Part 1: Why I Joined Cadenza

Founders, Funds, and the Catbird Seat

Jun 23, 2025

I’m joining the Cadenza family of funds as a partner, investing across AI, Web3, liquid strategies, and token generation events. But this isn’t just about deploying capital. It’s about scaling a platform built to serve both builders and allocators at every stage of the journey.

As a builder-investor, it’s important to realize Cadenza isn’t your typical venture firm. With dedicated funds for crypto and AI, a new liquid vehicle, and a founder studio in motion, it’s a multidimensional platform designed to support founders where they are and give investors access to the most meaningful innovation in the space.

Alongside Max, Kumar, and Harris, I’ll be working to expand that platform by connecting capital, talent, and opportunity; going from platform to ecosystem. And this isn’t just any team. They have brought together the former Chief Scientist of Siri, the founder of Together AI, the original BitMEX team, and institutional asset managers with serious reach. This isn’t your former consultant in a sport coat and sneakers, cosplaying as a VC. This is real capital, deployed by real builders, backing the future.

At the same time, I’ll keep building with the platform. Nautilus is an AI-native asset manager, powered by Seneca, a custom transformer built for deep learning and market execution. Mustaa is a real-world asset protocol, starting with tokenized yachts and expanding to villas, jets, helicopters, and whatever else the next decade demands. Both are deeply aligned with the Cadenza thesis and will grow in close collaboration with the platform while they evolve into their own respective ecosystems.

This four-part series, The Double Helix Thesis, maps that alignment. It begins with Part 1, where I explain why I joined Cadenza and what we’re building together. Part 2 dives into my Web3 thesis and why code has become the dominant asset class. In Part 3, we explore the AI frontier, from autonomous agents to intent-based infrastructure. And in Part 4, we zoom out to explore the future of venture capital itself and how it is evolving into something more collaborative, more composable, and more founder-aligned.

If you’re building something meaningful in Web3 or AI, or investing in what’s coming next, and want real operators and builders at the table with you, then look no further. We’re building the future. Come build it with us.

Web3 is changing the game: are you ready to invest smart? Explore tailored strategies and guidance at Nautilus.Finance. Stay updated in real-time by following Tom Serres on X.com or LinkedIn.

Power Is the Product

There’s a moment in Marc Andreessen’s recent interview that’s been living rent-free in my head. He said, “The thing that you want from your venture firm is power.” Not prestige. Not pageantry. Not a mediocre dinner at Carbone with someone who wants to “double click” into your roadmap and “lean in” to your burn rate in some kind of lame VC kind of way. Power. The kind that doesn’t just get you into the right rooms, but architects the room, decides who’s on the invite list, and probably designed the furniture.

When I decided to join Cadenza, it wasn’t some brand collab move. I didn’t do it to look cool at crypto conferences or add “VC” to my bio like it’s a new NFT trait. It was because Cadenza is one of the very, very few venture firms positioned to wield actual, catalytic, tectonic-shifting power. The kind of power that doesn’t just chase trends but births new markets. That doesn’t wait for regulatory clarity but helps write the playbook. That doesn’t just back founders but changes the odds in their favor.

I’ve been on the other side. In the trenches. Eating glass. Raising capital with the desperation of a freshman with a fake ID trying to get into a zero-liquidity nightclub. I’ve seen what happens when founders are forced to settle for midwit money wearing a Patagonia vest and issuing medium takes on “platform value” in Slack. It’s rare, to find a venture platform that isn’t LARPing. One that’s filled with people who not only understand the frontier but can terraform it.

Max, Kumar, and Harris didn’t build Cadenza as a flex or a holding pen for second-tier checks. They built it as a multidimensional capital engine. Crypto-native, AI-forward, and liquid-capable. It adapts to cycles, scales with conviction, and isn’t afraid to get weird in the right ways. They’ve architected a real platform. A shape-shifter that can write a seed check, token round, or growth allocation without blinking because they’ve engineered for optionality instead of prestige drag.

This is the firm that moves when it’s messy, not just when it’s obvious. That’s the kind of platform I want to stake my time, energy, and network on. A platform that doesn’t just find the signal but amplifies it until the whole sector tunes in.

This is not boutique. This is not another safe space for convertible note tourists. This is Cadenza. And we’re here to shape markets.

