Venture investing can be incredibly fun and rewarding. But sometimes, just investing in a company isn’t enough. For Jenny Dreier, the board meetings and strategy sessions only went so far before she wanted to be more involved in what’s being built.

For her, that turning point came after years in venture capital and a summer when The Exploration Company’s second demonstrator capsule mission turned an idea into something real.

She had just spent six years at EQT Ventures, supporting ambitious companies and investing in Deep Tech before it was popular. But some opportunities go beyond being just another portfolio company. This one felt like a calling.

At some point, “I thought, I need to switch sides. This feels too exciting to continue watching from the sidelines.”

In this conversation with Jenny, we discuss why she left venture capital for the space industry, what led her to move to The Exploration Company, what Europe still needs to build, and why Deep Tech now offers a clearer connection between profit and purpose than many people realize.

About Jenny Dreier

After many years as a VC and six years as an investor at EQT Ventures, Jenny Dreier joined The Exploration Company full time. Before joining EQT Ventures, Jenny gained firsthand experience at startups in Berlin and São Paulo.  She then spent a few years helping corporates on innovation and digital business building as a consultant at McKinsey & Company in Berlin.

About The Exploration Company

The Exploration Company was founded in 2021 by Hélène Huby and a team of space engineers who had worked together on the most complex European space programs, such as Orion-ESM, Ariane, and ATV. Their company operates out of Germany, France, and Italy, with offices in Houston and in MENA. They are the first European company to sign a Space Act Agreement with NASA.

The move from venture capital to full time operator

Jenny didn’t leave venture capital because of a sudden change of heart. In many ways, she still thinks like an investor: she’s curious about founders, values ambition, and appreciates the chance to watch people build things that matter.

“In my six years as a VC, I probably met around a thousand founders,” she says. “By the way, I think this is the biggest privilege about the VC job, being able to meet founders, being able to every day meet  the people that are actually sitting down and starting something great.”

But even among all those founders, one person stood out.

“And during that time, I met Hélène – the founder of The Exploration Company, and she was clearly one of the most ambitious founders I’d ever met,” Jenny says. “I was just blown away by her ambition from the first moment we met.”

It was not just Hélène’s big vision that impressed her, but the mix of ambition and mission. Jenny describes the company as built on “a strong belief in Europe, a strong belief in collaboration and space having the potential to contribute to peaceful living on Earth.”

“At some point, watching from the sidelines stops being enough.”

Investing before the market was ready

Jenny is refreshingly honest about how early conviction really works. “VCs are always proud to talk about how they have a thesis for a specific area, and that they were just waiting for the perfect founder to come along,” she says.

“I wish I had that thesis. I think we were so far from it when we first invested in The Exploration Company in 2023.”

The Exploration Company wasn’t just about numbers at first; it was about people. At the time, space in Europe was still outside many investors’ comfort zones.

“At that time, space wasn’t on everyone’s radar, and many investors just put it off as too capital-intensive, too complex, too long-term, and didn’t even take the call,” she says.

Taking the call led Jenny to discover a founder who clearly had a long-term, highly ambitious mission and a team whose reputation held up under scrutiny. When Jenny and her colleagues did diligence, one message kept coming back from the market: “If there’s one team that could do this in Europe, it’s this one,” she recalls.

For a company working in such a technically demanding field, that mattered more than a good story. It was one of the few early signs they could rely on.

“We didn’t have a thesis, we just took the call others ignored.”

What Deep Tech conviction looks like when there are no neat KPIs

While software investing teaches people to look for dashboards and clear growth metrics, investing in space tech requires a different approach. The usual signs of progress are often missing or incomplete, and Jenny is open about that.

“I think this is where space tech or Deep Tech investing is a bit tougher,” she says. “When we invested, there were no real KPIs that we could look at. There were very few technical developments yet.”

The usual shortcuts for the judging process didn’t apply. There were some early contracts, signs of momentum with ESA and partners, and a first demonstrator. Still, Jenny was clear about what she could and couldn’t evaluate.

“I couldn’t assess the technology,” she says. So The Exploration Company did what many top Deep Tech startups do: they proved themselves by moving quickly. The team quickly built a basic capsule, using early funding to show they could deliver.

“They produced something really quickly and demonstrated their ability to move fast, to build on time, on cost, and on budget,” she says. “If you went straight for a big thing, nobody would have given us money.”

The first capsule, called the “bikini capsule” because it was built with only the basics, took nine months to make and launched to space aboard the Ariane6. It wasn’t the final product, but it showed the team’s pace, focus, and ability to deliver. In fields where every technical step is costly, showing steady progress is a big achievement.

“When there are no metrics, conviction comes from people, not dashboards.”

Europe’s launch problem, and why sovereignty is no longer optional

Despite the progress in European space, Jenny is clear about the main challenge: Europe still depends too much on others for launches.

