Consulting

I help founders tell stories that empower the people they seek to serve.

Selected projects:

  • Coached dozens of founders on story—developing blog posts, newsletters, investment theses, strategy memos, decks, docs, guides, videos, and contributed articles.
  • Chronicled the quests of teams working on asteroid mining, venture investing, AI, building more housing in California, and electronics design.
  • Wrote commissioned science-fiction stories for Fortune 500 CEOs to inform long-term strategic planning.
  • Led editorial for epidemiological simulation firm that helped schools, businesses, and state governments respond to COVID-19—building and iterating the website, collaborating with the cofounders and science team on mission-critical blog posts, supporting partnerships with organizations like MITRE and RAND, co-publishing narrative data visualizations of disease spread with Esri, and working with leading epidemiologists on articles for publications like STAT and the Chicago Tribune.
  • Co-created the W3 Award winning website True Blue, raising money for ProPublica and pioneering narrative responsive design.
  • Contributed Victory Condition to Anthropocene Magazine’s Climate Parables series, which was adapted for the stage in partnership with the Long Now Foundation and Back Pocket Media and performed by actors accompanied by live animation and a string quartet, sold out its run, and was brought back to the stage in a special production for the American Geophysical Union’s annual gathering of Earth and space scientists.
  • Gave talks at places like Google, SXSW, Comic Con, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Niantic, the Conference on World Affairs, Future in Review, and UC San Diego.
  • Co-designed the critically acclaimed game Machine Learning President and co-produced two live sessions in partnership with the Long Now Foundation and Cards Against Humanity for curated groups of players including journalists, activists, technologists, and policymakers.
  • Wrote founding manifesto capturing core values, longterm mission, and underlying strategy for AI/ML startup.
  • Co-created and led storytelling workshop for Qualcomm’s top engineers.
  • Commissioned, edited, wrote, and published stories exploring the feedback loop between science fiction and technological progress for Scout.
  • Developed commercialization plans for geophysics startup, resulting in millions of dollars of revenue, private investment, and US Department of Energy grants.
  • Wrote essays for publications like TechCrunch, OneZero, the Boston Globe, GEN, Every, Tor.com, NEO.LIFE, Future, Techdirt, and Harvard Business Review.
  • Spun new IP out of universities, worked on early-stage venture financings, and provided drop-in operational support for portfolio companies as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a venture capital fund.
  • Co-founded consultancy that helped climate tech firms expand into new international markets—clients ranged from energy storage startups to global top ten solar firms.

My work has been featured by the New Yorker, Entrepreneur, the Economist, VentureBeat, Inc., Businessweek, Economy, Forbes, VICE, Huffington Post, the Verge, Quartz, BBC, NPR, and the New York Times.

Consulting inquiries: eliot@eliotpeper.com