Tractable - Entrepreneur First's first unicorn

What Tractable's success means for the future of investing in talent

We thrilled that Tractable, a graduate of Entrepreneur First's 2015 cohort, has announced a Series D funding round that values the company at over a billion dollars.

Alex, Razvan and Adrien have built something extraordinary: Tractable builds computer vision models that can quickly and accurately appraise car insurance claims. It's the UK's first computer vision unicorn and one of the most important technology companies serving the insurance industry, with customers including GEICO and The Hartford. More about their story here.

It's also Entrepreneur First's (EF's) first unicorn - and the first company anywhere to reach a billion dollar valuation that started life in a "talent investing" platform.

The achievement belongs to the founders, of course, but it's also an important moment for talent investing - a new model of venture capital that EF pioneered and that, for a long time, seemed a pretty controversial idea.

The core idea of talent investing is that it's possible to identify and fund great founders before they start a company. We seek out individuals who we think could be exceptional entrepreneurs, back them pre-company and support them to find a co-founder and build a company from scratch.

You can imagine the obvious questions this raised when we got started: don't you suffer from adverse selection? can the founders really be mission driven? will teams built this way hold together? and more...

Alex, Razvan and Adrien have answered these questions pretty conclusively. They're one of the most dedicated, customer-obsessed teams you could hope to meet and have built something that will have enduring value.

We were lucky that they let us partner with them from before the company even existed. That meant, we made our first investment at $0.02/share. Six years later, their Series D is priced at $26.75/share - a >1,300 multiple for EF. Talent investing is great for founders and it's great for LPs.

Tractable is just getting started - and so are we. Tractable came out of the very first EF cohort that we ran on our current model: paying individuals stipends pre-company, then investing in their companies at incorporation.

Tractable was one of the first 13 companies we funded this way (in fact, in the same cohort as Magic Pony Technology, our biggest exit to date) and since then we've funded >300 more, most of which are still pre-Series A.

It's our first unicorn, but many more are coming. Just look at the trajectories of companies like Cleo, Accurx, Flexciton, Portify, Transcelestial, See Mode, Fabric Nano, Dishpatch, Omnipresent, Neoplants, Neptune Robotics and many, many more...

Venture capital has proven an amazing tool for enabling founders to fulfil their ambitions. But talent investing has an even bolder promise: to increase the supply of great entrepreneurs. Tractable's success is an important proof point. There are lots more to come.