Q1 was an active quarter for us. We deployed $1.75m across two new seed investments: a team based in Greater China building the agentic operating system for the one-person company economy and a team based in the US building AI infrastructure for embedded systems. This note summarizes what we observed in the market and how it is shaping our activity.

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Q1 Activity

We spent time with founders and allocators across the Bay Area, NYC, Boston, Austin, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shenzhen, and continued deploying across our core areas of focus. Across our conversations, a consistent message emerged from many funds: they are not deploying at pace.

The reasons are not uniform, but they point in the same direction:

• Public market volatility has made exit timelines harder to underwrite.

• There is uncertainty around how AI will reshape software margins and where durable value will sit across the stack.

• Hardware, robotics, and physical AI introduce longer feedback cycles and unclear capital intensity.

• Internally, many firms are also managing pacing, reserve allocation, and DPI pressure from prior vintages.

Each factor is rational on its own, but together they have slowed decision-making.

Market Observations

What we observed was a split in the market. At the early stage, fewer processes are competitive and rounds are taking longer to come together. Founders are often engaging with a smaller set of investors, and pricing is more dependent on specific conviction than on broad momentum. In parallel, capital has concentrated into a narrow set of categories. AI infrastructure, agent-driven systems, and physical compute continue to absorb a disproportionate share of funding, while most other sectors see limited activity. Large funds are still writing large checks in these areas, but outside of them, many are effectively in observation mode.

This combination changes the structure of opportunity. When large pools of capital slow down, access improves for investors who are willing to engage early and underwrite independently. Fewer competitive processes mean a higher likelihood of building direct relationships with founders and shaping rounds rather than reacting to them. Entry prices become less anchored to recent comps and more to the specific risk and progress of each company. This environment rewards speed and clarity of thought, particularly at the seed and Series A stages.

The current environment allows for earlier access, less competitive processes, and more variability in pricing. Historically, these conditions have led to stronger entry points for early-stage investors, particularly when capital is concentrated and decision-making slows at larger firms.

Where We’re Spending Time

Our approach this year has been to remain active within digital assets, where the dislocation is more pronounced. The focus has been on market infrastructure, agent-driven financial systems, and applications that abstract complexity for end users. On the infrastructure side, we are spending time on primitives that improve how value moves onchain, including settlement, liquidity formation, and the coordination of capital across fragmented environments. We are also seeing early signs of agent participation in financial activity, which introduces new requirements around execution, pricing, and risk, effectively forming early agent economies onchain. At the application layer, the most relevant teams are building products that package these systems into something usable, whether for traders, developers, or mainstream users.

Alongside this, we are tracking adjacent shifts in AI infrastructure and systems that bridge software with the physical world. These areas increasingly intersect with digital assets, particularly as compute, coordination, and capital allocation become more programmatic. The common thread across both digital assets and these adjacent systems is exposure to real usage and capital flow, rather than isolated technical progress.

The founders operating in these areas tend to share a consistent profile. They iterate quickly, often with incomplete information, and are comfortable building in environments where there is no established playbook. Internally, we refer to this group as “Squirrley Operators.” The term is informal, but it captures a real pattern. These teams are building infrastructure that is used continuously, often by other systems, and their success is measured in performance rather than visibility.

In Q1, we continued deploying across these categories with a global sourcing approach. Being physically present across multiple ecosystems has been important for both access and filtering. Many of the most relevant teams are not running broad fundraising processes, and early engagement has been necessary to build conviction. Our check sizes and stage focus remain consistent with our strategy, but the environment has allowed for more direct access and, in some cases, more favorable entry points than would have been available in a more competitive market.

Outlook

Periods like this have historically favored investors who are willing to act while uncertainty is still high. The advantage does not come from predicting macro outcomes with precision, but from identifying where real work is happening and underwriting it before it becomes consensus. That is the position we are taking as we continue deploying through 2026.

We are continuing to deploy within these areas with a focus on early-stage opportunities where we have direct access and clear conviction. The market remains selective, but we are seeing consistent signals in specific segments, and we plan to stay active as the year progresses.

