Building the Channels for Deep Tech Stories to Flow
Progress isn’t defined by the discovery alone but by its adoption.
A brilliant insight recorded in a lab notebook doesn’t change anything. It only becomes important when it encounters the right context: an industry ready to change, a community willing to believe, a system ready to adjust. What sets apart the breakthroughs that reshape our world from the many ideas that disappear is timing, translation, and connection.
At E1 Ventures, we aim to make this happen. We build channels, share stories, and connect visionaries. We help founders take their ideas out of research labs and into spaces where investors, partners, policymakers, and communities come together. That’s where belief grows and momentum starts.
We understand this because we have experienced it ourselves. Before we became investors, we were founders. We faced tough problems, spent long nights, and felt that no one outside our group could truly understand. We know that progress speeds up when a community of supporters forms around an idea that seems impossible.
This is our role: to make sure deep tech founders are not only creating breakthroughs but also fostering the belief that makes those breakthroughs possible.
The Story as a Catalyst
At the beginning of 2025, we connected with Ashlee Vance, the journalist whose storytelling has captured the rise of Elon Musk and countless other frontier technologists. Early this year he launched Core Memory, a podcast dedicated to telling the stories of founders tackling the hardest problems in technology. We saw in Core Memory something deeply aligned with our mission - and so we chose to support it. Ashlee brings the craft of narrative; we bring belief in the importance of giving deep tech stories a platform.
A few months later, we met Jason Carman, founder of Story Inc., and the creative force behind Saturday Startup Stories (S3). Jason is, in the truest sense, a chronicler of entrepreneurial journeys. His work gives early-stage founders the ability to showcase not just their companies, but their struggles, their philosophy, their “why.” Jason told us about his idea around Lighthouse, a new video series exploring some of the hardest questions in technology and society. Again, we recognized the resonance - and chose to back Lighthouse as a way to bring bold, necessary stories to life.
Education as Community-Building
Why do we care so much about storytelling? Because we believe education is the cornerstone of community. The more people understand what deep tech is and why it matters, the more investors, policymakers, and everyday citizens will rally around it.
This is why we’ve also become regular partners of Deep Tech Week in New York and San Francisco. These gatherings aren’t just conferences - they bring awareness. They create spaces where scientists can meet capital, where investors can feel the energy of frontier innovation, where the public can glimpse futures not yet written. And in the same spirit, we’ve supported hackathons like the USS Hornet Defense Tech Hackathon, where bold ideas are tested, challenged, and accelerated in real time.
Our mission is not just to fund companies. It is to expand the circle of belief. Because belief attracts capital, and capital enables experimentation, and experimentation builds the technologies that redefine the world.
Longevity as a Lens
Last week, both Ashlee and Jason released new content about longevity. Ashlee interviewed Bryan Johnson.
Jason, meanwhile, released the first episode of Lighthouse series about The Secret to Accelerating Longevity.
This wasn’t coordinated, but it was telling. Longevity is not just about living longer; it’s about reshaping the architecture of human possibility. It is a perfect mirror for deep tech itself: audacious, uncertain, riddled with challenges, but profoundly consequential.
For us, longevity captures the essence of our mission as investors. We back companies not because their path is clear, but because their potential to transform human life is immense. And we support platforms like Core Memory and Lighthouse because they invite the world to understand, reflect, and care about those possibilities. By amplifying these stories, we help build the awareness and belief that founders need - and the conviction that LPs seek when they choose to back this space.
The Value E1 Brings
We support the channels, the networks, and the stage that allow bold ideas to resonate far beyond the lab or the whiteboard.
Our role is to create that ecosystem - one where extraordinary people are heard and connected to those who can help turn their ideas into reality.
We also believe in the power of storytelling. Through podcasts, videos, conferences, and every conversation that carries a founder’s vision into the world, we help educate and inspire. In doing so, we aren’t only investors; we are participants in the human project of pushing the frontier forward.
Deep tech is not just about technology - it is about belief. And belief spreads through stories. That is the capital we bring: the possibility of being heard, understood, and supported as the world’s boundaries are being reshaped.
Best,
Ana