LtM ep11 - Funding Science Fiction That Works From The MIT Media Lab, With Habib Haddad and Calvin Chin From The E14 Fund

Habib Haddad and Calvin Chin are the Managing Partners of the E14 Fund, an early stage deep tech fund that invests exclusively in startups from the prolifically inventive MIT Media Lab community.

This podcast is hosted by Benjamin Joffe, Partner at SOSV, a global early stage fund focused on deep tech. SOSV runs multiple accelerator programs including HAX (intelligent hardware) and IndieBio (life sciences). To hear about new episodes, sign up to the newsletter or follow us on twitter at @LabToMarket.

For another episode covering Boston & Cambridge’s deep tech ecosystem, check out John Ho (Anzu Partners) on Breakthrough Industrial Tech.

INTRODUCTION

There is a bit of mystery shrouding the MIT Media Lab. If you’ve watched the movies Minority Report or Disney’s Big Hero 6, if you’ve used a touch screen, an e-reader, AR/VR devices, or played the game Guitar Hero, you’ve been touched by innovations from the Media Lab and its alumni.

The Media Lab is especially renowned for its interdisciplinary research. Its departments have names such as molecular machines, synthetic neurobiology or tangible media (if you stick until the end of the podcast, you will hear about a very curious project mixing wearable computing, emotions sensors and video).

In this episode, Habib and Calvin describe:

• The journey that brought them to create the E14 Fund in 2013 (and why it’s named this way).
• The importance of the community built around the Media Lab and the fund.
• How they work with founders, supporting them sometimes years before it’s a startup ready for investment,
• What differentiates the best founders from others,
• What simple question you can ask founders to determine their ability to navigate both the short and long term,
• How deep tech startups can be both less capital intensive, and more capital efficient than many think,
• Why attracting, training and keeping foreign scientific talent in the US matters,
• We end with some ideas on how to grow the investment in deep tech, and why this sector inevitably matter a great deal.

REFERENCES MENTIONED

• E14 Fund
• MIT Media Lab
• Figur8: musculoskeletal health analysis. Founder: Nan-Wei Gong
• OPT Industries: Computational manufacturing platform for functional materials. Founder: Jifei Ou
• ThurWave: 3d imaging with mm waves. Founder: Matt Reynolds.
• Whiplash: a movie about drums, and much more.

PREVIOUS EPISODES

• Robert Gallenberger (btov Partners) on How to Select Industrial Partners
• Deep Tech Startups vs. Covid-19, with IndieBio, Khosla Ventures and 50 Years
• Eric Rosenblum (Tsingyuan Ventures) on Chinese Founders in the US
• Overview of Deep Tech Inv...