Founder's Mindset goes "meta" for season 2, episode 1
An interview with my own co-host, Alice Bentinck, and her cofounder Matt Clifford
Yes, friends, it’s finally here (and for those who read all the way to the promissory note at the end of my update announcing the season 1 finale back in May, I thank you your patience): the Founder’s Mindset season 2 premiere!
This is an extra-special episode for several reasons:
For one, it kicks off our new-and-improved conversational format for the podcast, which more closely resembles my original vision for a show that blends the intimacy and spontaneity of “call-in talk radio” with the depth and credibility of expert commentary.
It also exemplifies our commitment to featuring a wider variety of founders and cofounding teams in this season, mapping the founder’s journey across multiple industries (from autonomous delivery robots to ed tech), ecosystems (from Berlin to Silicon Valley), and stages (from pre-seed to post-exit).
But coolest of all, we decided to go “meta” with this episode—putting the podcast’s own co-host Alice Bentinck in the hot seat, together with her cofounder Matt Clifford, to reflect on their founder’s journey as creators of Entrepreneur First. On the heels of EF’s recently announced Series C raise of $158M, I sat down with Alice and Matt to reflect on their experience of the raise and of the 10 years leading up to it: 10 years that’ve taken them from a humble non-profit pilot experiment in “cofounder dating” to an international portfolio of 500 companies worth over $10B. We talk about how they’ve both evolved and how they’ve stayed constant over the years, both in their relationships with EF and with each other; their respective approaches to rejection, ambition, and growth, and why they follow the adage of “Don't learn too quickly”; the role of a startup in one’s identity, and what’s wrong with the conventional advice to “not get too personally attached to your company.”
We’ll be dropping a new episode each week for at least the next 5 weeks, so tune in on Spotify (linked above) or Apple Music or Amazon Music or wherever you listen to podcasts, and subscribe if you want to catch them all!