Long Journey

We are the second believers in the magically weird. Bellwethers welcome. Early journeys: @SpaceX, @AndurilTech, @Uber, @CrusoeAI, @TogetherCompute, @Truemed

[Long Journey @LongJourneyVC]

We are proud to announce Long Journey IV, a $181.8 million fund, which will enable us to continue pursuing our mission: to be the "second believers" in the magically weird (the founders are the first believers).

[Bloomberg Technology @technology]

Cyan Banister, Arielle Zuckerberg and Lee Jacobs have raised a $181.81 million fund to back "magical weirdos." https://t.co/4NJm14wryv

[Edge City @JoinEdgeCity]

At Edge Esmeralda 2025, Constellation collected neural data on-site, closed their lead investor, and assembled their founding team.

Since then, they have raised ~$10M to build foundation models of the human brain.

Last week, we caught up with Avery at @EdgeEsmeralda 2026 ☀️

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

Yes, we see your flame and we light ours from it and then we relight yours if it grows dim. We are a witness and we are enrolling in your belief about the future. Second believer energy is a thing.

[Miko @mikojava]

This is brilliant but being a witness of what did happen can be true detraumatization whereas shared conviction is closer to the "second believer" that @cyantist talks about at @LongJourneyVC

[Ofek Lavian @OfekLavian]

We just raised $40M to solve America’s affordability crisis.

Groceries are the #1 financial stressor in America. Food prices are up 30% since the pandemic. For the 100 million Americans earning under $50K, the money runs out before the month does.

To fix it, Forage is building a network for affordability:

1. For families, we’re building a suite of products to expand financial access

2. For partners, we’re building a revenue growth engine by helping them win on affordability

Today, our technology is used in over 100,000 stores across all 50 states. Our payments volume is up 13x YoY. When grocers switch to Forage, they see a 15% lift in EBT revenue.

We also launched the Forage app, a free tool that helps cost-conscious families check their EBT balances, save on groceries, and earn rewards on every purchases.

US grocery is a $1.5T market. We're just getting started.

Onwards! 🚀

[Mike Wang @zmwang]

We have a ritual I designed at Long Journey when we hire new team members to “knight” them and invite them to declare what they hope to bring to the team.

For the residency and fellowship in Edge Esmeralda, we “knighted” the 17 humans embarking on the adventure. It felt goofy at the time and I’m so glad we did it! Ritual.

[Liz Wells @TheTechBioGirl]

Official knighted for @JoinEdgeCity @LongJourneyVC and embarking on a season of residencies & returning to ‘summer camp’ 👑🌻

Being moved @heyohelen’s X presence (& manifesting I can someday be as cool as her!)

[Annie Zhang @anni3zhang]

thrilled to be building at 🦞 @JoinEdgeCity @LongJourneyVC

[Liz Wells @TheTechBioGirl]

SO pumped to be apart of this!

Thank you @EdgeEsmeralda, @LongJourneyVC, and @JoinEdgeCity for this opportunity!

[helen (ง •̀_•́)ง @heyohelen]

super excited to be heading to @EdgeEsmeralda as a @LongJourneyVC resident!! 🙂‍↕️

the world is created as we explore it and I’m rly hype to push the boundaries of my own thinking here ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡

look forward to sharing my learnings!

[Long Journey @LongJourneyVC]

A new flock.

[Edge City @JoinEdgeCity]

The 2026 Long Journey Residents are here!

11 founders, one month at @EdgeEsmeralda, building everything from orbital refueling to ocean robotics to AI memory systems.

Year two of our partnership with @LongJourneyVC.

Full cohort ↓

[Substrate @substrate]

We are honored to see our work with @googledeepmind's AlphaEvolve featured alongside major breakthroughs from @googleresearch and @googlecloud, as well as other impactful commercial applications.

[Stoke Space @stoke_space]

Our Stage 1 structure is now shipped, delivered, and ready for testing in Moses Lake, WA. Standing in its full vertical orientation, this flight hardware will be thoroughly vetted before returning to Kent for some final touches before the journey to Cape Canaveral, FL begins.

