Srikanth Narayan, a seasoned tech executive known for his work at Uber and Waymo, has stepped away from a lucrative Big Tech career to launch Cache, a bold financial startup that aims to rewrite how Americans build and protect wealth. With Cache, Narayan introduces a modern take on the decades-old “exchange fund” model—once reserved for the ultra-wealthy—and is now opening it to startup employees, founders, and everyday accredited investors.
A Personal Wake-Up Call
Narayan’s pivot began with a personal financial awakening. As an early engineer at Uber, he watched his equity compensation balloon during the company’s public debut. On paper, he was financially thriving—but the wealth was locked in a single stock. When the market faltered during the pandemic, he experienced the vulnerability of having his financial future tied to one company.
It wasn’t just a dip in stock value that startled him. It was the realization that even highly paid professionals could be financially fragile if their assets were overly concentrated in employer equity. A wealth manager eventually introduced him to exchange funds—an old-school wealth preservation mechanism—but they came with million-dollar minimums and barriers that felt designed to exclude.
That moment planted the seed for Cache.
What Are Exchange Funds?
Exchange funds are investment vehicles that allow individuals with concentrated stock positions to pool those holdings with others in similar positions. In return, each participant receives a diversified basket of stocks, all without triggering capital gains taxes. The model dates back to the 1960s and has long been used by the ultra-wealthy to protect themselves from risk without having to liquidate their holdings.
However, traditional exchange funds have historically required very high entry thresholds—often $5 million or more—and are managed by large asset managers catering to elite clients.
Narayan believed this needed to change.
The Birth of Cache
In 2022, Narayan left his role at Waymo and spent nearly a year in stealth, building what would become Cache—a tech-powered platform for exchange funds, optimized for modern investors. The platform officially launched in early 2024 with a single mission: make elite diversification strategies accessible to a broader base of high-earning professionals, especially in tech.
Cache allows accredited investors to contribute as little as $100,000 worth of a single stock into an exchange fund. These shares are then combined with other clients’ stocks to form a diversified portfolio, generally tracking a broader index such as the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100. The structure ensures no one stock makes up more than 10% of the total fund value—effectively shielding participants from company-specific volatility.
A Fintech Approach to Old-School Finance
What sets Cache apart is its infrastructure. It operates with the velocity and design sensibility of a tech company but with the rigor of a financial institution. The onboarding process is digital, simple, and transparent. Users input details of their concentrated holdings, receive instant diversification estimates, and are guided through a seamless transfer process.
The backend handles regulatory compliance, tax structuring, and ongoing fund rebalancing—all wrapped in a clean dashboard interface. Every two weeks, Cache opens new “fund windows” for participants, reducing the long wait times typical of traditional exchange funds.
This high-frequency fund formation gives investors more control over timing and liquidity, a feature previously unheard of in legacy exchange-fund models.
The Wealth Concentration Crisis in Tech
Narayan’s bet is grounded in demographic and financial reality. Today, a massive portion of wealth in the tech economy is locked in equity. Startups and public tech companies alike distribute restricted stock units (RSUs) and options to employees, and while this creates life-changing upside, it also introduces serious concentration risk.
A software engineer at a late-stage startup might see their entire retirement savings held in one company’s future. A founder might own 80% of their net worth in a pre-IPO company they helped build. For both, a downturn—or even modest market correction—could wipe out years of financial progress.
Cache is designed to solve this problem by offering tax-deferred diversification, empowering people to protect their gains without liquidating their stake.
Going Beyond the Ultra-Wealthy
A core pillar of Cache’s mission is accessibility. While the company currently serves accredited investors—those earning over $200,000 annually or holding over $1 million in assets—it intends to lower the bar further in the future, including exploring fund structures that could one day serve retail investors.
Narayan has spoken publicly about the need to dismantle the “gated garden” of elite financial tools. From family offices to startup employees, he argues, wealth preservation should not be reserved for those already at the top.
Cache also places strong emphasis on transparency. Its management fee structure is simple—often below the industry standard—and there are no hidden fees, load charges, or complex backend compensation models.
Scaling a Modern Wealth Platform
In less than a year since launch, Cache has attracted attention from venture capitalists, family offices, and financial advisors. It now manages hundreds of millions in assets from professionals across more than 300 companies. Many users come from the tech sector, but finance, law, and medicine are also well represented.
The company’s growth is fueled by word-of-mouth and a clear pain point. Users who once sat on dangerously concentrated portfolios are relieved to finally access a tool that was previously out of reach.
Cache has also begun partnering with registered investment advisors (RIAs), offering white-label solutions that help advisors integrate exchange funds into their clients’ wealth strategies.
The Human Side of Financial Engineering
Narayan sees Cache not just as a business, but as a movement. He frequently speaks of friends and colleagues who worked for a decade at a startup, only to see their financial hopes crash with a market correction or layoff.
“There’s a sense of betrayal when your whole life has been tied to one stock,” he says. “It’s not just numbers—it’s your time, your belief, your sacrifice.”
Cache, in his view, is a way to restore balance. By giving people tools to spread their risk, the platform empowers them to build a more resilient financial future.
Looking Forward: Loans, Liquidity, and Lending
Cache’s product roadmap is ambitious. The company plans to introduce tax-deferred loans against fund shares, allowing users to borrow without selling. It’s also exploring passive income options and customized fund tracking—so investors can align with industry-specific ETFs or values-based investing themes.
Another goal is liquidity. While exchange funds typically require a 7-year hold period, Cache is actively working with regulatory advisors and private market partners to build secondary solutions that may allow earlier exits in the future.
Redefining What Wealth Means
Narayan’s career shift is emblematic of a broader trend in Silicon Valley: successful tech leaders using their knowledge and experience to solve problems for the next generation of builders.
Cache is not about fast returns or speculative bets. It’s about stability, diversification, and long-term thinking—a counter-narrative to the boom-and-bust cycles that dominate the startup economy.
As Narayan often says, “You don’t have to be rich to want to stay rich. You just have to be smart.”
Final Thoughts
Srikanth Narayan’s journey from engineer to entrepreneur reflects a powerful mission: to take a complex, elite financial product and reengineer it for a new generation of wealth holders. Cache is more than a fintech startup—it’s a statement that financial security should not be reserved for the top 1%.
In a world where fortunes are built overnight and lost just as quickly, Cache offers a rare thing: peace of mind. And that, perhaps, is the real revolution Narayan is leading.
