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While most venture capitalists chase B2B SaaS, biotech, and crypto, Collette Tibbetts sees one of the biggest arbitrage opportunities hiding in plain sight: music tech. On Season 1, Episode 5 of the Top Decile Podcast, Collette sat down with host Connor to make the case for why music technology is venture capital's most overlooked sector.
A singer and songwriter before anything else, Collette is the founder and General Partner of Joker Deck Ventures, a pre-seed fund investing in music tech with applications that stretch far beyond the music industry. Alongside co-GP Rithik Kundu, a serial advisor in New York's audio and GenAI research scene, she is building a fund that bridges the gap between a legacy industry hungry for innovation and the founders building the future of sound.
From Songwriter to Investor
Collette's path to venture capital began not in a boardroom, but in recording studios and songwriting sessions. Growing up as a writer and performer, she had early exposure to the business mechanics of the music industry through relationships with major label executives who walked her through the economics of making hits. That foundation gave her a lens most investors lack: the ability to see the parallels between how record labels evaluate talent and how venture capitalists evaluate startups.
As the music industry's business model shifted from physical sales to digital distribution and then to streaming, Collette began drawing connections to startup financing. She recognized that major label record deals and artist royalty structures share surprising similarities with equity rounds and early-stage investment terms. "If you can learn to think like an investor does," she explained, "then you can probably understand a lot of how major labels go about deciding things." That cross-pollination of music industry knowledge and investment thinking became the seed for Joker Deck Ventures.
The Five Senses Thesis
At the core of Joker Deck's investment philosophy is an elegantly simple idea: music is audio, and audio is hearing, which is one of the five human senses. Once you frame music technology through that lens, the addressable market expands dramatically. Collette's thesis is that technologies validated in the music industry first often have powerful applications across healthcare, communications, deep tech, and beyond.
She offered a compelling example during the conversation. One portfolio company working on latency reduction, the delay between signal transmission and reception, has obvious applications in live music streaming and remote recording sessions. But the same technology extends into real-time communications, cellular infrastructure, and potentially even interstellar communications. "The second you're playing in the realm of one of the key human senses," Collette noted, "the possibilities open up." This pattern repeats across Joker Deck's deal flow, where music-first solutions regularly reveal applications in sports, fashion, media, education, and general entertainment.
The Bottleneck Between Labels and Startups
One of Collette's sharpest observations is about a structural gap in the music tech ecosystem. Major record labels are actively seeking innovation. Founders are building exciting products. But there is a bottleneck between the two that has starved early-stage music tech companies of the capital and connections they need to scale.
The roots of this misalignment trace back to the 1980s and 1990s, when the US and UK dominated the global music market. During that boom, much of the R&D and innovation push moved to European and Asian markets. When those research projects matured in the 2000s, the legacy relationships and infrastructure of the major labels had not evolved to meet them. The result is an industry where decision-makers still operate on decades-old frameworks while transformative technology sits just out of reach.
Collette sees a turning point happening now. Experienced professionals who have left major label roles through retirement or layoffs are pairing with Silicon Valley builders to create a new wave of music tech startups. Combined with the current technology renaissance, where vibe coding and rapid prototyping lower the barriers to demonstrating concepts, the conditions are ripe for a fund that can bridge the gap between legacy industry knowledge and early-stage innovation.
Finding the Jokers in the Deck
The fund's name is more than branding. It reflects a core principle of how Collette and Rithik evaluate founders. In a deck of cards, the joker is the only card that can assume the role of any other position. Joker Deck Ventures searches for founders who embody that same versatility: people with deep passion for music who can see how their ideas apply across multiple industries.
Collette described how some of the most promising founders she meets are not initially thinking about venture scale. They are locked in on a specific problem in music. But once they connect with the right people and begin exploring adjacent applications, "all of a sudden there are all of these other things on the table that open up." The fund's role is to help those founders expand their vision, make introductions to the right counterparts in both the music industry and the tech world, and provide the early resources that turn a music-first idea into a platform play.
Building the Kitchen, Not Just Feeding the Artists
When asked why music-passionate LPs should invest in a VC fund rather than simply sponsoring artists or donating to music institutions, Collette offered a vivid analogy. She positions Joker Deck as building the kitchen, not just serving the meal. The tools and technologies that emerge from the fund's portfolio will ultimately flow back to artists through the major labels and platforms that acquire or license them.
It is a systems-level argument for music tech investing. Rather than supporting one artist or one project, LPs in Joker Deck are investing in the infrastructure that makes it easier for all artists to create, distribute, and monetize their work. As Collette put it, the fund is focused on building "tools to create that longevity for not just one artist, for not just one project, but make it easier to create." If that thesis resonates with you, Collette welcomes the conversation. You can review the fund and schedule time with her directly on Decile Access.
The Start Fund Structure
Joker Deck is raising through the Start Fund structure, targeting $1 million. This approach allows the fund to conduct closes at earlier points and begin deploying capital sooner than traditional fund structures would permit. Collette is targeting pre-seed investments, where smaller checks paired with hands-on value add can be significantly more impactful than larger checks at later stages.
The LP profile she seeks includes people with experience building in the music industry, investors with backgrounds in consumer media and entertainment, and those drawn to the deep tech crossover that the five senses thesis enables. She emphasized that having creatives in the room alongside technical builders brings valuable diversification of perspective, not just diversification of portfolio. Prospective LPs curious about the opportunity can explore the fund on Decile Access and book time with Collette to go deeper.
Advice for Emerging Managers
When asked what advice she would give to aspiring fund managers, Collette zeroed in on the mental game: developing a tolerance for rejection. She was candid about the gap between how a fund looks on paper and the reality of building it from scratch. The shift that changed everything for her was reframing rejection from something to fear into something to expect and even welcome.
"If everyone in my life is saying yes out the gate without questioning it," she reflected, "maybe what I'm doing isn't a crazy enough idea." In French, venture capital translates to "risk capital," and Collette takes that literally. If no one is pushing back on your thesis, it may not be bold enough to generate outsized returns. She encouraged emerging managers to treat fundraising as a statistics game, track rejections as progress, and recognize that the best ideas always sound crazy before they become obvious.
Want to learn more about Joker Deck Ventures or connect with Collette? Visit the fund's profile on Decile Access to review the details and book time directly with her team.
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