Is this dude credible? Is this dude want to win? And I can tell you I want to win. 25,000 hours across the last seven years learning about this problem. Like that's really what I would bet on. The future of entrepreneurship, people, ideas, and communities.
What's the marketing campaign to download the app that could change your life from South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between? This is Get In the show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today. I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation. Today, I'm joined by Jerry Haye, serial entrepreneur, investor, and 20-year venture capital professor at the Kelly School of Business down in Bloomington. Jerry has committed his career to democratizing venture capital. Recognizing that the traditional model doesn't work for retail investors.
Today we're going to be talking about this problem, what the landscape of venture capital looks like today, talking about his innovative solution uh with Doro and what that means for all of you guys listening right now. And we'll get into a little bit of uh what makes Bloomington a special community. That's where he's at. He's been there and he's been teaching at IU Bloomington for over 20 years now. So Jerry, welcome to Get In. Thank you very much, Nate.
Not too often do we get uh repeat guests. So, I'm excited for you to be back in the studio uh talking through all things Doro. Uh and how far you I think it was, you know, 15 months ago, maybe over a year that you were last on and this was still just kind of a seedling, but now it's come to fruition. It has. And 25 years ago actually when um I was trying to raise money for my first startup here in Indianapolis and I had successfully gotten rid of the real estate agent commission. I was matching buyers and sellers through the internet to facilitate transactions.
We went from zero to a million dollars in revenue in like 18 months. What was this company called? Homey. com. Homey homey. com.
Dude, you've added such an interesting like from chicken to homey. com to now fixing what you believe like the issues with venture that you believe that that are there, right? So, homeyad. com, you grew to a million dollars in revenue in 18 months. Yeah. Not taking a real estate commission.
I'm sure real estate agents were pissed about that. Uh they were we were investigated by the Justice Department. Not us, but other real estate agents agencies were uh blackballing our listings. We're blackballing your listings. What does that mean? Well, uh we were listing homes all over Indianapolis.
um and their signs were out and uh real estate agents would say, "We're not going to show you a home that's listed on Homeia." They don't follow our procedures and protocol. Aka, they just like they're innovating on the the the old boys club or old girls club, whoever it is. Yeah. And you know, and maybe we were ahead of our time and probably 10 years ahead of Zillow. Um so what happened to Home yet?
Well, I tried to raise venture capital here in Indianapolis and you know, sort of the standard answer was,"Well, I would never night sell my home without a real estate agent." And I'm like, "Well, you know, you're not the customer." In the meantime, I had buyers and sellers are like, "Can we invest in this company? This is huge. This is the future." And I talked to my attorneys at Ice Miller and they're like, "No, you can't do that because there's an accredited investor rule and you have to be a millionaire and it's never going to work."
Well, let's start with there, right? So I I think um that venture capital does have a lot of lure, right? The you're going to have the allird shoes and the Patagonia vest and like it's very, you know, it's Silicon Valley, right? And I do think that it is getting more Midwestern. There's more access to traditional venture capital in the Midwest and the Heartland like you know obviously Elevates Friends of the Pod. There's some other funds around Indiana that are doing really good stuff.
I I'm interested in hearing uh if if someone out there had a you know $25,000 or $50,000 extra just sitting around, can they just go invest it in a startup? Like how does that work? What are the rules around it now? Well, um the way the rules work now is that you have to be deemed accredited. You have to have a million dollars of net assets net of your home or you got to be making $200,000 a year uh in income for the last So a million dollar in total at says your home. Yes.
Your home. So yeah, like not every person walking down the street has that one or you have to make 200k for over two years, right? And then is there just like hey I check a button somewhere and I'm like now an accredited investor. Yeah. And so a company who's raising around they'd have to qualify and certify that they do meet those standards and it's sort of like a sort of a selfcertification type of process. Yeah.
But you have to follow the SEC rules and and there's a double side to this problem Nate. It's not just hey I have 25K can I invest in it? If you put your 25k in one deal, you're probably going to lose your money. You got 90% chance that you're going to lose that money. You want to take that 25k, you want to put it into 50 deals. So, you want to take 500 bucks and put it into 50 deals.
And then you want to see which company is winning and then you just want to go all in on that company, right? It's kind of like hold them in poker, right? You you you drop your ante and then you see your cards and then if you got a really good hand um then you want to start betting heavy, right? And I that's that's how you really win in venture. It's called the convexity of returns and that's what's missing in a lot of ways with today's venture. Well, and obviously like like the venture capital expert, right?