If you’re looking for an active partner operating in the above markets, please reach out – we are actively deploying.

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MFV Partners,

As we’re writing this note, we’re sitting in East Asia. We’ve been spending time between New York and Beijing to start off our year and double-down on our East-meets-West approach. On the ground we smelled something in the air that reports are not picking up. Having experienced the rate of execution in the East first-hand for over a month, we can’t help but imagine the possibilities when paired with the vision of the West. We are convinced that Maximum Frequency Ventures, bridging the West and the East, is needed today more than ever before.

We have been reading Breakneck, and we see the stories in that book lived firsthand. We spent time with the leadership teams behind Xiaomi and Bytedance, some of the largest companies built outside the U.S. and we keep coming back to the same thought: what US venture returns could’ve looked like if investors had early exposure? In many cases, the outcomes are obvious now but the signal was there well before the rest of the market was paying attention. Being here reminds us of the last two decades in the US, however, this time, much of the most compelling company formation is happening outside the traditional Western venture funnel. And it’s still being underestimated and remains almost impossible to access for the 99%. Fortunately for MFV, with Alex in Hong Kong and Jerome in Singapore, we have direct access to current and future generations of founders in the East. And those founders need the MFV edge - the US go-to-market with deep product and design thinking that we perfected over the last two decades.

That was our core belief when we launched MFV.

At the same time, the broader Web3 environment has gone through a necessary reset. The speculative excess that defined prior cycles has unwound, capital has become more selective, and attention has shifted away from narratives toward execution. To us, this moment feels less like a downturn and more like a return to first principles—where durable platforms are built quietly, before the spotlight comes back. We’ve lived this pattern before. Aptos itself was formed during a similar period of dislocation, when the market had moved on and only teams willing to build through uncertainty remained—emerging on the other side as a $20bn network at its peak. In these environments, execution ultimately determines who matters.

It’s precisely in moments like this that structural blind spots emerge. As capital concentrates around familiar geographies and established signals, early indicators are easy to miss—especially when they form outside traditional Western venture networks. By the time outcomes are obvious, much of the upside is already priced in. This is the gap we focus on: identifying real momentum early, while it still looks quiet, and before it becomes consensus.

The Opportunity We See

What we’ve seen repeatedly across East Asia are founders who are deeply focused on execution and outcomes, often letting results speak before they do. The challenge is that this signal only becomes visible after outcomes materialize—at which point attention has already shifted. That disconnect creates an immense opportunity for investors who can recognize real opportunities earlier, before they become consensus.

This is where MFV operates.

How MFV Wins

We spend our time with founders early on both sides of the world and bring that outcome-driven signal forward in time. For our Western founders, we open doors to Eastern markets, partners, and execution velocity. For founders building across Asia, we help surface their companies to Western markets earlier, with the context, positioning, and access required for global scale.

You can see the impact of this dynamic playing out now, especially since development cycles are tighter. What used to take years now happens in months. Companies built in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo are competing globally far sooner than the market expects. It took Manus 9 months to get acquired by Meta after moving its HQ from Mainland China to Singapore. Only early stage funds in the East had exposure to the company at the earliest stages. Clearly execution quality has caught up, and in many cases surpassed prior assumptions. The question is whether investors are early enough to participate meaningfully.

Our globally distributed yet in-depth team provides a massive edge bilaterally. Our operational experience and pattern recognition is well structured to identify the new patterns that are forming. We understand where attention is shifting and can drive to where things will move next, getting there before it becomes a consensus bet. We saw this early on with Bitcoin and Ethereum, and built through down markets while founding Aptos, taking it from an idea to a $20B network. That same access and pattern recognition sourced MFV’s first investment of 2026: a founding team member of TikTok and a Google Cryptography PhD uniting to build the next AI social layer.

Our thesis was validated last year. While the market chased asset accumulation, we made the deliberate decision to right-size Fund I for high-velocity execution. We closed on the capital that aligned strictly with our vision, allowing us to stop fundraising and immediately start building. That discipline has paid off big time.

