Team

Kumar Dandapani

Kumar Dandapani is a Managing Partner at Cadenza. Prior to co-founding Cadenza, Kumar started BitMEX Ventures. Earlier in his career, Kumar was the Head of Data Science at Norwest Venture Partners as well as a quant and derivatives trader at Evolution Capital Management and Cornerstone Trading Company. Kumar holds a B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering and a B.A. in Social & Decision Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Max Shapiro

Max Shapiro is a Managing Partner at Cadenza. Prior to co-founding Cadenza, Max was an Investment Principal at BitMEX Ventures. Earlier in his career, Max was an Investment Associate at Blue Line Advisors, Inc. where he focused on middle market leveraged buyout. Max was also a Financial Consultant at Deloitte where he served private equity and investment banking clients. Max is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Certified Public Accountant (CPA). Max also holds a M.S. in Finance & Accounting and a B.S. in Finance & Accounting from Binghamton University.

Harris Wellner

Harris Wellner is the Operating Partner of Cadenza and joined the firm in 2022. Prior to joining Cadenza, Harris was a Vice President at Angelo Gordon in the firm’s real estate private equity group and managed a portfolio across the Southeast U.S. valued at over $2 billion.  He also was responsible for the portfolio management of U.S. real estate funds.  Prior to Angelo Gordon, Harris was a senior associate at Grant Thornton, principally focusing on private equity and hedge funds.  Harris is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and received his M.S. and B.S. degrees in Accounting from the School of Management at Binghamton University.

Nolan Ford

Nolan Ford is a Capital Formation Partner at Cadenza. He previously worked as a Capital Formation Associate at Pantera Capital, where he focused on raising capital from institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals. Prior to Pantera Capital, Nolan was a Prime Services Capital Introductions Associate at Credit Suisse and was responsible for managing relationships with hedge fund managers and institutional investors. Nolan began his career as an Associate Investment Advisor at Hawthorn, PNC Family Wealth. Nolan holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from the Fox School of Business at Temple University.

Kelly Yip

Kelly is an Investment Associate at Cadenza. Prior to joining Cadenza, she was a Summer Analyst at Greycroft in New York focusing on early-stage consumer brands. Previously, she also interned at Enlight Growth Partners in Shanghai investing in early-growth stage SaaS and AI companies. Kelly received her Bachelor of Science degree from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in Finance and Management.

Andrew Liu

Andrew is an Investment Analyst at Cadenza. Prior to joining, he was an Investment Analyst at Cambridge Associates in San Francisco. Previously, he was also an Investment Banking Summer Analyst in TMT at Wedbush and Flight Electronics intern at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Andrew holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA.

Vipul Ved Prakash

Vipul Ved Prakash is a world class technologist with years of experience across AI, ML, decentralized technologies, data science and engineering.  Vipul started his career as an engineer at Napster and Tradeindia.com before founding Cloudmark which was acquired by Proofpoint.  Vipul then went on to found Topsy which was a social media search and analytics service.  Topsy was acquired by Apple in 2013 and Vipul became a Senior Director leading a team of 250+ Apple engineers.  More recently, Vipul launched Together.xyz which is a cloud platform for large AI models.

Tim Tickel

Tim Tickel is a seasoned Security Software Engineer with over 20 years of industry experience and a passion for blockchain technologies. Throughout his career, he has focused on developing robust, user-friendly security infrastructure for companies such as Google, Facebook, Uber, Reddit, Plaid, and BitMEX. Tim's expertise covers a wide range of security domains, such as key management, authentication and authorization, access controls, infrastructure hardening, and data protection, enabling him to consistently deliver innovative and reliable security solutions.

Charles Srisuwananukorn

Charles is a tech industry veteran that bring his expertise in AI, ML, and software engineering as a Venture Partner at Cadenza. Charles is currently a founding engineer at Together.ai, a leading cloud platform for generative AI. Prior to Together, he served as Head of Applied Machine Learning at Snorkel AI and Senior Software Engineer at Apple. Charles holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford.

Jonathan Bier

Jonathan is Chief Investment Officer of Farside Investors. Farside Investors is a London based investment management company  specialising in global equities and cryptocurrency. Jonathan has over 13 years experience investing professionally in public equities, working for companies such as Ruffer and Brevan Howard. Jonathan also serves on the board of Brink, a charity that exists to strengthen the Bitcoin protocol and network through fundamental research and development. He has authored two books: "The Blocksize War" and "Reckless: The Story Of Cryptocurrency Interest Rates". Jonathan is a chartered accountant, having started his career at KPMG in London.

Kayvon Pirestani

Kayvon Pirestani, Venture Partner at Cadenza, brings a wealth of experience from the finance and technology sectors. He founded and led Coinbase’s APAC institutional business and served as COO of Coinbase Singapore. Prior to Coinbase, Kayvon held senior roles at Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank in Asia, orchestrating some of the region’s largest-ever equity derivatives transactions. An early employee at Lycos, he has a proven track record of spotting and capitalizing on emerging technology trends. Kayvon is excited to leverage his skills, experience, and relationships in Asia to identify high-potential investment opportunities in AI and blockchain
for Cadenza. Kayvon holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.