How long have you been teaching at IU? Since uh 2004. Since 20. Okay. So, 21 years of experience uh and you like knowing how this system works and through the years doing this for over 20 years, how have you seen it change on its own over 20 years? Well, to your point, it has expanded and it's great.
And I think everyone recognizes that entrepreneurship needs to be expanded. Mayor Hoget says this, Mayor Thompson says this in Bloomington, Governor Brun says this. We need more entrepreneurship and we're doing a great job of unlocking entrepreneurship and even with like the Started Up Foundation, right? Unlocking entrepreneurship everywhere. It's happening on the college campuses. What we haven't done is unlock capital and that's the difference.
And uh so while we're trying to bring more and more people into the fold of starting a company, the capital isn't there to support the vast amount of entrepreneurs who want to get started. And so traditional venture capital sort of has been a gated, you know, sort of a gated system and it's in the hands of the wealthiest of wealthy who decide who gets in and who doesn't get in. It's a shame. It's not just a shame. I think it's super critical that here in Indiana we unlock as many entrepreneurs as possible, give them the capital and the energy to get started and then if they're winning then we go all in and support them even further. It's the the classic like if you know how the system works a little bit like you can get inside and you know and I don't know like if you can raise $10 million or $5 million on just relationships like you got to have a little bit of a premise but you know those first couple hundred thousand largely come on the backs of like the founders's personal network and do they have a are we betting on this person and obviously if you're inside the circle they're going to know more about the person than if you're outside the circle.
So that makes sense to me. I can see how unlocking this uh for the I mean this was Robin Hood's thing right like the retail in retail Joe retail investor how do they have the knowledge the power to go out there and invest in the same things that uh the investment bankers on Wall Street or whatever are investing in so u currently like are there crowdfunder platforms that are similar to this like what what does the market look like now for democratizing venture capital I went all in on this back in 2018 18 to study this market. I put probably 25,000 hours into this seven years. 25,000 hours and I got and I got into the inner bowels of the crowdfunding network. So I was last year for example I was the keynote speaker at the Wefunder VIP conference in San Francisco. So I know the industry from the inside out.
I know the players. I understand the problems and they are proving that people do want to invest in startups. It's just that what's happened is we've taken the traditional venture capital model that was invented by George Dorio back in 1946 which continues to be the pre-minent model for VCs and angels and we're trans uh transplanting that to retail venture and it doesn't work. And so that's what I discovered is that you cannot take that traditional model and give it to uh give that same game to retail investors and expect them to a do it or b uh win. And so when you say the traditional model, explain this to the person who doesn't know that traditional model that George Doro uh started in the 40s. First you you have to aggregate a lot of capital and then you are going to invest in multiple deals as I said earlier and then you're going to see out of all those deals that you invest in there's going to be a few that win and then you want to back those and for to to do that successfully you have to have great deal flow.
You have to have lots of access to a lot of opportunities and you're doing this full-time. Right? If you're a retail investor and you could only afford to put a hundred bucks into a deal, you don't have 10 hours to do d do due diligence, excuse me, diligence. VCs will put, you know, 50 hours of diligence into a deal. Yeah. With like a junior analyst, right?
You're out there like sourcing deals, looking through the deck, seeing all the stuff, talking to founders. Uh that makes a ton of sense, right? And it's like you're you're the retail investor. You're you can't be on Zoom calls or learning like this founder or what's coming down the pipeline. So yeah. Okay.
So that's the bet like let's say uh any given VC let's say you know you have a million they have way more than a million dollars but a million dollars it's like how how are they spreading that across how many deals on average? Um, so if if you think about sort of like let's just do a $50 million fund, you're probably that's a seed fund. You're probably dropping 250 to 500K into 25 or 30 deals and then you're going to hold back capital with those companies that are winning and then get in on the series A round and then try to maintain your position to the series B round. That's what's crazy to me on like the venture the traditional model is that like you make 20 bets and you only need one to hit. That's right. like one's going to return the fund.
That's right. And especially if you get on in on the follow-up rounds and you there's like a whole Nate, so think about so when you talk about access and power like Sam um Alman who is the founder of OpenAI or one of the founders in 2009 he was given the opportunity to put 15K into Stripe. At the time he was not accredited but he's an insider. He gets to put 15K into Stripe. Today that bet now is worth $650 million. How how did he get the option just because of knowing people because he knew he was part of Y Combinator or new people.
