Parker McCurley on Decent Labs’ venture studio model

0:01i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investmentpitch media in the crypto coin show and today on blockchain interviews we have parker mccurley co-founder and ceo of the web 3 venture studio decent labs parker welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time today thanks so much for having me action you're very welcome let's jump right into it i'd love to start with

0:24why decent labs and tell us a little bit about decent labs uh the value and the philosophy behind the venture studio absolutely um yeah so decent labs was founded in 2017 during the first kind of big ethereum bull run where decentralized projects for getting off the ground i think both founders had a lot of frustration with um what had happened in 2008 in the

0:51financial crisis and how you know centralized authorities had made a mess of our financial system time and time again which led our interest in cryptocurrency um so between the way that open source software has an ability to empower individuals and united communities and the problem of you know centralized financial systems and um how predatory and dangerous they can

1:17be for individuals uh cryptocurrency really attracted us and we've been building in the space now for almost five years amazing great to hear and being a web 3 venture studio i'm curious on your biggest distinction between you know web 3 investments and regular web 2 investments and if there's anything specific you're looking for in that yeah that's a great question um so we've

1:45worked on a lot of different types of projects over the years um so we've been you know the whole gamut from uh startups that are building you know centralized uh companies and software that leverages cryptocurrency all the way to you know fully decentralized and open source uh web 3 projects and i think the biggest difference that i've seen in web 3 that's most tangible is the

2:08speed so the speed at which projects are getting off the ground the speed at which they're scaling through communities and social media and the speed in which uh you know finance comes into play both from a funding perspective uh from a liquidity perspective and from the ability to incentivize people to contribute to the project so i think that's why overall for our venture

2:30studio we're seeking not to create and deploy new companies but to create and deploy new communities uh online i really like that saying parker and good to know about the speed of course everyone seems to know that cryptocurrency moves really fast and speed of course is important and timing uh just as important with you know bringing out something that's not too innovative and

2:56ahead of its time but right at the right time as this exponentially growing industry continues to explode especially in d5 throughout 2021 but speaking of speed and teams that are delivering their projects at speed when you're looking at investing through the venture studio into new startups in web3 i'm guessing speed is one of those factors but maybe you can talk about the

3:21other factors as well that in which you determine how to make an investment yeah that's a great question and we're actually working on a tool to help with this both from a builder and investor perspective called satori which is an analytics platform for the ethereum blockchain and other evm based networks and uh basically i think what's important to me has always been usage so

3:46in 2017 there were a lot of projects i saw that had a lot of hype around them and a lot of financial interests from investors but i didn't understand a technical value or a use case um and so in the long term a lot of those projects even if they were highly valued early on have sort of withered away over time uh in contrary i've seen a lot of projects

4:10that early on you know don't receive a lot of hype don't receive a lot of interest from investors but there's some strong fundamentals in the technology behind it and with the right team backing i've seen over the course of years those projects really flourish so you know i don't make a ton of investments outside of the work that we build ourselves here at decent but when

4:31i do it's usually because we've identified a technology that is very valuable and we can use it ourselves and when we find ourselves using something in order to create other decentralized applications it's safe to say that protocol or tool is being used by other people and that's usually a nice way that i used to guide investments in technology outside of

4:53what we're producing within our mentor studio yeah very well said and i i think a lot of people that use products should you know if they're using a product every day or something that's a necessity they should be investing in that as well uh you know because absolutely yeah and and it's sort of like the entrepreneurial journey where you had a problem you solve it

5:14yourself and then you're like hey this is a great idea because i'm actually using this right and you know there's gonna be uh usage and uh it has value because you're using it yourself um so now i want to dive into thank you for that information about you know deciding the factors in which to invest now moving into the actual fundraising i saw that there's some

5:38differences with your web3 studio in on-chain fundraising versus like traditional vc fundraising maybe you can talk about those differences yeah that's a great question um so i think i mean obviously right now it's really popular to hate on venture capital and there's a lot of ways to improve you know the way that our industry in the technology industry works

6:02but there are also a lot of benefits to raising venture capital including the access to sophisticated minds who've seen companies grow before and can help you grow yours um so i think when we're looking at the interface of bc and web 3 we want to both you know create a level playing field and allow individuals and institutions the same access to investment but also

6:25continue to hold ourselves to a standard that when you're capitalizing a project you're looking for partnership and support and assistance the way that sophisticated investors are able to offer and so i think at a bare minimum the benefit of on-chain fundraising is that you're getting an equal and transparent deal to anyone participating right there's no backroom uh

6:49conversation however remembering that these are still individuals participating i think we have a lot of work to do as a space in terms of figuring out how do we allow sophisticated investors and builders to participate that we want to play a role in the growth of a dow or the growth of a decentralized project and how do we want to create fully completely open uh financing

7:11opportunities the way that we see in my crowdfunding today so i think that both play a role in our space that are super important but there's a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of building systems that support multiple levels and types of investors definitely parker and i completely agree with that and it's funny that uh some of these tech innovators that are raising capital

7:35you sort of have to go through those traditional ways and it's not as transparent and you know decentralized as the protocol is you're signing a saft on a piece of paper off the web or something like that and it's like you really those methods of fundraising i think need to be innovated to get to the level of where these protocols are at so i think the on-chain fundraising model is a

