PEO Decent to stop serving customers

In a blog post published 3 days ago, Nick Soman, the CEO and co-founder of Decent , a health plan provider in Texas, shared that his company hit a massive and unexpected setback and that for the near term, it doesn’t have a health insurance product to offer and will need to stop serving customers.

We first covered the startup in 2018 (~5 years ago) when it raised an $8 million round of seed funding. Its vision was to create a decentralized protocol and network that makes it simple to spin up a legal health pool with no waste or middleman. Blockchain tech aside, by the end of that year, Decent introduced its current brand, and a year later it started offering its health plan in Austin, Texas. Its $10M Series A round was announced in the third quarter of 2020 – led by QED Investors. Still, the plan was only available in a single state where Decent worked with independent Direct Primary Care doctors and partners such as AXA, HCA Healthcare, Medlion, Hint, and Costco Health Solutions to deliver its offering.

In 2020, the company was a team of 38. At its peak – Sep 2022 – it was a team of ~65. Now the company is letting the entire team go. “Our focus is on doing right by our customers and doing right by our team. Richard and I are not giving up on our mission to deliver affordable health insurance for all, and we intend and expect to overcome this setback. But to give us the best shot at finding a path to market, we are letting the rest of the Decent team go in the coming months with notice and severance,” says Soman.

The announcement follows a lengthy period where Decent was working with a major partner to prepare for nationwide expansion, however, the partner pulled out for unspecified reasons. “Our major partner pulled out without warning, citing unspecific concerns from their executive team and leaving us with no near-term path to market.”