Entrepreneurs First

Scope AI has raised $20M led by Index Ventures to build the future of inspection. Inspection is the most common way physical data is collected, underpinning the integrity, operation, and safety of every industry. Yet the software these inspections run on hasn’t changed in 20 years. Founded by Jonathan Low and Jakob Cassiman, Scope is building the AI-native paradigm for the 10x inspection engineer to speed up industrial inspection workflows, from reporting to asset integrity. Proud to back Jonathan and Jakob from day zero at EF.

We hosted 300 of SF’s best VCs in our office two weeks ago. 17 teams took the stage to share their story and ambition. If you missed our April 26 Demo Day, the full recording is now available in the first comment.

Next Tuesday, I’ll head to London! 🇬🇧 I’ll be joining Entrepreneurs First and Episode 1 Ventures for a conversation on building a company, from an ambitious idea to a venture-backed business. Last month, we announced a $5m pre-seed round led by Episode 1 Ventures, an exciting milestone for the team and the beginning of our journey. If you're interested in frontier tech, offshore innovation, or early-stage entrepreneurship, join us next Tuesday. Sign-up link in comments. And if you’ll be there, or simply around London next Tuesday, let’s catch up! Milly Gigg Carolina Monck, PhD Hanne Mortazavi Jonny Clifford Maria Luque Anguita Martina Sardelli Mathilde Barge Maxwell Filip-Turner Jannick Stein Alexander Deviataikin Carolyn Mahr

Our portfolio company Jack & Jill, founded by Matthew & Saaras, just placed the CTO of one of our London portfolio companies. We have partnered with them on building unicorn cofounding teams from scratch. Jack & Jill is at the heart of supporting the flywheel London's startup ecosystem needs. To paraphrase the founder and one of our most successful EF alumni, Matthew: "More great talent in great roles → more product value → more growth → more capital to hire more great talent into startups." That loop requires matching brilliant talent to the best startup opportunities. Want access to upcoming EF opportunities? To be in the talent loop? Talk to Jack. He's free, takes 10 minutes and we will directly reach out with opportunities to join our in-house EF team and/or for roles across our portfolio of companies. Link in the comments.

We’re looking for a killer Content Creator to document The Bridge in SF. In April, you would have shared: - Everett "Ev" Randle @ Benchmark, and Niko Bonatsos @ Verdict Capital (early investors in Gumloop, Ramp, Discord and Mercer) giving firesides in the living room 🔥 - Nicolas M. @ Arago talking about photonic chips ⚡️ - Founders building everything from zero-prompt AI and robots for dogs, to AR glasses for mechanics and humans-on-chips 🛠️ - Chef Jac preparing 5* meals day after day ❤️ - Suited-up humanoid robots in the house 👔 - Sam Altman signing a picture of himself as the Mona Lisa 🖼 May is just getting started. Your job is to make sure The Bridge gets in front of the right people across the world.

I’m getting lots of people asking me what sorts of companies we want to invest in via our program for repeat founders (XF) at Entrepreneurs First Some of the conversations I've had in the past week: 🤖 A demo of a robot that would still be able to walk out of the ring after a round in Robot Wars 🪱 Exploring what worms can teach us about AI and continuous learning  😇 How to make AI therapy more effective through multi player mode  💉 What would be needed to allow precision medicine to actually reach n=1 🕶️ The potential infrastructure needs for a world of physical AI experiences  💾 What the operating system for AI native companies will look like 🇺🇸 Many conversations about accessing US markets and funding What marked these conversations out for me was not necessarily the ideas themselves, but the ambition and drive behind them. And the scar tissue to know what it will take. If you’re thinking about, or know someone thinking about, similarly ambitious ideas for their next venture, I’d love to chat. cc. Kit Logan

Blood pressure without white coat syndrome. Heart sounds without gender bias. Cardiovascular insights without physical contact. That’s the future we’re building at LightHearted AI! We built a new sensory system for the human body. A silicon + photonics platform that captures cardiovascular signals from meters away at unprecedented resolution — decoding them in real time with AI, including blood pressure and ECG, without contact. Developed by a team of photonics PhDs, AI/ML and clinical experts, the technology traces back to high-performance sensing work originally funded for advanced applications, now repurposed to reinvent how we measure the human body. Starting with heart valve disease diagnostics, we are on a mission to help prevent 10 million heart-related deaths by 2030 while helping close longstanding diagnostic gaps in cardiology. We are very excited to share we are backed by Draper Associates!