Today we’d like to introduce you to Jerome Dotson Jr..
Hi Jerome, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I grew up with music all around me and always knew it would be part of my life in some way. What I didn’t know was that the path there would run through corporate America first.
I spent years working as a product manager, building SaaS products, managing enterprise accounts, and leading strategy for teams across multiple industries. On paper it looked like a solid career. Behind the scenes I was producing events on weekends, building relationships in the music industry, and quietly laying the foundation for something bigger. I was living two lives and burning the candle at both ends, but every sacrifice felt intentional. I wasn’t just dreaming about building something, I was preparing for it.
Musicade started as a music and experience production company. Over time it evolved into something larger, a marketplace and SaaS platform designed to give independent artists, DJs, event producers, and venue operators the infrastructure they’ve never had. I kept seeing the same problem everywhere I looked. Talented people doing incredible work, piecing together five different tools just to get paid and find their next opportunity. We’re fixing that.
Today we have a live MVP on the App Store, activated markets across multiple cities, and a team of industry operators who aren’t just building this platform, they’re living it every day. We’re just getting started.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has not been a smooth road, but the biggest obstacles have been internal more than external.
Being a founder means sitting with uncertainty every single day. There are no guarantees, no salary, no roadmap that tells you everything is going to work out. Learning to stay calm in that environment, to make clear decisions while managing real risk and real unknowns, is something nobody fully prepares you for. That mental stability doesn’t come naturally. It’s built.
What kept me grounded was trusting my own foundation. I’ve been building things since I was 8 years old. I’ve launched businesses, managed products, led teams, and developed a portfolio of work across corporate, music, and events that gave me the confidence to know I could figure it out even when I couldn’t see the full picture. My education and years of product management experience meant I wasn’t guessing at how to build, I was drawing on a deep well of real experience every single day.
The grit wasn’t about pushing through one big moment. It was about showing up consistently, staying level when things were uncertain, protecting the vision when it wasn’t visible to anyone else yet, and trusting that the preparation I’d put in over years would carry me through the moments where the path wasn’t clear.
That mindset is now baked into how I lead the company and the team around me.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Musicade is a music and experience production company and technology platform built for the independent music economy. We specialize in connecting the operators, creators, and fans who make live music and events happen, and giving them the tools to do it all in one place.
On the production side we are known for curating experiences that feel intentional and culturally connected, from intimate industry mixers to multi-city festival activations. That reputation has been built city by city through Chicago, Dallas, Washington D.C., Salt Lake City, Austin, and beyond.
On the technology side we are building what has never existed for this market, a single platform where artists find gigs, DJs get booked, producers manage their entire workflow, and fans discover experiences worth showing up for.
What sets us apart is simple. We aren’t outsiders who studied this industry. We are the industry. Our team is made up of working artists, DJs, producers, and event operators who built this out of their own frustration with the way things worked before.
What we’re most proud of is building something real and proving the model works before asking anyone else to believe in it. The community around Musicade wasn’t manufactured. It grew organically from the ground up and that’s something no competitor can replicate.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I don’t see myself as a reckless risk taker but I’ve never let fear of being seen make a decision for me.
The moment that defined my relationship with risk was when I started launching my own festivals and events and building a community around Musicade before we had a finished product. I was putting myself and my brand out there publicly, creating content, promoting shows, building an audience, and doing it all in the open. That means everyone gets a front row seat. They see you win and they see you struggle. There is nowhere to hide.
What I realized early on is that neither outcome is the point. The win doesn’t validate you and the loss doesn’t define you. What matters is whether the mission is real enough to move people. And the proof came before we ever hosted our first show or shipped a finished product. People were signing up. They believed in what we were building before it fully existed. That told me everything I needed to know.
That experience reshaped how I think about risk entirely. Risk isn’t about gambling, it’s about conviction. If you know why you’re building something and who it’s for, putting yourself out there isn’t really a risk. It’s just the work. The scariest version of risk for me would be having a real vision and never testing it because I was afraid of what people might think.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://musicade.app
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamjeromedotson/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerome-dotson-jr-15247645/
- Twitter: https://x.com/iamjeromedotson
- Other: https://jeromedotson.com