But if you could have taken that same 15k subdivided it by you know $100 per get 150 people to put 15k every one of those 150 people would have $4. 3 million today. So $100 to 4. 3 million. That's a bad lifeanging. That's not a bad return.
Not a bad return. How do you make that easy for both the retail investor to like see all that and easy for the founder like when you have more people that have a vested stake in your thing that want to like whether they want to root like on one side it could be root for you and cheer you on and the other side it could be like like if let's even just say it was $1,000 like that's like uh to a traditional you know middle America family $1,000 doesn't grow on trees and so it's like okay let's say you got 15 families amilies, 15, you know, dads in the basement on Reddit that put $1,000 in. They want to know what's going on. And it becomes it could become almost like another problem or just like thing to spin for this founder. Uh we especially I I think about like people who raise friends and family money and like your friends and family, what's going on? Am I going to get my money back?
Like yada yada yada yada yada. What do you think about that? Well, I totally agree with you and I think the family and friends round is a is a travesty, right? There's 60 billion dollars of family and friends money that goes out there into the market and then the traditional venture industry gets a free ride on their backs, right? The family they do all the risky work. They took all the risk to get something started and then they don't get to participate and continue to invest when the company is winning because the game gets rigged then in a way to favor the venture capitalist.
They get priced out. They don't have 25k to put in. don't like that's the minimum check size. So they can't even just like well I can put another hundred bucks into this but that next $100 is going to 100x from here right that's real money that's 10 G's. Yeah. So uh what we're doing is getting rid of the family and friends round and then spreading that risk out to across thousands of people per round uh or per company.
So if you think about this technologies working today through blockchain and decentralization you could come to a platform and say I want to raise 150k if on the other side of this there's you know 10,000 people that are like you know what I'll I'll put a little money into your deal you can aggregate that put one item on the cap table and then you've got a community you've built a community and then it's your job to nurture that community but if they've got rights to continue to invest in you that's probably three or4 million dollars of firepower in the future per round. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, talk me through how this process then. So, we've addressed the problem.
Problem is it's a club for the most part minus the riskiest investing. The riskiest investing being the friends and family round where you go to grandma and say, I know you have life savings of, you know, 25 grand. I need 20 of it to get my company off the ground. So, we have that piece. But then as we go down market like a traditional seed round, you know, bigger check sizes and kind of prices out or they're not accredited and they can't invest in those traditional venture rounds. Issue set solution that you're presenting is Doro.
Yes. Take us through what this solution looks like. So the the So what we're introducing tomorrow is venture staking. So this is a entirely new model of venture that's unheard of. It's never been seen before, but we could operate within the regulatory constraints of the SEC and we can bring millions of people into this process. Now, we're not trying to disrupt venture.
We're going to fork venture, right? There's the traditional route and then there's going to be the venture staking route. The one thing that I discovered where this now is starting to move very quick is this one true uh uh truth in venture. The right to invest in a startup in the future that's winning is more valuable than investing in an unproven startup today. Yeah. I mean, it's like the it's like, have you ever seen Back to the Future when he gets the almanac?
This is a weird comparison, but then it's like he knows he goes uh to the future or goes to the past and knows who's going to win the games, right? And so you have the option to invest later on. Exactly. So what we're building is a marketplace for investment rights in startups. So in other words, for 10 cents on the dollar, you can buy rights into 50 companies and then lock in your position and then you just watch and wait to see which companies are winning and then when they go back out to raise more money, you've got a seat at the table. You got a guaranteed slot.
So for example, maybe you can only afford to put $100 into a startup. Cool. For $10, you can buy a right into 50 startups for 500 bucks over the course of three or four years. Okay. Wait, wait. I can afford to put up uh let's say my my budget to put into this is $1,000.
Yes. So I I take $1,000 for Doryo, right? Or for not even for Doro. I take $1,000 for all venture investing that I can do. I'm a retail investor. Now you're saying versus putting I mean Yeah.
because the that would put put all $1,000 into somebody that I know that's working on XYZ thing. That's one option in their friends and family round. Very risky. You're saying I could take a portion of that and buy rights to invest as it pans out. That's exactly right. Okay.
