Founder Story: Will Collier and Charlie Durbin from Decent

Decent is a no-code application and protocol for creators to easily construct highly customizable token-based projects.

Decent is a Circle Ventures Portfolio Company. 

Tell us about the concept behind Decent and your journey so far.

When we set out to build Decent, our mission was to provide artists an alternative route for growth to the traditional label path. To replicate the role of the label, you need to provide artists with two things: upfront capital and some basket of services around marketing, discovery, and operations.  We believed (and still believe) that blockchain applications are able to fulfill both the function of capital formation (e.g., NFT sales with proceeds going to the artist) and can be structured with positive sum incentives that motivate fans to work on artists’ behalf in a way that can rival label resources. 

Our co-founder, Xander Carlson, is a full-time artist. He’s been signed to both indie and major labels, and a lot of our original motivations for founding Decent were rooted in his personal experiences.  Our journey went into hyperspeed when we released our first proof of concept launch - one of our co-founder Xander’s back catalog songs - the first week of December 2021 while at the same time joining Y Combinator for the Winter ‘22 batch. From there, we kicked off full platform development in the spring and were able to do custom, curated releases with 15 different artists over the course of a few months.

Decent’s mission is to be a launching pad for these artists, companies, and organizations to enter the web3 space without needing a full solidity development team or granular understanding of how to build on the blockchain. Artists don't have the time to dabble in all of the complexities; they should be able to harness the power of the technology without taking time out of the other parts of their career. 

We’ve been serving artists as a curated marketplace for 6 months, and have realized that in order to assist the amount of artists that we want to support at scale we need to build tools that anyone can have access to.

What does crypto solve for creators at large? 

With crypto, creators can leverage digital relationships to monetize their music and art in new ways, as well as use their new offerings to capture more data on who their fans are. Crypto enables artists to create deeper and more engaged digital experiences with less worry about fraud or issues of permanence. As a creator, you can now have full ownership of your art and distribution; crypto tools are the best option to date in facilitating these relationships, and that is why we believe they will come to be the de facto rails for the creator economy.

Tell us about your vision for the future of music distribution.

The future of music consumption is unlikely to change significantly from today’s status quo.  Our thesis is that the future of the creator economy will leverage comparative advantages from web2 and web3 – meaning web3 opportunities will be augmentative or alongside web2 distribution, not in full replacement.
 
The base processes of music distribution will likely remain similar to today’s; however, how those stakeholders monetize will change dramatically.  New monetization tools and crypto-native markets will emerge at every level of distribution (e.g., artist-to-distributor, distributor-to-DSP, DSP-to-fan, etc.). Digital collectibles and creator-owned marketplaces are currently providing differentiated revenue channels for artists through web3 mediums. We believe this approach most directly solves the glaring problems in the industry today, and it is why, at Decent, we spend most of our time considering how to build new market structures.

What about music labels – how might their structure change in a blockchain-enabled world?

Music labels are dominant and long-lasting structures within the music industry. In a blockchain-enabled world, the most immediate change may be more choice for artists. Labels are most well-known for their ability to grant funding to artists that need capital to invest into their careers. In a blockchain enabled world, we’re already seeing more options for artists to gain a few thousand dollars or more of capital to put back into their own art through NFT or DAO sales rather than a contract with a label. It will be interesting to see if labels end up having to reduce their take-rates on artist deals or change their business models to catch up to growing optionality, something they haven’t had to confront in the last 50 years.

What’s in your roadmap for Decent?

We launched our Decent Protocol, as well as the first application built on it - the Decent Creator HQ. We’re currently working on building out new functionality for the Protocol through new modules that are backed by market demand – airdrops, allowlisting, and more. We’re also working on new builds with partners and interested parties that will leverage the Decent Protocol to power their contracts and functions. We’re very excited to keep growing our amazing developer community too.

What keeps you up at night as a founder?

Speed is key as a founder, and not just speed in any direction, but speed in the right vector is necessary to create the best products and win. In the web3 space especially, product-market fit is not a static state, but rather a culmination of constantly being able to adapt, grow, and innovate quicker than the rest of the space. Constant change can be exhausting, yet exciting; it keeps us on our toes and busy as founders.