WE RAN ICON COLLECTIVE'S ONLINE PROGRAM. WE REBUILT THE SCHOOL AI-NATIVE.
Max and John ran Icon Collective's online program, the leading American EDM school. The artist network and the audience came with us. We rebuilt the school around Kadence, our AI music coach, with live mentoring from working artists like LSDREAM, Ghastly, and Dr Fresch.
This round ships our Kadence Desktop app and carries us to profitability at 250 paying members.
Three things changed in 2025. Without all three, this product was impossible a year ago.
Voice models, an open audience, and the agent stack all arrived inside twelve months. We built into that opening.
Coaching-grade voice models.
GPT-4o-class voice models can hold a 20-minute coaching call. As of 2024-25, latency, prosody, and reasoning are finally fit for craft instruction. Kadence Desktop is built on top of this shift.
Icon Collective closed.
May 2025. The leading American EDM school went dark. Thousands of producers and the artist instructor network were orphaned. The operators of Icon's online program rebuilt it as Futureproof.
Tool-use protocols matured.
Function-calling and the Model Context Protocol stabilized in 2024-25, so an AI coach can actually see the producer's project and act inside the DAW. Kadence Desktop uses this stack end-to-end.
We found the bottom and turned it.
Marketing only started Q4 2025. We bottomed at 33 paid members in January 2026 and have grown every month since on a single validated ad creative and a hand-built nurture. 48 paying today. Kadence Web is in use by every member; Kadence Desktop ships Q3 2026.
Total paid churn across this five-month window: 6 members. The slope is the story. Members are recovering faster than they churn, on a single validated ad channel (LSDREAM Instagram creative) we have yet to scale with capital.
Two tiers today: $99/mo Nexus (AI coach + live artist mentoring) is the high-touch LTV product, capped near 500 members by the human side of the operation. $29/mo Starter (AI-only) is the AI-delivered scale engine at near-zero marginal cost. The mix shifts toward Starter as we grow past the Nexus operational ceiling.
Here's where the model goes:
My production game has improved tremendously within a few months. The mentorship is like having an elite coach in your corner, and the community is by far one of the best I've been a part of.
An AI music coach + artist mentors + an adaptive curriculum.
- Kadence Web is our in-browser AI music coach via text and voice. Answers questions, gives track feedback, integrates with the curriculum. Available to every paying member today.
- Kadence Desktop (currently in beta for Q3 2026 release). Voice coaching on your computer, with a direct connection to Ableton. Kadence Desktop sees your project, coaches in context, and knows what you've been working on. Shipping with this round.
- Live weekly sessions and workshops with working artists for the parts AI can't touch.
- Courses produced by working producers and touring artists.
- An active global community meeting via Zoom and Discord.
AI works better around the music than inside it.
Students don't want AI to write their tracks. We know because we asked. The real demand is for AI that clears the friction around making music: mix feedback, workflow, branding, marketing, the business side. So that's what we teach.
- Live today: Vibe Coding for Music Producers. Our most-attended workshop series. Becomes a course in May 2026.
- Live today: Kadence Mix Assistant. An in-house AI that listens to student mixes and tells them what's off.
- In development: Courses on using AI for branding and marketing, aimed at the parts of an artist's career that eat the most time.
On generative tools. We'll build generative-AI curriculum when the demand shows up among serious producers.
Kadence desktop app
Great platform, nice people running the school. I like that the AI music coach tool can actually listen and view my DAW.
We're building Kadence: an AI music coach that knows what you need to learn next.
Every producer starts somewhere different and has limited time. A graph of techniques that Kadence routes each student through serves them better than any fixed curriculum. It's what Kadence becomes once Desktop ships and connects to the curriculum. Kadence helps producers learn. It isn't there to replace what they make.
Kadence Web (today)
In-browser coach. Text and voice. Answers questions, gives track feedback, cites the curriculum. Live today.
Kadence Desktop
Voice coaching connected to Ableton. Sees your project. Coaches in context.
The graph emerges
As Kadence Desktop accumulates context on what each producer makes, struggles with, and is ready for, it surfaces curriculum lessons contextually. Each lesson is a node. Kadence routes the path.
Kadence Desktop sees what's on the producer's screen. She's deeply integrated with Ableton today because that's where our students live, but the architecture isn't tool-locked. Add background context for more software, index more public material, and she helps with more of the producer's stack without rebuilding the product. We start with American EDM because that's where our network and authority are. From there, the same engine expands to more tools and more genres.
What's live now.
