Michael Stothard

Michael joined the investment team at firstminute after 15 years in startups and the media.

Michael joined the firstminute investment team after 15 years in media, most recently as founding editor of Sifted.eu, and before that as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times. At Sifted, he helped scale the company from an idea to a venture-backed reporting and events platform with a team of 80 journalists and engineers producing world-class, in-depth and award-winning coverage of the European technology landscape. At the Financial Times, he was senior correspondent and bureau chief in Paris, Madrid, Stockholm and New York. As a leading foreign correspondent, he interviewed hundreds of breakthrough tech founders as well as anonymous hackers, rogue traders, presidents, military dictators, global CEOs, and quirky billionaires.

At firstminute, he is focused largely on AI investing, having made investments into companies such as Mistral (foundational models) Klu.ai (platform for building custom generative AI applications), Agemo (apps built with natural language), Maihem (AI agents for testing AI products), Claimsorted (an AI-native third-party administrator) and Granola (building an IDE for knowledge work) as well as a number still in stealth. He also sits on the boards of Typology (France’s leading skincare start-up) and Tailwind (gaming) and also leads on French coverage for firstminute. He has a first-class degree from Cambridge University.

Harking back to his journalism days, Michael also still likes to write, produce podcasts and videos to be part of the global conversation on the new economy. He believes that storytelling is a superpower and advises firstminute’s portfolio companies on shaping their central message for customers, staff, investors and themselves. If any of that above sounds interesting, and you are an entrepreneur trying to build a world-class company and looking for seed stage venture funding (or think you might be looking in the next year or so), please do send him an email or a LinkedIn or a carrier pigeon or whatever you prefer to set up a chat.