Explain explain this how that process works. Okay. So, let's just take an example for Doro. Tomorrow, you can come to our site and we're going to be selling rights to invest in our marketplace, right? We're we're going to eat our own dog food. We are the first company to ever do this.
We're the first company to ever do this. And so like Nate maybe like uh you have a right to buy for $10 you can buy a venture stake in Dorio and then three months four months later we come back out to market and saying hey we're raising a $5 million round at this valuation here's our partners our venture partners here's u what we've accomplished and Nate do you want to put your hundred bucks in today and then you get to decide at that point based on more information whether you want to put more money into this deal and then we go back out and let's just fast forward two years from now we want to go raise another around and saying, "Hey, look, we have just we're expanding. We're growing like crazy. We're raising another round of cap capital, Nate. You got a seat at the table. You want to put another hundred bucks into this deal."
Right? So, you get to buy in as the company is succeeding. And we want to do that at scale for thousands of entrepreneurs annually across the globe. Okay. So in your case, you could take $500 and buy venture stakes into 50 promising companies. Probably three or four of them are going to win.
That's where you put 90% of your capital. Well, if I only have if I have f if I have a $1,000 pool. Yeah. So I would buy $10 stakes or I'd buy $10. These are rights. So, this is the part where I I get caught up is the fact that I'm not actually buying anything to start and my $500 is more for uh research and and data.
You're buying a seat at the table. Yes, I'm buying the option for a seat at the table. Think about it as an anti- bet for Texas Holdem. You don't think about the anti-bet every time you you're paying to see cards. Oh, we're doing the same thing here. You're buying to see cards and then only then you will get to decide whether you want to put more money into it.
And so why couldn't I just come and say I no I just want to put $10 into 50 deals to start because in today's world no one is going to be able to run around for $10 investments. Okay? If you take a look at what's happening in crowdfunding the minimum investment for most is $100. Then it ranges up to $1,000 minimum. trying to run a raise with $10 investments. That may happen in the future when we sort of tokenize and move forward with opportunities.
I'm Okay. Okay. I think I It's clicking. It's clicking for me. So, if I had only $1,000, I could only initially put out $10 bets, right? In the traditional like I go on Weunder, I could put out $10 bets, right?
And the thesis for all these VCs is we take 20 bets, one hits. roughly something like that, right? Like it's 5%, right? Sometimes you get a home run, etc. But 20 20 attempts and one hits. So with this strategy, I would only put out 10 bits bets.
So it's like a two and a half% chance that one hits, right? And but on top of that, more importantly, you can't have the right to invest in the future if that company's winning. That's that's the key. The key to venture is to continuously invest your money in the winners, even though like the multiple comes down, right? where it's like if you were in early, it's like a bajillion X and then it's a thousand X and then it's 100X and then it's 10X, right? But even at 10X, you're still beating the stock market by, you know, um I don't know, 50% 60% return.
Yeah. It's Yeah. Crazy, right? Like Yeah. If you're if you're putting in a dollar and getting out 10, you're doing pretty well. Okay.
All right. I'm following now. So, with Doro, I'm going to get to see these cards and it's going to expand what I get to see. I can see instead of before I was putting all my chips in on 10 bets, now I can buy this $10, let's say like 50 $10 stakes, find the five winners, and then uh my call, if we're using poker terms, would be to put $100 in each of those. That's right. And then I go back over, keep working, save up more money, I get to my next maybe it's $1,000 a year, and then next year I get to follow up and say, "Oh, but I can only put in $100."
Right. Well, if you buy a $10 stake, your max is a hundred. That's a lot of You could maybe buy more depending on what the the raise looks like. Yeah. But you're guaranteed that slot. If you buy a $1,000 stake, uh then you can you can put the 10K into a deal.
Yeah. Okay. So, it's 10x like it's like it's like a multiple of 10. That's right. Okay. and you're paying uh the the fee upfront.
But it's let's say you hate all if you hate all 50 companies that come through and you don't like it. Yeah. The you're you paid to play the game. Better than spending $1,000 for the same thing and not getting you know putting you know $1,000 in the 10 deals that don't work. Right. So it's just trying to make Yeah.
a smarter retail investor. Yeah. Right. So you get to you get to see 50 deals come through and it's like 50 companies, one of them's going to do something, right? You hope. Yeah.
