Announcing: the Long Journey Residency at Edge Esmeralda 2026

TLDR

• Month-long founder residency at Edge Esmeralda 2026 (May 30 to June 27, Healdsburg, California)
• 13 founders, fully sponsored, living and building together inside a popup village of 500+ builders, researchers, and creators
• For early-stage and pre-seed founders at the -1 to 0 stage, chasing ideas too early or too weird for traditional investors
• Mentorship and office hours with Long Journey's investment team, weekly demos, expert matching, and a final demo day
• In year one, close to half the cohort secured follow-on funding, with several closing multi-million dollar rounds ☀️

Application deadline is March 31st; we’ll review them on a rolling basis. Apply here.

Why are we doing this?

Long Journey backs the absurd and the weird before it becomes consensus. They act as the second believers to founders, showing up to witness the crazy belief, and compound it with their own. They act as a Bubbe to the most audacious dreamers, showing up with warmth and conviction long before the rest of the world catches on.

What Long Journey understands - and what Edge City is built around - is that the right room changes everything. When you're surrounded by people who take the absurd seriously, you think bigger, move faster, and build with more conviction. The residency exists to be that room, because it just takes one more believer to start a following.

When two communities share the same belief, the natural thing to do is build something together. That's this.

Ok, but what actually is this?

The Long Journey Residency is a pre-accelerator for the magically weird. For one month, you'll live and build inside Edge Esmeralda, a popup village where 400+ of the world's most ambitious builders, researchers, and creators gather. You'll be surrounded by the right people, the right energy, and a full month of uninterrupted building.

The old playbook said you needed three months in a traditional accelerator to get off the ground. We think you need one month in the right environment. Long Journey and Edge City provide that environment, along with the mentorship and network to help you launch. It’s the place builders can take a "risky" idea and spend a month seeing if it has legs.

What You Get

• Full sponsorship to Edge Esmeralda 2026, including housing in a shared founder house and meals
• A cohort of 10-14 ambitious founders building alongside you
• Dedicated programming: weekly demos, founder dinners, Long Journey office hours, curated expert matching, and a final demo day
• Direct access to Long Journey's investment team and portfolio founders
• The village: 400+ builders, researchers, and creators gathered for a month. One of the highest-signal environments anywhere.

Who Should Apply

• You have a bold idea you can't stop thinking about and you're ready to start building
• You're at the -1 to 0 stage: pre-accelerator, transitioning from concept to prototype
• Your idea seems too early, too weird, or too ambitious for traditional investors
• You're high-agency and resourceful, someone who thrives in a dense network of ideas and people
• You plan to raise capital for what you're building

This is for outliers with a belief for a magically weird version of the future, who are ready to start building before certainty or consensus exists. If you want a safe, consensus-backed path, this isn't it.

What Happened in 2025

Last year, Long Journey and Edge City ran the first residency at Edge Esmeralda 2025 (recap here). Fourteen residents lived and built together, working on projects spanning brain-computer interfaces, synthetic biology, causal world models, and autonomous systems.

The results:

• Close to half the cohort secured follow-on funding
• Founders closed multi-million dollar rounds
• Founder recruited fellow residents to build their teams
• Each residents accelerated their progress by months in the span of 30 days.

The numbers are real, but ask any resident what they remember most and they'll talk about the 2am kitchen conversations that turned into technical breakthroughs, or the hike where they found their co-founder. The residency worked because everyone was building at the same intensity, in the same place, for a full month.

As one resident put it: "The residency acted as a kind of petri dish of high-agency individuals and gave me the catalytic energy to reimagine my life trajectory.”

What's New in 2026

• Year one proved the model works. Word has spread, and the caliber of applicants this year is already stronger. Expect an even higher-agency, more ambitious cohort.
• Better pathways for residents to connect with Long Journey's investment team and network after the program ends
• A growing alumni network from year one, helping source the next cohort
• Most importantly: In the last twelve months, the world has changed. We’re in a time of rapid deployment and prototyping. You don't need many months toiling away; you need the right idea in the right environment, surrounded by the right people.

There's never been a better time to build something that sounds crazy. Do it here.

How to Apply

Applications are open now: apply by March 31st.

We're looking for builders who embody resourcefulness, high agency, and tolerance for non-consensus thinking. Previous credentials matter less than your conviction and ability to build.

Questions? Email longjourneyresidency@edgecity.live.

About Long Journey

Long Journey is an early-stage venture capital firm led by Lee Jacobs, Cyan Banister, and Arielle Zuckerberg — veterans of AngelList, Founders Fund, and Kleiner Perkins/Coatue, respectively. At Long Journey, we are second believers in the magically weird, partnering with entrepreneurs on absurd, unconventional ideas before they become consensus. Collectively, our team has invested early in over +35 unicorns, including SpaceX, Uber, Anduril, Notion, DeepMind, Postmates, and Flock Security. Notable recent seed investments where we were second believers include Crusoe, Together AI, and Truemed.

Recently, we announced the launch of Fund IV, a $181.818 million fund to fan entrepreneurs' flames to create the world that they imagine, bringing our AUM to $450 million.

About Edge City

Edge City convenes people working at the frontiers of tech, science, and society in popup villages across the globe. We are building a "society incubator", an IRL lab of experimentation for new ideas, technology, culture, and institutions, all aimed at accelerating human flourishing.

Our popup villages last one month and gather leaders from fields like AI, biotech, crypto, hard tech, governance, philosophy, and beyond. They’re designed for deep connection and collaboration, creating the ideal environment for ambitious builders to focus, experiment, and prototype new ways of living and working.

We’ve had over 12,000 people participate across eight gatherings. Over time, we will build a global network city that shares incubations and learning across the world.

About Edge Esmeralda

Edge Esmeralda is a month-long popup village designed to be the healthiest, most productive, and most inspiring month of your year. It takes place each summer in Northern California and brings together innovators from across tech, science, culture, and society.

Edge Esmeralda 2026 will be the third edition of the village and serves as a prototype for Esmeralda, a permanent new town being built just 15 minutes away. It’s a place to live, build, and experiment alongside thoughtful peers; where new projects, startups, organizations, and ideas take root.

Apply here to attend: https://edgeesmeralda.com/

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