Below, we’ll take you through our portfolio and the investments we’ve made to date, and what that progress looks like in practice. We believe this approach reflects how enduring, opinionated venture firms are being built in this generation.

MFV investments

Since fund inception, we’ve deployed $7.6M and invested in eight companies distributed across the globe. Most of these investments came from our network directly, carried over through our days of building at Aptos and the respective professional journeys of each of our GPs. The deployment rate has been right on pace according to our original portfolio construction, with an average equity valuation of $█M for our seed investments.

We’ve outlined select investments below. Through them all there is one common theme – crypto-native teams building real products where momentum builds and the edge lasts.

Klickl: UAE-based fintech bridge between traditional finance and digital assets

• What they do: An Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) licensed B2B2C Fintech that connects fiat rails (IBAN/banks) with digital-asset rails combined with retail cards and merchant payment infra.

• Why it fits our thesis: At the critical cross-roads of traditional and novel financial infrastructures; strong regulatory moat (licenses in UAE, Europe and NA) and fast growing flows.

• What’s happened so far: Fully activated in USD and EUR corridors between Europe, ME and APAC. Created a robust system to meet compliance requirements of one of the most sophisticated financial regulators. Building towards a trusted and sustainable banking relationship with the old guards.

• How MFV helped: Partnered on GTM strategy and operational planning (governance, reporting, processes) for compliant product rollout.

Moonshot: Next-generation mobile gaming platform and hardware

• What they do: Moonshot is building a mobile gaming ecosystem that combines quality hardware, social infrastructure, and digital ownership to deliver console-quality gameplay on mobile while rewarding players and creators.

• Why it fits our thesis: Moonshot reflects our conviction that durable consumer platforms are built by leading with product quality and community, not financialization. By treating ownership and rewards as infrastructure rather than the headline, Moonshot is positioned to form lasting franchises and network effects in a mobile-first world.

• What’s happened so far: The team has focused on shipping product and getting mass retail distribution first. Advancing hardware, software, and community layers in parallel; while experimenting with creator-led growth and monetization models designed for long-term engagement.

• How MFV helped: We supported Moonshot on product economics and community strategy, helping prioritize retention, creator alignment, and sustainable participation over short-term revenue.

Bluff: Provable on-chain casino & betting platform

• What they do: A next-generation casino and sportsbook, building culturally native betting experiences. They create new wagering verticals that turn social and entertainment moments into interactive play, with a relentless focus on user experience.

• Why it fits our thesis: Entertainment + provable speculation shows clear PMF inside crypto communities. The team pairs consumer-game instincts with the operational and governance discipline needed to scale a durable, responsible betting platform.

• What’s happened so far: Early product-market fit testing and free to play gaming launch.

• How MFV helped: Advised on fundraising and go-to-market for crypto-native audiences.

[Stealth]: IP studio and AI-native consumer storytelling platform

• What they do: A K-entertainment studio that owns & curates its own IPs combined with an AI-enabled community platform that converts webtoons & webnovel into short, shareable formats.

• Why it fits our thesis: Founding team that pioneered the K-webtoon industry. Product that owns upstream IP rather than competes only on distribution. Original thinking around character-franchise digital economies.

• What’s happened so far: Early product development and owned IPs launched on incumbent platforms (KakaoPage and NaverWebtoon) with good reception.

• How MFV helped: Advised on product hooks, day to day operational support (marketing and hiring strategy) and distribution experiments to accelerate IP formation and creator adoption.

[Stealth]: Institutional-grade exchange infrastructure

• What they do: A high performance exchange optimized for low-latency orderbook trading and market-structure rigor, designed to be license-ready for regulated deployments.

• Why it fits our thesis: Deep market-structure expertise and an ambition to build durable trading infrastructure maps to large, defensible economic value.

• What’s happened so far: Architecture and product work focused on performance and risk controls with a view toward regulated adoption.

