For scientist-led teams, that's a harder question to answer than it sounds. Your technology might take years to commercialise. Your founders might have PhDs instead of a track record of exits. Deep tech investors are evaluating risk that shifts over time, moving from scientific validity to engineering execution to commercial scale, according to BCG's 2023 guide for deep tech investors.
Your About page needs to do more than introduce the team. It needs to function as a trust asset, one that works for investors, customers, research partners, and future hires at the same time. This article breaks down how to build that page without turning it into a technical paper or a brand platitude.
Key Takeaways
- A credible About page connects people, technology, proof, and purpose in one coherent story.
- Translate scientific expertise into evidence each audience can verify independently.
- Lead with real founders, milestones, and partnerships instead of superlatives like "revolutionary."
- Layer your content: simple enough for a generalist, deep enough for a technical reviewer.
Why Credibility Is Especially Important for Scientist-Led Deep Tech Teams
Conventional startups ask visitors to trust a product. Deep tech startups ask visitors to trust a scientific claim and the team's ability to turn it into something that works at scale. That's a bigger ask, and it comes with a longer timeline.
Different visitors are checking different things:
- Investors look for evidence of expertise, market understanding, and progress—not only a compelling idea.
- Customers and enterprise partners need confidence in reliability, implementation support, and long-term viability.
- Researchers and institutions check scientific seriousness and how collaboration actually works.
- Future employees read for mission, culture, and the standards they would be signing up for.
A Five-Question Credibility Framework
Every strong About page answers five things, in order: Who are you? What problem are you solving? Why are you qualified? What evidence backs this up? What happens next?
Skip any one of these and visitors fill the gap with doubt.
Replace Hype With Specifics
"Breakthrough" and "world-class" tell a reader nothing they can verify. Replace hype with details someone outside the company can check:
- The specific problem you are solving
- Your technical approach in plain language
- Your current stage of development
- Evidence a third party could validate
Nielsen Norman Group's research across 100 corporate websites found that users actively compare company claims against outside sources before they believe them, and that hard-to-find basic information damages satisfaction more than almost anything else on an About page.
Your About page also should not double as your product, research, and careers pages. Link out to each so readers can go deeper on purpose, without sorting through unrelated detail first.
What to Include in a Deep Tech About Page
Lead with a One-Line Positioning Statement
Start with what technology category you're in, what problem you solve, and who benefits. Define any unfamiliar terms immediately. If a reader needs a glossary to parse your first sentence, you've already lost them.
Introduce People, Not Just Credentials
List your founders and technical leads as people with a reason for being there, not a stack of letters after their name.
- Include names, roles, and the specific experience or insight that led them to this problem.
- Clarify what each person actually owns: research, engineering, commercialisation, partnerships.
- Use current photographs or short videos rather than stock imagery.
When we built the About page for HYDGEN, leadership and advisory bios sat alongside a plain-language mission statement and the company's 50kW electrolyser specifications. A technical buyer and a generalist investor could both find what they needed on the same page.
Tell the Origin Story as Problem and Discovery
Describe the real-world observation that started the company, the turning point from research to company formation, and how the focus shifted as the team learned from pilots or customer feedback.
Climeworks is a useful public example. Its brand narrative walks through the founders' journey and the obstacles they overcame building direct-air-capture technology, rather than opening with a generic mission paragraph.
Build a Milestone Timeline That Earns Trust
List research stages, pilots, grants, partnerships, patents, or fundraising, but only what you can substantiate with a source. A timeline of unverifiable "wins" reads as filler. One that's dated and linked reads as proof.
Close the narrative with one clear next step matched to intent, such as reviewing a case study, meeting the team, or starting a conversation.
How to Prove Expertise Without Overwhelming Readers
Not all proof does the same job. Separate it out so readers find what's relevant to them fast.
| Proof type | What it demonstrates | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Scientific | Research validity | Peer-reviewed publications, lab results |
| Product | Technical maturity | Field trials, reliability data, prototypes |
| Commercial | Market traction | Signed customers, repeat usage, revenue |
| Institutional | External validation | Grants, certifications, press coverage |
| Founder | Execution capability | Prior companies, domain leadership |
LabStart's About page is a good model here: it states 50-plus years of collective expertise across climate technology, national laboratories, and venture capital, and backs that with supporting-organisation logos including the US Department of Energy. The claim and the proof sit together.
