London’s First Concepts raises €871.7k to build “taste-aware” AI operating system for creative agencies

First Concepts, a London-based startup that has built an AI intelligence layer that applies context and taste to creative pitches, has raised €871.7k ($1 million) in pre-Seed funding less than nine months after the startup was founded.

The round was led by Arāya Ventures in partnership with Antler. Notable industry leaders also participated, including Jez Jowett, former Managing Partner at Havas; Nathan McDonald, founder of We Are Social; Sean Williams and Sam Winward, Partners at UNKNOWN; and Hugo Rodger Brown, founder of YunoJuno.

Conor Hoey, co-founder and CEO of First Concepts, commented, “First Concepts has a simple mission to transform creative context from something fragile and ephemeral into a structured, compounding asset. We are building an operating system that understands the value of creative thinking and taste. This will transform creative workflows for teams around the world.”

Founded in 2025 by Conor Hoey, Polina Sali, and Marin Godechot, First Concepts is a taste-aware AI native workspace for early-stage creative work. Hoey previously served as a product marketing leader at Amazon, where he expanded Amazon Fresh to generate €436 million ($500 million) in revenue. Sali is a brand and systems designer who has managed creative programmes throughout Europe. Marin Godechot is a full-stack and AI engineer with ten years of experience developing mission-critical software.

According to the company, agencies currently pitch up to 10 times per month and can spend as much as €231.5k (£200k) per pitch, yet up to 40% of creative time is lost reconstructing context across fragmented tools.

First Concepts claims to address this by operating above the stack to coordinate leading models and creative tools through a shared taste and context layer. “The platform is built on three foundational pillars: a Creative DNA taste engine that learns individual and brand judgment, a unified interface that treats context as the source of truth, and a tool agnostic infrastructure that ensures creative coherence across every output,” explained the company. 

The company states that it makes workflows tool-agnostic and aligned with judgment, allowing teams to progress from brief to pitch-ready ideas 70% faster. It is built for creative agencies, and unifies briefs, research, references and generation into a single persistent context system. 

The UK startup reveals that at its core is Creative Memory, an infrastructure layer that preserves taste, maintains coherence and compounds creative decision-making across projects.

Adam French, Partner at Antler, commented,  “The founders of First Concepts possess the rare combination of technical depth and creative intuition required to redefine how teams collaborate. By building a taste-aware layer that sits above the current AI stack, they are ensuring that human judgment remains the central driver of creative work. We believe First Concepts will become the essential infrastructure for any brand or agency looking to thrive in an AI native world.”

Currently, First Concepts works with over 40 independent creative agencies across London and New York, including Mother and R/GA. It reports that agencies using the platform have witnessed up to 70% time savings for reaching concepts that have ultimately won pitches whilst elevating their creative quality using AI.

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