In the fast paced world of creative agencies, developing ideas for pitches often requires juggling multiple tools, teams and streams of information, making it difficult to maintain consistency and clarity throughout the process. As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in creative workflows, there is growing demand for systems that can organise context and support decision making rather than simply generate content. London based startup First Concepts is aiming to address this need, and has now raised $1 million in pre seed funding to build its AI powered workspace for early stage creative work.
The funding round was led by Arāya Ventures alongside Antler, with participation from several industry figures including Jez Jowett, Nathan McDonald, Sean Williams, Sam Winward and Hugo Rodger Brown. The investment comes less than nine months after the company was founded and will support further development of its platform.
Addressing fragmentation in creative workflows
Creative agencies often work on multiple pitches simultaneously, each requiring research, ideation and collaboration across teams. While digital tools have improved productivity, they have also introduced fragmentation, with information spread across different platforms and formats.
As a result, teams frequently spend significant time rebuilding context, aligning on ideas and ensuring consistency across outputs. This can slow down the creative process and make it harder to maintain a unified vision for projects.
First Concepts was founded to solve this problem by creating a system that treats context as a central asset rather than something that is constantly recreated. The platform is designed to help teams organise their thinking, maintain continuity and build on previous work more effectively.
Building an AI powered creative workspace
Founded by Conor Hoey, Polina Sali and Marin Godechot, First Concepts brings together expertise in design, artificial intelligence and product development. The company is developing a platform that integrates artificial intelligence into the early stages of creative work, particularly in areas such as concept development and pitch preparation.
Rather than acting as a standalone content generation tool, the platform functions as an AI layer that sits above existing creative tools. It coordinates multiple AI models while maintaining a shared understanding of context, enabling teams to generate ideas and outputs that remain consistent with a project’s objectives and identity.
This approach aims to help creative professionals focus more on strategy and ideation while reducing the friction associated with managing fragmented information.
Introducing the concept of Creative DNA
At the core of the platform is what the company calls a Creative DNA engine. This component is designed to learn and adapt to individual and brand preferences over time, capturing elements such as tone, style and decision making patterns.
By building a structured representation of these preferences, the system can help ensure that outputs generated during the creative process align with the intended vision. This reduces the need for repeated adjustments and helps maintain coherence across different stages of a project.
In addition to the Creative DNA engine, the platform includes a unified interface that centralises context and information, as well as a tool agnostic infrastructure that connects with existing creative software.
Enhancing collaboration and decision making
One of the key goals of First Concepts is to improve collaboration within creative teams. By providing a shared context that evolves over time, the platform allows team members to build on each other’s work more effectively.
This shared understanding can help teams make decisions more quickly and with greater confidence, as they have access to a consistent source of information and insights.
The system is also designed to support creative judgment, enabling teams to balance the efficiency of AI generated outputs with human expertise and intuition.
Expanding the platform
With the new funding, First Concepts plans to continue developing its AI native workspace and refine its core technology. The company aims to enhance its ability to capture and structure creative context while improving integration with a wide range of tools used by creative professionals.
As artificial intelligence continues to reshape how creative work is produced, platforms that can manage context, maintain consistency and support collaboration are likely to play an increasingly important role. First Concepts is positioning itself at the intersection of creativity and AI, seeking to build infrastructure that helps teams turn ideas into cohesive and impactful outcomes.