Apply an Evidence Ladder
For every important claim, follow four steps:
- State the claim
- Explain why it matters
- Show the supporting evidence
- Link to the source
Don't invent metrics, and don't publish anything confidential just to fill a gap.
Layer Technical Explanations
Readers arrive with wildly different technical backgrounds. Handle that with three layers:
- One sentence in plain language — what it does.
- A short paragraph on mechanism or differentiator.
- Links to papers, methodology, or data rooms for readers who want depth.
This mirrors the progressive disclosure principle Nielsen Norman Group describes: show essential information first, then make advanced detail easy to find rather than mandatory to read.
Be Honest About What's Unproven
State plainly:
- What can be shared
- What stays confidential for IP reasons
- What still needs validation
A founder admitting "this is validated at lab scale, pilot testing starts next quarter" builds more trust than a page implying every problem is already solved.
This is where a design partner earns its keep. Susteon, for instance, needed to explain a highly technical catalysis platform to investors and partners who weren't scientists themselves.
We organised that evidence, including co-founder Prashant Gupta's background, into a narrative that held together across the brand, the website, and even a business card with a QR code linking back to the full story. Getting that structure right is a design problem as much as a writing one. That is the work we focus on at What if Design for climate tech and deep tech teams.
Design and UX Principles for a Credible Deep Tech About Page
The best evidence in the world doesn't help if nobody scrolls far enough to find it. Nielsen Norman Group's research on the page fold found that what's visible on first load determines whether users keep going, and that fold position shifts across devices.
Get the Above-the-Fold Hierarchy Right
Lead with a clear hierarchy visitors can grasp in seconds:
- Precise headline
- One-sentence explanation of what you do
- Mission or problem statement
- Visible path to proof further down the page
Don't make visitors guess what you do before they decide whether to keep reading.
Use Visuals That Explain, Not Decorate
- Founder and team photos should look current and unposed.
- Diagrams, lab images, or system maps should clarify the work, not just fill space.
- Timelines should stay readable on mobile, with text alternatives where needed.
Balance Authority With Approachability
Substance beats polish. Prioritise:
- Plain language over jargon
- Scannable sections with descriptive subheadings
- Accessible colour contrast and meaningful image alt text
On our own About page, the Design Declares badge sits quietly near the footer rather than dominating the hero, because the evidence of our work matters more than the badge itself.
Launch and Maintenance Checklist
Before publishing, review the page as five different visitors would: an investor, a technical expert, a customer, a partner, and a prospective employee. Each should find the evidence relevant to their decision within seconds.
Verify Everything
- Check every factual claim, date, credential, and customer reference.
- Confirm every external link still resolves.
- Add update dates where team or milestone information changes often.
Check the Experience Before You Publish
- Confirm the page works cleanly on mobile.
- Add a descriptive title, meta description, and logical heading order.
- Test load performance on the real About URL—keep LCP under 2.5s and layout shift under 0.1 per Google's Web Vitals guidance.
- Confirm every call to action leads somewhere useful.
We've carried this discipline into our own work. Our pitch design has helped teams raise over $45 million, including companies backed by Accel, ARPA-E, and the US Department of Energy.
We schedule a content review after every funding round, product milestone, or team change. Stale claims age faster than you'd expect, and an outdated About page undercuts the credibility it's meant to build.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is included in an about us page?
A strong About page covers positioning, origin story, mission, team, proof points, and values, then ends with a clear next step. Deep tech teams should also link out to research, pilots, or case studies as technical evidence.
What does a strong deep tech About page look like?
It usually opens with a plain-language mission, then covers founder expertise, the problem-and-discovery story, evidence-backed milestones, and team profiles. Links to research or case studies sit nearby for readers who want proof.
How can a deep tech company build credibility on its About page?
Credibility comes from specific, verifiable evidence: relevant founder experience, research, testing, pilots, partnerships, and customers. Transparent statements about what's proven and what isn't yet also build trust rather than undermine it.
Should scientists be featured on a deep tech company's About page?
Yes, when their expertise is directly relevant. Give them clear roles, accessible biographies, current photos, and links to publications or professional profiles.
How technical should an About page be?
Keep the main narrative understandable to non-specialists, then link to technical documentation, research, and data for readers who need deeper detail. This layered approach serves both a generalist investor and a technical reviewer on the same page.