“To be transparent, when we first invested, that was a concern,” she says.

At this point, The Exploration Company’s story becomes about more than just one business; it’s about expanding Europe’s capabilities. Jenny sees a clear gap between Europe’s ambitions and its infrastructure.

“Europe needs its own launchers - also large ones: today’s satellites, constellations and vehicles for exploration need a high thrust engine and heavy launcher that is reliable and cost competitive,” she says.

This thinking is shaping the company’s plans, too. Along with building capsules, The Exploration Company has "started to develop its own heavy lift engine" to power a rocket that can carry its capsule.

This approach fits into Europe’s wider push for independence. It’s not about isolation but about building resilience and real capabilities at home rather than relying on other countries.

“If Europe wants to explore space, it can’t rely on someone else’s rockets.”

The 2028 milestone

The company’s short-term plans are important because they move The Exploration Company from early demonstrations to real operations.

“We’re now planning to launch our first full-scale capsule in 2028,” Jenny says. “That’s actually going to be a major milestone for us, as the capsule will dock to the International Space Station and actually deliver food, experiments, and maintenance parts to the astronauts on the station.”

What’s especially interesting about this roadmap is how it mixes traditional aerospace disciplines with new design methods. Jenny highlights "the use of computational engineering" and tools that let teams "simulate a lot more, to experiment a lot more virtually," which helps improve designs "in a very, very cost-effective manner."

She avoids turning this into a buzzword. The main point is that the next generation of space companies is changing both what gets built and how quickly and affordably they can improve things before launch.

Between basic prototypes and full-scale missions, there’s a new kind of engineering approach focused on learning quickly without sacrificing quality. In space, where quality is critical, this really matters.

“2028 is when our vision for Nyx, a space vehicle for all of humanity, will come to life.”

Why Deep Tech investing now looks more like ecosystem building

Jenny has seen both sides of the industry and has noticed that funding conversations are changing.

“It’s great that there are so many more investors in Europe now open to Deep Tech,” she says. “The ecosystem has developed so much in the last few years, and so much more capital is available for hardware and complex products that go beyond SaaS.”

But she’s also clear that building companies like The Exploration Company takes more than just a founder and a VC fund.

“For DeepTech companies, you need so many more players,” she says. “For some businesses, you need public bodies to act as anchor customers. You need research institutions. You need non-dilutive funding sources: some technologies need grant funding, while others need debt funding for capex investments. All of that has to play together to make this work.”

This means that both founders and investors need to work differently. Managing stakeholders becomes a key strategy, not just a task. National goals, technical networks, public funding, and private capital all need to come together for the company to move forward.

“It has to be done collaboratively,” she says. This isn’t just a challenge; it’s part of what made The Exploration Company interesting from the beginning. Jenny saw more than just a product; she saw a team capable of handling a much more complex environment.

“This was never just about venture; it’s about coordination across countries, capital, and capability.”

Balancing profit with impact

A key theme in Jenny’s career, even before moving into space, is her doubt that software alone can shape the future.

“What drew me to the Deep Tech topics is my belief that software won’t save the world, and we can’t all be investing in B2B software companies,” she says.

This is one of the strongest points in the conversation, not to dismiss software, but to put it in perspective. Jenny says Venture Capital gives people "the incredible privilege" of being trusted with money and some degree of freedom to invest it in what they believe is the technology of the future. The real question is not just about returns, but about what impact you make along the way.

“For me, it was important that the money I invested could leave a mark in the world,” she says.

For Jenny, space is one of the few areas where business and real-world impact come together. She mentions the International Space Station as a symbol of countries working together, even when they disagree on Earth. She also points to the importance of having independent infrastructure, reliable communications, and the protection of key assets in space. Earth observation and climate monitoring are also becoming increasingly important.

For her, her work with The Exploration Company “aligns profit with impact.”

This alignment is one reason Deep Tech feels more urgent now than it did a few years ago. The world feels less theoretical. Infrastructure, independence, and capability all matter more than ever.

“You can return capital, and still build something that actually matters.”

Quick-fire round

A tool you can’t live without?

“Superlist. It’s actually a company that I invested in, so I’m very biased.”

How do you recharge?

“Hanging out with my 2-year-old son and learning about his latest construction truck.”

Advice that stuck:

“One action a day keeps the quality team away.”

Founder or start-up that you admire:

“The Netflix founders.”

The Exploration Company is hiring

 “We’re hiring about 200 people this year,” she says. These roles are spread across Munich, Bordeaux, Turin, Dubai, and the US. This alone says something about the phase The Exploration Company is entering. It is rapidly scaling and building strategic infrastructure across Europe at a time when it is most needed.

If you’re interested in shaping the future of European space infrastructure, check out the team’s open roles across Europe, the UAE, and the US. Follow Jenny on LinkedIn and The Exploration Company as they work toward their next big milestones.