Jul 13, 2025

Week 0 (EF)

Our cohort’s official start was on July 7th. Kick-off Weekend was 28-29th June. I refer to the week between KOW and cohort launch as Week 0.

Key Learnings

  1. Be physically present in Week 0

The EF team will not ask you to be in the office during Week 0. But most of the best people will be in the office. If you want a head start on working with someone awesome, be physically present and spend that week creating strong connections.

  1. Know your values going into Week 0

When you meet potential co-founders, you will screen for two things: overlap of ideas/edges, and values. You will (rightly) be discouraged from prioritising the edge overlap. You should screen people based on their values. Values can include ways of working, thoughts about the future of tech, and ambition for the company you want to build. If you self-reflect enough before the cohort starts, you will know your answers to these questions, and you will not waste valuable time thinking about this when you finally meet people. I made a document on my values during Week 0, after thinking about them through multiple conversations during the week. I wish I had come with that document to KOW. I will share this document in a separate post.

  1. Invest time in people v ideas

In Week 0, meet most (if not all) people 1-2-1. Learn about their values, and briefly about what they’d be open to working on. The three main benefits of doing this are:

a) when most people (and they will) break up the teams they formed during 0-3 weeks, you will have already screened them to know if you’d work with them;

b) most people in your cohort will go on to do cool stuff - so these are connections for life, equivalent to an Oxbridge MBA;

c) you will probably work with person A on something that people B, C, and D all have experience in; if you warm relationship with people B, C, and D at the start, you will have an additional primary source of information when validating your idea.

  1. Don’t panic when teams start forming rapidly during Week 0

80% of our cohort were in teams going into Day 1 of Week 1. Most were formed during Week 0, and a few pre-KOW. Don’t panic about it. If people teamed up before KOW, they likely haven’t met everyone in the cohort, and they will be open to meeting / cheating / breaking up. Even if they are super loyal to their co-founder, EF will force them to meet more people during KOW through co-founder carousels & ideation sessions - so you still have a chance to “steal” them if you are good.

  1. Prep your 60-sec intro for KOW

Most people will remember key things from your 60-second intro. They are screening you based on what you said during it, and how you said it. Prep your pitch before you come into KOW.

  1. Remember who your audience is

Your 60-second intro is equivalent to selling a product on a sales call. The same principles apply. If you’re looking for a technical co-founder, do not speak in commercial terms that they do not care about. Speak about what they will care about. If you’re the product you are selling, sell the features they are missing. This seems obvious, but a lot of us got it wrong. I got it wrong.

  1. Stand out

Remember writing a UCAS personal statement and being told that the first sentence must stand out for anyone to remember your application? Apply the same reasoning to how you pitch yourself.

  1. Don’t be the “sports guy”

If you watched HIMYM, you’ll get this reference. If not - the TLDR is, if you are not married to an idea, be careful not to come across like you are. People will rule out working with you if they think you won’t work on anything else. You might do this by accident, by talking about your interests a lot - which makes people remember you by them.

  1. CTO v Founding Engineer

If you’re the commercial co-founder, you’ll want a good engineer to carry the heavy lifting on the tech side. But there is a big difference between an engineer who will make a good CTO and a Founding Engineer. Your cohort will have people in both buckets. Screen people for more than what they’ve built and their technical experience. It will matter in the long run. You can (semi) easily hire a good engineer later. You will find it harder to hire a technical co-founder with the stamina, dedication, and way of thinking that a strong CTO should have.

  1. Be and choose cracked

People will use this term a lot. Don’t come into this only acting cracked. Be cracked. Because if you’re not, you will waste your time, EF’s time, and your co-founder’s time. If you put in the hours and sacrifice everything for this - people will notice, label you cracked. And then finding the most optimal co-founder match will be easy for you.

Side learnings

  • Use free Apollo credits (and all Apollo competitors) for bulk email outreach

  • Use Lemlist for Li bulk outreach (still works, Apollo doesn’t)

  • Use free Clay credits for emails, phone numbers

  • Cold call a lot

  • Set your location on Li as Argentina to get Sales Nav for 1/4 of the UK price

All of this seems very obvious until you reach the end of Week 0 and reflect on all the mistakes you made.