TACANS VENTURE STUDIO

Group Chief Product Officer & Director | Web3 Venture Studio

Tacans was founded in March 2021 by Lars Seier Christensen — founder of Saxo Bank, which he grew into one of Europe's largest online trading platforms before selling his stake for approximately €400 million — and Mathias Lundoe Nielsen. The venture studio model was designed to systematically create, incubate, and scale blockchain startups through shared infrastructure, capital, and expertise.

James Davies joined as Group Chief Product Officer and Director in November 2021, taking responsibility for product strategy, technical architecture, and delivery across the entire portfolio.

The Venture Studio Model

Unlike a traditional VC fund that makes passive investments, a venture studio actively builds companies. Tacans provided portfolio companies with:

• Shared development resources (150-200 engineers)

• Centralised product management and architecture oversight

• Capital for initial development and subsequent funding rounds

• Go-to-market support and strategic partnerships

• Legal, compliance, and operational infrastructure

James's role was to ensure technical and product coherence across the portfolio — reviewing architectures, setting development standards, prioritising roadmaps, and making build-vs-buy decisions that affected multiple ventures simultaneously.

Scale of Operations

At peak, the group comprised 8 portfolio companies and over 200 professionals working across multiple locations. The core development operation was headquartered in Kyiv, Ukraine, with additional staff in Estonia, Denmark, and the UK.

Portfolio Companies

The studio built and operated ventures spanning the Web3 infrastructure stack:

• Tacans Labs — The venture builder itself, responsible for ideation, validation, and early-stage development of new concepts before they spun out as independent entities

• Tacans Dev — Outsourcing and outstaffing operation providing blockchain development services to external clients, generating revenue to support portfolio company burn

• Spaceseven — NFT marketplace targeting the premium art and collectibles market, with integrated minting, auction, and secondary trading functionality

• Hypery — Social engagement and gamification tools for Web3 communities, designed to drive user acquisition and retention for token projects

• Provenance Tags — Physical-digital authentication system linking NFC chips to blockchain records, targeting luxury goods authentication and supply chain verification

• CryptoX Wallet — Consumer-facing cryptocurrency wallet for iOS and Android, designed as a gateway product for mainstream users entering the crypto ecosystem

• VEAX — Automated market maker (AMM) decentralised exchange built on NEAR Protocol, featuring innovative variable fee mechanisms that adjusted based on market conditions

• CVEX — Derivatives protocol that ultimately became Pascal and Jetstream (see separate project page)

Product Leadership Across the Portfolio

As Group CPO, James was responsible for:

• Architecture review — Ensuring technical decisions across portfolio companies were sound, scalable, and aligned with industry best practice

• Roadmap prioritisation — Balancing resource allocation across competing demands from eight simultaneous ventures

• Outsource management — Overseeing the 200-person Ukrainian development team, including vendor relationships, quality assurance, and delivery management

• Product-market fit assessment — Working with each venture to validate assumptions, iterate on positioning, and identify viable paths to revenue

• Technical due diligence — Supporting capital raising efforts with detailed technical documentation and investor presentations

Wartime Operations

When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the development team of 150+ engineers in Kyiv was directly in harm's way. The first weeks required crisis management: establishing contact with all staff, supporting evacuations for those who chose to leave, arranging temporary accommodation, and setting up secure communications channels.

James worked with local management to maintain business continuity through extraordinary circumstances. This included:

• Relocating key personnel to Western Ukraine, Poland, and other safe locations

• Establishing backup infrastructure and redundant systems

• Managing the psychological and practical challenges of a distributed team under stress

• Ensuring project delivery continued despite air raids, power outages, and internet disruptions

Operations were sustained without significant disruption to portfolio company timelines — a testament to the resilience of the Ukrainian team and the operational structures put in place.

Capital Raising

James participated in seven separate fundraising rounds across portfolio companies during the three-year engagement. His role included:

• Preparing technical and product documentation for investor due diligence

• Presenting to institutional and strategic investors alongside portfolio company CEOs

• Negotiating commercial terms and partnership structures

• Supporting post-investment integration and reporting requirements

Total capital raised across the portfolio exceeded $15 million during James's tenure.

Governance

As a Director of the holding company, James participated in board-level decisions affecting group strategy, capital allocation, and portfolio company oversight. This included difficult decisions around sunsetting underperforming ventures and doubling down on those showing traction.

Spin-Out and Transition

By mid-2024, CVEX had developed into the most promising venture in the portfolio — with genuinely novel technology addressing a significant market gap. The decision was made to spin it out as an independent company, with James transitioning from Group CPO to Co-Founder & CEO of the new entity (now Pascal Protocol and Jetstream).