Tae Hea Nahm

Most Operators Still Treat ARR Like a Monolith But not all ARR is created equal. Some ARR is sticky, compounding, and margin-rich. Other ARR is flashy until it vanishes. Modern operators ask: → Where does each dollar live on the margin-retention map? → What’s expanding vs. eroding? → Is our revenue mix actually compounding? The best teams manage ARR like an asset portfolio. Do you?

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VC schedules, and thoughts on being a VC noob. -- VC schedules to know -- Most venture capital firms hold partner meetings on Mondays. This is typically when the investment committee votes on new investments and other key decisions. Savvy founders learn the exact timing and may need to provide additional data over the weekend to stay in motion. It is also well known that many venture capitalists observe a “European summer,” with August often being light or fully off. Similarly, the winter holidays reduce activity across much of December. That said, data from Carta shows a meaningful year-end push to close deals in December, followed by a flurry of activity in January. Founders should be cautious about kicking off fundraising during these slower periods. You do not want a raise to go stale and fall apart. VCs talk to each other, the industry is highly interconnected. -- I’m a mid career Noob! -- I am an “emerging manager,” effectively a new VC, less than three years in. In venture capital, the timeline is long. On my Linkedin you'll see I have two roles at Blitzscaling: Limited Partner means I put money into a fund, but have no decision making ability, and General Partner means I'm actively finding startups, bringing them to the partnership, and funding. As a General Partner, you are often considered an emerging manager for close to a decade, as it takes years for a fund to fully mature and establish a VC track record. Investing is a long game, but the upside can be extraordinary. Fortunately, I entered this role with a positive angel track record from my own bank account, which is often a good idea to have as a VC. When I learn a new VC concept or term, I’m an AI first, I’ll link to my post a few days ago in the comments, I totally live for constant growth and learning, if you’re not growing you’re dying. Fun fact: Many/most start their VC career in their 40s, as they need to have enough tech and biz cycles, a broad enough network, resources, and a platform to stand upon. As we end the year, I'm sharing more career thoughts, and productivity thoughts, rather than industry trends and market maps and frameworks and forecasts. I wrote all of this by hand myself, but used AI to edit some of it.

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AI and Tokenization unlocks new business models. At Decasonic, we have been seeking investment opportunities at the intersection of AI x RWA. Our investment thesis: Exponential technologies like AI and Web3 converge to build entirely new markets. These new use cases bring the digital world to the Real World Assets (RWA), enabling programmability, composability and liquidity that are native to digital code. The Dune x RWA.xyz RWA Report 2025 (attached) highlights how tokenized U.S. Treasuries alone have reached $7.3B in market size, an 85% YoY growth just this year. This is just one signal of how quickly tokenization is scaling across treasuries, credit, equities and other assets. We believe AI will accelerate this adoption and unlock entirely new business models. Here are three areas where we see Web3 tokens and AI mutually flourish: 1️⃣ New Business Models for AI Creations, AI Agents and AI Digital Twins AI agents, digital twins, and generative models are producing novel assets daily. Tokenization provides identity, ownership, and monetization rails, allowing creators and enterprises to build sustainable business models around AI native output. 2️⃣ Proof of Work and Proof of Personhood In an age of infinite AI content, trust becomes scarce. Tokenized attestations validate that work was produced by a verified human or an authenticated AI agent. This secures reputation and enables trust driven marketplaces. 3️⃣ Data Provenance for AI Models are only as good as the real and synthetic data they ingest. Tokenization provides a cryptographic ledger for data lineage, ensuring verifiable provenance, aligned incentives, and compliance for enterprises and regulators. The big idea: AI creates exponential output while tokenization ensures that output is verifiable, ownable, and monetizable. Together, they enable an entirely new layer of the global digital economy. The convergence of AI and tokenization is not just infrastructure. It is the foundation for the next generation of business models, from AI native enterprises to institutional grade financial systems.

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Founders, your Ideal Investor Profile (IIP) is as important as your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). While many founders are using ICP frameworks to find product market fit, I find almost no startups are using a similar framework for fundraising. Which investors are most likely to: - Convert? - Send $ on the timeline you need it? - Be a good long-term partner? I see early stage startups meeting with VCs who either do not have a mandate to invest in their geography or else are unlikely to convert soon (most common). I see founders meeting with investors who do not invest in their industry. If you are fundraising you are selling. Your product is your equity and your customer is the investor. Treat the process almost the same as you would when selling your startup's product/service. Design your IIP, go to market, get feedback, iterate, repeat.

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HawkEye 360’s Series E financing and strategic acquisition mark an important milestone. HawkEye 360, a Seraphim portfolio company, has closed the acquisition of Innovative Signal Analysis (ISA), adding significant depth in signal processing and engineering and further strengthening a mission-critical, end-to-end platform. This is supported by a $150m Series E preferred equity and debt financing round, providing the capital to integrate ISA and continue scaling with discipline in a demanding dual-use market. More details here: https://lnkd.in/eAHtFfCJ Congratulations to John Serafini and the entire HawkEye 360 team on a strong step forward. John’s latest letter is also well worth a read: https://lnkd.in/e6bU-59W #SeraphimSpace #DualUse #SpaceTech #DefenceTech #NationalSecurity #SignalsIntelligence #RF #SpaceEconomy

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