The Platform Behind the Curtain

When most people think of venture firms, they picture a dimly lit boardroom with a ficus plant, a few generalists in vests who peaked during the SaaS boom, and a slide deck full of buzzwords no one understands but everyone pretends to. They imagine a single fund, a set-it-and-forget-it model, and maybe a vibe of curated exclusivity where founders get mentorship in the form of passive-aggressive calendar invites.

Cadenza is not that. Not even close.

Cadenza runs more like a multi-core operating system than a traditional venture fund. It has dedicated pools of capital for crypto, AI, liquid strategies, and token-based events. That’s not just diversification, it’s intentional architecture. It means they can operate across timelines, across market structures, and across financial instruments without getting stuck in any one narrative.

There’s a founder studio being built that actually does what studios promise to do. It brings in the operators, assembles the resources, and hands builders more than just a Notion doc and a good luck handshake. The partner network is dense and real. You’ve got the former Chief Scientist of Siri riffing in Slack with security engineers who built core infrastructure at BitMEX. You’ve got institutional asset managers talking to open-source AI researchers before breakfast. This is not theoretical support. It’s action, constantly moving across lanes, constantly stacking momentum.

The culture doesn’t run from complexity. It metabolizes it. One minute the conversation is about LLM fine-tuning protocols, the next it’s about liquidity provisioning for a token round in an emerging market. And nobody flinches. That’s not a coincidence. That’s the kind of internal cadence that happens when your bench is built from people who’ve shipped real product, scaled infrastructure, and raised capital in the fire, not just on the panel circuit.

This isn’t a place where advice is handed down like commandments from on high. It’s a platform where everyone’s in the game. No sidelines. No spectators. Just builders, investors, engineers, and capital architects moving in rhythm.

That’s not a metaphor. That’s Tuesday.

You Built the Thing, Now What?

If you’re a founder, this is probably the only section you’ll pretend to skim while actually reading twice. You don’t want just capital. You want someone who understands what you’re building before your pitch deck even loads. Someone who can look at your half-shipped prototype, see the edge, and say “Yep, let’s go” while the rest of the market is still waiting for consensus or a whitepaper with fewer than six typos.

You want a partner who doesn’t need three reference calls and a Gartner report to know it’s time to move. One who can architect your next raise, unlock the right syndicate, draft the core engineering hire you weren’t even looking for, and make sure your breakout moment doesn’t end in a cap table horror story and a Medium post titled “What I Learned From My Exit to Nowhere.”

Cadenza is built for that. This isn’t a team chasing flavors of the month. They underwrite edge. They were in Together.ai before open-source inference was trending. They backed FalconX and CoinDCX when most funds were still debating Bitcoin allocations over overcooked steak and legacy dashboards. This isn’t Monday morning quarterbacking. It’s early conviction paired with real scaffolding.

And now they’ve built a platform that scales with you, not just funds you. Seed to token design to Series A and beyond. If you need capital, it’s there. If you need someone who actually knows the difference between infra and app layer when hiring an engineer, they’ve got you. If you need a secondaries partner who doesn’t vanish after signing or someone to decode a jurisdictional knot without burying you in legalese and PDF attachments from 2009, they’ve already got the playbook.

More importantly, they bring context. Not the kind you get from panels or press releases, but the kind that comes from actually doing the work. Context is the one thing no one teaches you before you raise your first round, and the one thing you can’t afford to fake when the stakes get real. Cadenza has it, they live it, and they share it like it’s oxygen.

And if you’re the kind of builder who doesn’t just want a check but wants a real partner in the arena with you, then reach out. Seriously. I want to meet you. You can find me on socials or just email me directly. Let’s figure out how to build what’s next.

Capital With Context

If you’re allocating capital, this is the part where things usually get hand-wavy. Some “emerging manager” shows up quoting macro theory like they’re auditioning for Bloomberg TV, shares a few charts with decimal-point precision as if that implies mastery, and promises access to “exclusive deal flow” that somehow looks identical to the same five companies on every other deck you’ve seen this week. You nod, sip your coffee, and wonder why they’re calling you “partner” when you’ve never met.

Cadenza doesn’t play that game. This is not some ex–Big Four consultant cosplaying as a VC in a sport coat and sneakers, lobbing jargon and praying for a mark-up. This is a platform designed and run by actual builders, people who have scaled trading firms, launched exchanges, shipped foundational AI infrastructure, and steered billions through market cycles without flinching. The platform isn’t optimized for prestige. It’s optimized for power. And not the figurative kind. The kind that shapes markets in real time.