• How MFV helped: Supported the founders from pre-company incorporation to product strategy and market positioning for institutional customers and regulatory readiness.

[Stealth]: DeFi platform for structured yield and wealth products

• What they do: Packages sophisticated options and derivatives strategies into accessible products, allowing users to gain exposure to institutional-style yield without requiring deep financial or trading expertise.

• Why it fits our thesis: Aligns with our view that the future of DeFi lies in translating on-chain market efficiency into institutionally relevant financial products. By abstracting complexity and focusing on real risk management rather than speculative yield, the platform targets durable, scalable use cases.

• What’s happened so far: Early-stage development has centered on simplifying complex strategies into intuitive user flows while laying the groundwork for institutional adoption and capital alignment.

• How MFV helped: We advised on product-market fit for institutional users and supported positioning and messaging to make advanced strategies understandable and credible for a broader audience. Pulled together early user groups, market makers and liquidity providers to co-build and bootstrap the product in anticipation for launch.

We feel more convinced than ever that crypto will reshape legacy industries and MFV will help the best teams make that change real.

Thank you for your support,

Mo, Neil, Alex, Jerome

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“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.”
— Frank Herbert

Most of the world’s value still moves on slow, closed systems.

Payments hop from bank to bank, batch files move overnight, and markets settle days after a trade. Your “balance” lives inside a handful of platforms that barely talk to each other. It works, but it’s fragile, opaque, and built for a world before phones, APIs, and AI.

Now imagine a world where every digital interaction, every data flow, and every automated decision runs on an invisible but unbreakable backbone—not today’s opaque, centralized systems, but open, programmable protocols that quietly power everything.

This isn’t sci-fi or a distant horizon. It’s the natural next phase of the internet, and we’ve already crossed the inflection point.

Protocols are emerging as the invisible force of the next economy and are operating at maximum frequency and powering everything from global value flows to autonomous agents, identity, and how communities form and coordinate online. This transition rhymes with past shifts: the internet rewired information, mobile rewired participation, and now protocols are rewiring value exchange and coordination.

Something fundamental has changed. The groundwork is finally in place. Programmable protocols now carry the potential to reshape how value moves, how ownership works, and how people organize across borders.

A new digital renaissance is forming. The boundary between physical and virtual space is blurring, and people are gaining more control over their digital lives than ever before. The most influential builders of this era will be the ones who recognize the quiet strength of systems that work out of sight—running constantly, enabling entire ecosystems before the rest of the world even realizes what happened.

At MFV, we frame it simply:

Applications are interfaces. Protocols are the product.

The biggest long-term outcomes won’t accrue to the next shiny interface. They’re in the protocols that harness the core primitives of money, markets, identity, and coordination to deliver products that finally scale.

This thesis lays out how we see the next 5, 10, and 20 years—and where MFV chooses to play.

What we believe about the next 20 years: All value will be on-chain

Today, hundreds of billions of dollars already circulate as “stablecoins” – digital dollars issued on blockchains and backed by cash and short-term government debt. For most people, that still sounds niche. In practice, stablecoins have become the default way money moves inside crypto and a growing way it moves across borders.

We believe that over the next five years, stablecoins and tokenized cash products will become the primary internet rail for dollars and other major currencies. Cross-border payments, corporate treasuries, remittances, and even consumer apps will quietly start routing through these rails because they’re faster, cheaper, and easier to integrate than legacy bank plumbing. This is happening and accelerating.

Over 10–20 years, the lines between “bank deposit,” “stablecoin,” and “money market fund share” will blur. They’ll be different regulatory wrappers on the same basic thing: tokenized claims on safe assets that can be moved, composed, and programmed in real time.

On-chain market structure eats fintech

Fintech gave us better front-ends on top of old rails. Crypto gives us new rails. New front-ends will follow; we don’t pretend to know exactly what those look like yet.

DeFi (decentralized finance) protocols already handle lending, borrowing, trading, and derivatives on-chain, without traditional intermediaries. Today that still feels experimental and mostly crypto-native. Over the next decade, we expect these systems to settle into something more boring and more important: core infrastructure.