7:57great step towards that direction i was looking at the portfolio of decent labs and looking at some of the recent platforms that have you've worked with this on-chain fundraising with and i saw sarcophagus maybe you could talk about that investment um and just overall the decisions behind that and where you see going forward after that's been done absolutely yeah and i love sarcophagus

8:25they're one of the earlier groups that saw our model and and wanted to collaborate and work with decent labs and we've done a lot of you know we've done a lot in terms of developing that technology and bringing it to the public and we're really excited to see the project grow the way that it is now um just to break down what sarcophagus is so it's a dead man switch

8:47meaning it's a it's a mechanism meant to be triggered upon the incapacitation of the creators so an example of that modern society that we're probably familiar with would be like a will or a trust or escrow agent so um what's really fascinating about that is when you think of a will you're pretty much just thinking of limited to the case of you know my death and what

9:11happens with to my estate after what's exciting about sarcophagus being a d5 building block and a you know protocol is that it you know we really have only addressed the tip of the iceberg of the use cases for it um new use cases are being found every day because you can integrate with it with it programmatically uh using other smart contracts or systems on the ethereum

9:34network um so it's super exciting in that in that sense uh and of course with you know it seems almost every month now there's a new news article about somebody who wasn't able to secure their cryptocurrency um and after you know their death their family their friends their loved ones you know are kind of left without access to those resources which

9:56is a terrifying situation and i think lastly super important sarcophagus is built on ethereum and are we and that means both on the censorship-resistant blockchain and data storage solution so it's use cases outside of say where i live in the united states or in more oppressive countries and governments there's plenty of use cases for privacy and freedom activists all over the world

10:24so it's a really exciting tool and you know we're really just getting started with it great point there both the us and other countries as well parker and so yeah i really think that's a great investment to make uh maybe you can talk about looking forward for future investments and 2022 for decent labs what are some of the trends in d5 or nfts or in web 3 that you may

10:49specifically be looking for throughout 2022 totally well i think what was really exciting um because i'm a total d5 nerd and finance and fintech nerd in general and what was really exciting in 2021 um was not only the establishment of d5 but everything that the nft space and the art and the gaming world has been doing um and in the way that they've bridged

11:13exciting content on chain to consumers in a way that finance really still hasn't you know bridged a gap to your typical layman um to get them excited about cryptocurrency and so what i'm really excited for this year for me in particular is how can defy learn from that and start building consumer applications that excite and inspire you know regular everyday people

11:37just the way when venmo came out and being able to split my bill after dinner was actually a big deal and felt really exciting that you could do this now with friends and so i'm excited to see how do we take the powerful tools that d5 has given us and start delivering them in user experiences that are exciting and engaging and you know get people hands on the technology

11:59amazing and i i anticipate so much more to be happening in 2022 than in 2021 and it's hard to even fathom because there was so much going on in 2021 you know they're two giant bull mini bull markets that just had everybody going um is there any like predictions or hopes that you'd like um for you know what would be the best case scenario for decent labs

12:27for this year yeah wow that's a great that's a great great question so i think um you know years ago when we started in this space there was this vision for transparent financial systems that could stop things like 2008 from happening ever again and along the last five years my journey in the industry what i've seen how i've seen things play out

12:53um i think you know there's been bumps along the road where i really thought you know maybe this isn't happening maybe this technology is just going to be you know consumed and used the way that um others have in the kind of dream and ideological vision for bitcoin uh won't work and i think what's really exciting is five years later you know defy's testament that you know this is actually

13:15possible that fully decentralized organizations and software suites and tools can be used uh to support a alternative economy and so you know i think looking into 2022 um and a few years down the road like the usage of dows and improvement of dows as a superior model for starting and creating an institution in our world versus a company um that's what i'm most excited for

13:42because i think the decentralized future where someone has a few you know freelance gigs working for a few different dows whatever it is that they do is actually a lot closer than we once anticipated and so i think a lot of the most exciting things this year aren't going to be created by corporations or traditional startups but by open source and online communities and that's what

14:01i'm really excited for very uh cool parker and yeah i'm super excited for that as well i'm really glad you touched on that with the dows because i think i completely agree 2022 is going to be the year that dao's take it to the next level in terms of actual organization and functionality for creating value from everyday people and with more people quitting their jobs or losing their jobs

14:27working for a dao might be the status quo you know by 2024 so i'm excited to see the progression of that and i'm interested to see how decent labs you know invests or participates in dao's besides the the dow that your team is running as well already so that's really interesting is there any last words that you wanted to mention we are running short on time but

14:48for 2022 for the prospectus of decent labs or just what you're looking for from the communities and how they can get involved i think as per usual my program this year is to hold and build which is what we've been doing for a long time um if you're interested in getting involved with decent labs you can join our discord and uh chat with anybody you want on the

15:12team to learn about what we have going on we're releasing a lot of new d5 protocols in 2022 within the decent labs ecosystem so we're really excited to announce that as well as the tokenization of decent labs itself so we have a lot of exciting news uh come down the pipeline here and you know if anyone's interested we'd love to talk to them and see how they can get involved

15:35amazing thank you parker i will leave those links to the discord the platform everything in the description box below as well for the viewers all the best with decent labs moving forward and let's follow up in the near future awesome thanks so much ashley have a great day you