Institutional LPs like VanEck are here because they see the machinery humming underneath. The founder of Together AI is already in the room. So is the original BitMEX team. These are not logos for social proof. These are collaborators. These are operators who have shaped multi-billion dollar ecosystems and are now actively investing in the next frontier.

You want pre-consensus exposure to open-source AI infra before the hyperscalers start their buying spree? We’re already in. You want access to token event structures that aren’t built on hype but on mechanics? We’re designing them. You want to toggle your exposure intelligently as the market turns? The liquid vehicle is coming soon and it will function as a core allocator tool, not a bolt-on gimmick.

And yes, access is part of it. But the real edge is being both investor and builder at once. That’s the DNA of this platform. It lets you see the inflection points before they hit the trend cycle. It lets you bet with conviction instead of consensus. It means we don’t just follow the market, we help shape what the market becomes.

So if you're looking for exposure to the real frontier, if you want access to a multidimensional platform that is architected to win across cycles, and you’re tired of pretending the guy reading off a Linkedin comment thread knows what’s coming next, then now’s the time. The signal is here. The window is open. Get in before it’s crowded.

Builder-Investor Synergy: Nautilus and Mustaa

One of the best parts about this new chapter is that I didn’t have to stop building to start investing. That binary is broken. At Cadenza, building is the job. And thanks to the way the platform is structured, it’s not just allowed, it’s expected. That’s where Nautilus and Mustaa enter the chat.

Nautilus is our AI-native asset management platform, built on top of Seneca, a custom transformer model that doesn’t just consume data. It interprets context in real time like it’s playing multidimensional chess across global markets, news cycles, memetic flows, and token dynamics. Seneca isn’t chasing alpha on vibes and gut instinct. It’s engineered for digital asset treasuries, sovereign wealth sandboxes, DAOs, family offices, and any allocators who want signal without ceremony. You want quant performance with machine intuition. That’s Nautilus.

Mustaa is something else entirely. It’s a protocol for tokenizing real-world assets with embedded time utility, built to unlock the full potential of high-value assets just sitting idle. We started with yachts, not to flex, but to stress-test composable ownership across social groups, seasonal movement, and yield generation. The kind of assets people dream of using but rarely do. Then we layer in villas, jets, helicopters, and if the simulation holds, orbital meditation pods. You think that’s a joke? Give it a few parts. You’ll come around.

But what makes both of these projects truly powerful is how they’re woven into the Cadenza ecosystem itself. Liquidity pathways, governance primitives, advisory access, founder cross-pollination, distribution channels. It’s not just a nice-to-have. It’s part of the operating system. And when you build with that kind of feedback loop, every layer you add feeds another. Capital informs coordination. Coordination informs design. Design drives returns. And returns scale belief.

That’s the builder-investor advantage. You’re not waiting for someone else to validate the thesis. You’re living it, shaping it, deploying it. So if you’re building something that wants to plug into that loop, or investing in teams that do, you should probably reach out. This is what the next cycle looks like. Let’s build it together.

The Catbird Seat Isn’t a Metaphor

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This is the catbird seat. Not because we’re kicking back with lattes and thought leadership decks, but because the altitude is real. The architecture is real. The visibility into what’s coming next is real. And so is the conviction to act on it. We’re not here to squint at trendlines and pretend we’re visionaries. We’re here because we have the data, the network, and the machinery to move on real signals before they show up on someone else’s quarterly memo.

That’s the advantage of sitting inside a platform like this. You’re not reacting to momentum. You’re shaping it. You’re not chasing rounds. You’re building the rails. And when you combine that with people who have actually built products, protocols, companies, and in some cases, entirely new markets, you’re not just in the room where it happens. You are the room.

If you’re building something meaningful in Web3 or AI, we should talk. If you’re allocating capital and tired of pretending that spreadsheet theater is a substitute for edge, we should definitely talk. This isn’t some PR stunt dressed up like a new hire announcement. This is the front door to the next decade of venture, and it’s wide open. No cosplay. No jargon. Just a signal flare to the people who are tired of the noise and ready to make moves.

In Part 2, I’ll show you what that looks like on the Web3 side. Not just hype, but infrastructure. Not just capital, but coordination. From on-chain liquidity to protocol-native networks and programmable primitives, we’ll get into why code is no longer just product. It’s the asset class. Stay tuned.

The Web3 shift isn’t coming. It’s already here. Make smarter moves with curated strategies from Nautilus.Finance. Follow Tom Serres on X.com or LinkedIn for real-time insights and opportunities.

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