Alice Bentinck

The daughter of Major Vivian Mark Bentinck, of the Royal Marines (a descendant of Admiral Sir Rudolph Bentinck, Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth, of the Barons Bentinck) and Dr. Miranda Whitehead, Bentinck grew up in the New Forest region of southern England. She attended the Godolphin School in Salisbury, an all-girls boarding school. There she enrolled in Young Enterprise, creating a business model for handmade purses. She then attended the Nottingham University Business School, graduating with a bachelor of arts in management studies, with first-class honours.

Prior to founding EF, Bentinck interned in the office of Tony Blair in London, where she also assisted the Africa Governance Initiative. From 2009 to 2011 she was a management consultant in the London office of McKinsey & Company.

Bentinck and Clifford met in 2009 while working at McKinsey. After noticing that entrepreneurship was not seen as a viable career option for talented and ambitious individuals in Europe, unlike in Silicon Valley, they decided to found Entrepreneurs First in 2011. Alice initially served as CPO at EF before taking over from Matt as CEO in 2023.

Noticing that most individuals applying to Entrepreneurs First were male, Bentinck and Clifford founded Code First Girls in 2012. The non-profit is the largest provider of free coding courses for women in the UK, delivering over £20 million worth of free technology education and teaching three times as many women to code as the entire UK university undergraduate system. Code First Girls has now taught over 55,000 women to code for free at university level and has significantly impacted the technology landscape. Since 2015, Bentinck has also served on their board and helped raise £4.5M in Series A for them from leading VCs including Active Partners and Samos investments.

EF's first international office was opened in Singapore in 2016, bringing the same company building model to Asia.

In 2017, it was announced that Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and Partner at Greylock, was leading a $12.4million investment into Entrepreneurs First. As part of his investment, Hoffman also joined the board of EF.

In December 2023, it was announced that Bentinck would take over as CEO of Entrepreneurs First after Matt Clifford stepped down from the role to concentrate on opportunities in artificial intelligence.

As of 2025 Entrepreneurs First's combined portfolio is worth over $11b with global sites in London, Paris, Bangalore, New York and San Francisco.