[Stoke Space @stoke_space]

Testing is LIVE in Moses Lake, for both our Stage 1 structure and Zenith engines. Proud of the teams who are working relentlessly to drive us forward on the road to launch.🛣️🚀

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

I was secretly filming someone last week.

We were Trumaning her, a Truman Show moment, orchestrated. Creating a magical 24 hours for a woman named Leia to welcome her to San Francisco. She didn't know the cameras were there. She didn't know any of it was for her.

We ended up at the Martin Lawrence gallery.

[Mario Gabriele @mariogabriele]

Investor Cyan Banister (@cyantist) has backed SpaceX, Uber, Niantic, and Flock Safety. A majority of those investments did not emerge from a formal meeting.

Uber traced back to a conviction that the taxi medallion system was a racket. Niantic grew out of watching friends charter helicopters for an obscure geolocation game. Flock Safety materialized from reading the public WiFi list at a Four Seasons cafe.

Her method is not a framework. It is attention: a lifelong habit of noticing bottlenecks, tracking human obsessions, and poking at reality until it reveals something others missed.

In this conversation, she covers:
• Why the taxi medallion system was the real Uber insight
•How she found a $7 billion company on a public wifi list
• The Biz, Tizz, and Rizz framework for identifying legendary founders
• Why the age of the polymath is arriving faster than most people expect
• How brain-computer interfaces are surfacing thoughts from two weeks prior
• Why she believes vibe manufacturing will mint the largest wave of new millionaires in a generation

The signals she is reading now are worth understanding.

@thegeneralistco

Thank you to the partners who make this possible
@dottechdomains: An identity for builders at their core: https://t.co/vNsDgb1aBH
@brexHQ: The intelligent finance platform: https://t.co/WsjMETv6Zf
@withpersona: Trusted identity verification for any use case: https://t.co/eF6Icbe0Dv

(00:00) Intro
(03:51) Never playing the game you appear to be playing
(07:18) Practicing childlike wonder as a daily discipline
(10:08) Questioning belief after her stroke
(13:30) Cyan’s metaphysical experiments
(23:24) Non-local consciousness and creativity
(27:22) Investing with extreme openness to signals
(29:05) The importance of timing in investing
(32:26) Meeting Travis Kalanick
(34:19) Finding Flock Safety through a chance encounter
(38:23) The summer of Pokémon Go (what worked and what didn’t)
(39:55) Human nature and what makes something "stick"
(42:15) Brain-computer interfaces and AI’s accelerating effect
(52:53) “Biz, Tiz, Riz:” her framework for evaluating founders
(59:20) Why Cyan lives in a retirement community part-time
(1:03:50) A unique way of finding books that speak to you
(1:08:44) Final meditations

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

This was a very fun interview! Thank you Mario!!

[Cyan Banister @cyantist]

Last night we "Trumaned" a person who was coming to our screening of the Truman Show. So much love and care went into the experience both for her and everyone else who was part of the village. 170 people showed up and afterwards I felt the feeling that artists feel when they pulled it off. There's nothing like that feeling, lemme tell you. Nothing.

Thank you to the @LongJourneyVC team for taking events to a whole new level.

[Yossi Farro @FarroYossi]

Just visited the @LongJourneyVC House!

Wrapped Tefillin with their amazing and proudly Jewish founder @LeeJacobs.

Their latest fund raised $181,818,181.80 to back what they call “magically weird” founders and support “life and creation.”

And no, all the 18s aren’t random.

In Jewish tradition and numerology, 18 represents “chai” meaning life. A beautiful way to build a fund centered around creation, optimism, and backing builders shaping the future.

[Mike Wang @zmwang]

SF Sci-Fi Theater IV tonight. The Truman Show is one of my Top 5 movies of all time.

It forecasted this future world of
a) reality TV & the always watched internet identity
c) parasocial relationships
d) surveillance capitalism
e) blur of authenticity & performance
f) simulation (conspiracy) theory

So excited. Can't believe we got 150 people! Have a couple of spots left.

[Augustus Doricko @ADoricko]

Mankind has always been at the mercy of the weather.

No longer.

Rainmaker is the first company in history to routinely, unambiguously, modify the weather.

Last quarter, we produced >143MM gallons of unambiguously man-made precipitation.

Here’s how we do it 🧵