Money markets, perpetual swaps, credit lines, and even parts of repo and FX will increasingly be priced and cleared on programmable rails. Banks, brokers, and exchanges won’t disappear; they’ll sit on top as distribution, compliance, and brand. But underneath, the pipes will be different.

In that world, “fintech” that only rearranges user interfaces on top of legacy infrastructure starts to look limited. The more interesting opportunity is to own the protocols that determine how risk is priced and how collateral moves.

Protocols under every AI agent and social graph

AI is turning software into a swarm of agents that see, decide, and act on their own. Those agents will hold keys, send payments, manage portfolios, negotiate contracts, and coordinate with each other. They will need open, programmable money and identity rails as much as humans do.

We don’t believe the future of AI-native finance and coordination is a patchwork of private APIs controlled by a few platforms. We think it’s a set of protocols that define:

• How an agent proves who it represents

• How it gets paid and pays others

• How it accesses credit, insurance, compute, and data

The same is true for social and consumer products. If your social graph, game inventory, or identity live only inside a single company’s database, your AI agent is locked in by design. Protocols provide a way out.

Across all these trends, our through-line is simple:

The world is moving from slow, closed, institution-mediated value flows to fast, open, protocol-mediated ones. We want to back the protocols that make that shift real.

Where MFV Comes In

We’re not tourists to this transition.

Our team helped build and scale a Layer 1 blockchain from whitepaper to tens of millions of monthly active users across dozens of countries. We have shipped core protocol upgrades, wallets, and developer infrastructure under real stress: bull and bear markets, regulatory uncertainty, public scrutiny, and adversarial conditions.

We’ve been in the room with regulators, banks, and exchanges when answers weren’t obvious and there was no playbook to copy.

MFV exists to bring that experience to founders who are building the next layer of infrastructure.

We do that in two ways:

• Deep, focused sprints. We run MF sprints – one to two intense days working side-by-side with a team on product, token design, go-to-market, market structure, and regulatory path. Work that would normally drag out over months gets compressed into a concrete, testable plan.

• Hands-on help with the hard parts. After we invest, we stay close on the things that are genuinely hard to outsource: structuring tokens, navigating capital markets, bridging East and West, and speaking both “crypto” and “regulator/bank” fluently.

We think of ourselves less as commentators and more as co-architects of the rails we’re betting on.

And as builders, we recognize the clarity and resilience that turn early protocols into enduring ones. That’s why we focus on four lanes we believe will create durable value over the next 5–20 years.

MFV invests across four interconnected frontiers:

1. Founder-protocol-fit: visionary builders with deep alignment to the problems they’re solving

2. Financial markets & payments: stablecoins-era rails that render legacy fintech obsolete.

3. Next-gen consumer & community apps: cultural and entertainment models powered by meaningful token design.

4. AI-crypto convergence: autonomous agents, coordination protocols, and AI-native marketplaces reshaping digital interaction

What We Look For in Founders

We care more about earned scars than perfect polish. The founders we back tend to share five important traits:

1. Protocol-first thinking. You can explain clearly why this needs to be a protocol or rail at all, who pays, who earns, and what the steady-state economics look like once incentives calm down.

2. Culture-native but bilingual. You’re comfortable in crypto culture, new social sub-cultures – online, onchain, and in the trenches – but you can also walk into a room with a bank, regulator, or enterprise and explain your product in plain language.

3. Narrative backed by numbers. You have a simple story about why your project matters and a spreadsheet under it: market size, path to users, and why you win instead of the next team.

4. Cross-domain pattern recognition. You borrow from games, social networks, financial market microstructure, logistics, and AI – and remix those patterns into something that only works because money and markets are programmable.

5. Antifragility. You expect bear markets, policy shocks, hacks, forks, and social backlash. Your design – and your personality – is set up to get stronger under stress, not crack.

Most of all, there is a must-build idea that will not leave you alone. You’d work on it with or without outside capital.