Artist network that converts
Max and John ran the online program at Icon Collective, the legendary LA EDM school. When Icon closed in May 2025, the relationships came with us. Three bass music artists (LSDREAM, Ghastly, Dr Fresch) already endorse Futureproof for free, and a reel with LSDREAM was our highest-converting ad creative. This funding round will fund a series of paid artist deals.
Community and retention
Live mentorship plus a global student community drive 3.1% monthly paid churn. Max and John have run online music communities for years. The social layer is the part a generic ed-tech company finds hardest to copy, and it's working today.
An open lane in American electronic music.
No modern production schools combine AI coaching with a community and mentors built around American EDM and dance culture.
Kadence is a unique learning technology and we have a market opening in American EDM.
A team with operating credibility in electronic music education.
The founding team ran Icon Collective's online program and learned what this audience buys and why they drop off. We operate lean: small core team, contractor mentors, AI-assisted ops, and specialist consultants on short engagements (see The Ask for details).
John von Seggern
Founder / CEO / CTO. Software engineer and producer. Built Kadence and the school's AI-powered backend. Press & media →
Max Pote
Marketing Director. Top instructor and the main driver of our social and marketing. Also a working dubstep artist with major festival plays and international tours under his belt.
Susan von Seggern
Full-time publicist. 20+ years in LA public relations, former major label publicist, early to indie rock, rap, and electronic music. Drives press, brand visibility, and media relationships for the school.
AI Staff
We have AI agents helping us behind the scenes with everything from marketing analysis, retention monitoring, financial reporting, and curriculum research, running on a custom knowledge base and toolchain built over the past year.
Raising $250,000 as a bridge to profitability.
SAFE, $3M cap, 20% discount. $250K ships Kadence Desktop (Q3 2026), scales the artist-endorsement channel LSDREAM validated, and carries us to 250 paying members and profitability by Q1 2027. From there, growth is funded by revenue, not capital.
Runway & team
Keeps Max, John, and mentors funded through profitability. Covers Kadence Web and the Kadence Desktop ship. Funded now, not deferred.
Marketing & endorsement-content engine
Funds the endorsement-content engine: premium content made with name EDM artists (the LSDREAM playbook), amplified through paid channels. Endorsement-led acquisition, not cold-traffic chase.
Expert consultants
Hart Thorson (Hart Thorson Learning Design) consults on the curriculum framework while Stephen Sullivan, founder of Middy (a music-education platform used at Icon Collective), helps plan Kadence Desktop technical architecture.
Curriculum production
New curriculum: lesson scripting and content build-out covering more topics in music and production as well as adjacent areas like branding, marketing, and video production. A deep library keeps students engaged longer and our AI seamlessly adds new courses to student roadmaps.
Admin & compliance
Legal (SAFE, S-Corp, IP assignments), accounting (CPA quarterly + year-end), insurance (E&O, workers' comp). The operating infrastructure behind the round.
Historical
TTM avg through Apr 2026, before survival cuts.
Current
Survival mode (May 2026). Tech trimmed, Max temporarily reduced, founders unpaid. ~$1K/mo net at current MRR.
Post-raise plan
$5K John W-2 · $5K Max W-2 · $5K ops (teachers, tech, workshops). Susan defers. ~23 months runway at flat MRR; net burn → $0 at Q4 2026 break-even.
Current trajectory at +2 paid/month on a single validated creative. Q2 finishes with the raise closed, the post-click funnel rebuilt, and the artist-intensive pipeline (Protohype EP live) signing the next two cohorts.
Kadence Desktop GA (voice-in-DAW coaching). First paid artist partnerships signed.
Paid partnerships with well-known producers live across the catalogue. Revenue covers gross burn.
70/30 Nexus/Starter mix. ~$5K/mo margin on a $15K burn. Growth now funded by revenue, not investors.
One path. We ship Kadence Desktop, reach profitability, and raise the A from strength or sell into the consolidating music-creator stack.
- Series A from strength.Profitability gives us the option to raise a larger round at a materially higher valuation, on our terms. Your SAFE converts at the $3M cap.
- Strategic acquisition.An AI-native music school with an artist network, a working voice coach inside the DAW, and an Icon Collective-grade audience is the asset Splice, Native Instruments, BandLab, MasterClass, and major-label creator-tool arms have started buying. We expect that surface to widen, not narrow, over the next 18 months.
Profitability is the milestone that lets us choose, not the outcome we're selling. We're underwriting Kadence as a compounding learning graph in the largest growing producer market on earth.
We bootstrapped this far. This round gets us to profitability and then we win.
Paying members. A working AI coach in the browser. An acquisition channel that works. $250K gets us to 250 members, ships Kadence Desktop, and carries us to profitability. Join it.