Axel Wehr and Rachel Finegold from our team came to see Entrepreneur First's latest cohort - arguably the largest and most technical so far. 

By all accounts, the London startup scene was abuzz with Entrepreneur First‘s latest Demo Day today, as 25 startups — up from nine! — took to the stage to pitch their wares. The so-called “talent first” investor targets the best technical graduates in Europe and beyond to put them through a six-month program where they form teams and in turn found startups.

This “pre-team, pre-idea” approach is what sets EF apart from other accelerators, while the emphasis on technical talent — 95 percent of the cohort who presented today have a technical background — is producing some very interesting results. “This could be game changing for the U.K. ecosystem,” is how one serial entrepreneur put it to me prior to the event.

To that end, and building on last year’s intake, startups on stage spanned cybersecurity, AI, robots, fintech and much more. Specifically, of the fifth cohort, 45 percent are described as working on deep technology, 70 percent are B2B/enterprise products, and 16 percent are hardware