This is the world we’re underwriting at MFV: one where money and markets move at maximum frequency on open protocols, where applications are just the visible tip of much deeper infrastructure, and where the biggest value accrues to the rails the world ends up depending on.

Our job is to find the people building these things and help them move faster.

We’re excited to share the launch of Maximum Frequency Ventures (MFV), a $50 million operator-led company-creation engine and venture fund designed to help founders go from idea to scale, not just raise and pray.

Most crypto funds write checks and then wait for a token event. Accelerators push to demo day. Studios stop at prototypes.

MFV does it differently: we invest early, embed with teams, and stay until adoption takes hold.

We know this matters because we’ve lived it. As operators who helped build Aptos from an idea into a top-10 Layer 1 blockchain with a $20 billion valuation and more than 200 projects in its ecosystem, we experienced firsthand what it takes to scale real-world adoption — and what’s often missing from the traditional venture model.

MFV was created to close that gap: pairing capital with deep operational expertise so founders can turn conviction into growth.

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Why Now

Crypto’s foundation is finally in place. Blockchains scale. Stablecoins are moving trillions. Wallets and on-ramps are reliable. Institutions are participating. The next frontier isn’t infrastructure — it’s execution. The challenge now is turning conviction into adoption. That requires product discipline, operating muscle, and partners willing to stay in the trenches.

That’s where MFV comes in: we don’t just fund ideas, we help build scale.

How We Work

Our approach combines capital with operating muscle through three core programs:

• Founder Residency. A program for operators and technologists ready to become founders. Residents validate markets, ship MVPs, recruit core teams, and leave with early believers, plus a first check from us.

• Invest & Embed. We invest early and work side by side with founders through structured sprints, 12-week operating plans, and ongoing working sessions. When a team needs us on the ground, we show up.

• Beyond the Prototype. We stick with teams until adoption shows up. That means supporting product iteration, building teams, shaping token mechanics, and lining up the first customers.

Who We Are

We’re four operators who built and scaled Aptos from inception to one of the leading ecosystems in Web3 — and we’re bringing that same operator-first approach to the next generation of builders. We’ve been where founders are — raising rounds, building teams, launching products, and scaling ecosystems. Now, we’re turning that experience into leverage for others.

• Mo Shaikh – generational operator who builds the systems everyone else ends up using; co-founder of Aptos and architect of its scale.

• Neil Harounian – relentless execution from Aptos, White Star Capital, and RBC.

• Alexandre Tang – clarity and long-game strategy from BCG and Aptos.

• Jerome Ong – institutional roots, startup edge and crypto-native lens from GIC, Cloudkitchens and Aptos.

We know what it takes because we’ve carried the weight ourselves.

Proof of Work

Even before this launch, we’ve been quietly putting the model into practice.

For each portfolio company, we’ve gone beyond writing a check — recruiting founding team members, defining product loops, connecting teams with design partners, and helping land early users.

As one founder put it, “Working with MFV is less like having an investor and more like gaining a co-founder. They challenged us to anchor our product in community, sharpen the model behind it. Their mix of Web3 insight and deep content expertise – plus the ability to bridge Asia’s content leadership with global audiences – makes them far more than just capital.”

Our Edge

Our playing field is the whole world: founders, users, and the entire crypto ecosystem. Our edge is Asia.

It’s where we learned what real adoption looks like, building Aptos from scratch and working with exchanges, banks, developers, and communities who made it scale. That experience taught us how to turn early traction into lasting growth.

Now, we’re bridging that same operator-driven approach to help founders find their first believers, grow faster, and expand globally.

Asia leads in open-source crypto development, and everyday crypto applications. Remittances across East Asia and the Pacific exceed $130 billion annually, and markets like Hong Kong are pioneering retail-accessible BTC and ETH ETFs.

Looking Ahead

Our goal is simple: to prove that operator-led capital outperforms passive capital in crypto. Success will mean founders can point to MFV not just for a check — but for the build, the support, and the scale that followed.

If you’re a founder (or ready to become one), we’d love to hear from you.

Let’s build.