Venture Capital Jobs and Internships at E14 Fund

We support and invest in MIT startups, whether founded by recent graduates or long-time alumni.

E14 Fund is the early stage venture capital fund for MIT startup community. Born at the MIT Media Lab, our mission is to serve the whole MIT community and invest in scalable, deep tech startups. We donate a significant portion of profits to MIT.

We’re usually your first investors and most often help when a company is moving from tackling early science or engineering challenges to building and shipping product to address a real market need, moving from using your scientist brain to using your founder brain.

Whether you’re a researcher considering the real-world translation of your work, an alumni who’s thinking about a new idea or a startup looking to connect with industry leaders who might have valuable feedback, become a partner or a customer, E14 Fund is here to help. Brainstorming, spitballing, looking for connections and resources within or outside of MIT — if you have a past or current MIT affiliation, it’s never too early to talk with E14 Fund, and no request is too small. Not sure you’re a fit, just ask.

History

Built from the common culture of the polytechnic university model at MIT, our community has always married discovery with application, invention with purpose. This has meant billion dollar startups from MIT, year after year after year, for decades. More recently, we’ve seen this pace only increase as researchers have embraced company-building as the best way to scale their impact and the cost and complexity of building a deep tech startup has gone down.

So in 2013, with the hypothesis that stakeholders across the community could use support in scaling new ventures, MIT Media Lab launched an experiment that tested different models of financial and non-financial support. Four years later, having been embraced by the whole community and made investments in successful, fast-growing companies, we launched E14 Fund with a new dedicated team to grow what worked.

With our first fund in 2017, our second fund in 2020 and our third fund in 2023, E14 invests in MIT startups tackling big, meaningful challenges. These startups have some core, differentiated science or engineering that provides a sustainable advantage. Their business models are typically focused on selling products to enterprise customers. In other words, we focus on where we think the resources and relationships across the MIT ecosystem can be the most helpful.

Does E14 Fund invest only in MIT spin-offs?

E14 Fund only invests in startups with key contributors from MIT, some spinning straight out of MIT, others with founders who left MIT decades ago. Focusing on our amazing community helps us build trusted, deep connections with our founders and better support their companies. And this also makes the donation we make of a portion of our profits to MIT more meaningful to our portfolio companies too!

When am I ready to pitch E14?

As a part of the community, it’s never too early to come talk with us: maybe we’ll have questions to help with your brainstorming and customer development; maybe we can give you our opinion on your roadmap; maybe we can introduce you to a potential customer or a potential co-founder. E14 Fund invests at the earliest stages, and even if you’re not sure you’re ready for investment, we’re always here to try to help, coach and give feedback. We often work and workshop with students and alumni months or sometimes even years before we invest, although we won’t disrupt your academic career and won’t make an investment before you’ve left MIT.

* to avoid conflict of interest, E14 Fund only invests in startups whose core managers / founders have already graduated / left from the Media Lab.

When and how much do you invest?

Core Investment: We’re typically your first institutional investor and our usual first investment is somewhere between $500k and $2M. For these core investments, we also set aside additional funds to continue supporting your startup in future rounds.

Fellowship Investment: We also have a program called E14 Fellows for companies that may not yet be ready to digest a bigger investment. Fellowship investments are typically $50k to $100k on founder-friendly terms. They’re made on a continuous basis and there is no fixed schedule, milestones or program. Instead, we work with E14 Fellowship companies on an individual basis to help them be ready for a bigger check from E14 if and when it makes sense for the company, whether that’s weeks or months later.

Do I have to be in Boston?

No. E14 Fund invests in great, world-changing MIT companies wherever they may be.

Why are you called E14 Fund?

Our name comes from the main building that houses the MIT Media Lab where we are affiliated (n.b. Buildings at MIT are all numbered!). But lucky us, E14 also looks like π in Leet and the element with atomic number 14, in other words element 14, is Silicon. Perfect for a deep tech fund!