And and in 2018, one of the things I wanted to see is retail behavior. So what we built our first product was called fantasy startup and or is called fantasy startup. You can download the app and then you can do 50 companies, right? You can make 50 investment decisions and then uh based on that it follows sort of the CB insights what the results are going to be by those 50 investing decisions. We've discovered that retail investors will make a decision within 35 seconds on a deal. Oh, that's my due diligence for sure.
if you if if you're bringing to them a a credible opportunity, they all they need is basically a half a minute to make a decision. So that's what we're going to bring to the market. Like you're going to look at this, you're just going to get to your gut. Like do I feel this? Do I do I do I like this idea? Do I like the problems being solved?
Do I like this? Do I feel that this person wants to win? And then just make a bet. Oh yeah. I go instantly like I mean I don't actually invest but if I would or if I want to just gauge and get the pulse on a company I instantly go to LinkedIn or like social media and I look at the founder and I'm like I would bet on her. Yeah, I'd bet on him.
I like that person. I'm I'm in. Exactly. So people have that decision with me tomorrow like is this dude credible? Is this dude want to win? And I can tell you I want to win.
Dude, if there's one thing I know is that he wants to win, baby. Yeah. Okay. And and but but winning for you means everyone wins. Everyone wins. Okay, the the concept I mean we talked about this on a Zoom call maybe a month or so ago and it was still like sort of kind of clicking but now I feel I feel a good grasp.
Right. So if I I'm going to recite it back to you so I understand it fully locked in. Right? So I have my $1,000 budget which like maybe it's annually. Every year I have $1,000 that I could well it's not going to go into DraftKings. It's going to go into Doro.
Take my $500. I buy 10 Doryos or I could buy 20. You know I spend $200. I have $800 left. I see 20 companies. I can then look follow along for a specific period of time, 9 months, 12 months, whatever.
Then as they come back uh and we see them winning, they open another round. They open around. Yep. So it's not like I can just be like, "Oh, I see them winning. I want to buy in." They have to be raising financing, right?
Okay. They open a round. You have the option. You got to look at what you've been seeing, the cards that you've been seeing, and say, "Oh, yeah. I would talk toss my $100 in there." And then you wait a longer, and they go back out for another round.
things are still booming and then you buy more into that, right? And then and these are long-term bets, right? We're betting on entrepreneurship. We're betting on innovation. This is money that you don't need tomorrow to pay the rent. This is long-term investing.
But what we're talking about is helping you get to earning annualized 25 30% on that particular amount of money using this strategy. In the world of immediate gratification, right? Like I my the thing about it is I put $1,000 into DraftKings. I could have 2,000 in 10 minutes. Yeah. I could go to the casino or even with Robin Hood, it's like I can monitor every second so I'm richer on paper every second.
Yeah. Like with these companies, um will there be like the live scoring or anything like that where I can be like, am I winning, am I losing, what's going on? Yeah. So on the other side of this, when you take venture stake money right now, your obligation is to keep your community involved and informed. And so we're going to put our founders on, you know, a regular cadence where you're updating your community, right? Because in the future, in my opinion, uh after looking at this market, the future of startups is people, ideas, and community.
Forget about product, right? People, ideas, and community. AI is going to come in and decimate existing industries and reimagine those industries. The future of entrepreneurship, it's literally people, ideas, and communities. And as long as you've got a group of people that are backing you and supporting you, you'll find a way through. And if you're someone who's ambitious enough, ambitious enough to see it through, then you are then you've got a massive support network that you don't get in traditional venture.
I truly believe in that. I think so much of today, I hate to say it and be like kind of pessimistic about it, but like all the good like a lot there's not that many brand new ideas that have never been thought of before. It's all about the people, right? It's like who who's running it? Like who's the the founder and who's in the founders's corner and that's so important. Um especially as like AI is going to I think obviously there's going to be tons of innovation but like raise the table stakes of product you know like everyone's going to be making good products as time goes on.
That makes sense. So how can the community support you get involved? What does that look like? So our biggest issue is distribution. We just want to pre present this opportunity out to the world to see this. We've got hundreds of people across the globe that are signed up for our reveal tomorrow.
I really want Indiana to see this. I think we are way more innovative than everyone outside the world gives us credit for. I think we are hardworking people. I think we we do a lot of really cool things in Indiana and I'm staking my reputation on this that we can absolutely fork venture and create an entirely new game, a winnable game that unlocks trillions of dollars of retail capital into venture. And we can now start funding more than just the wealthiest 1%. Because if you go out to Silicon Valley, it's basically where you where you went to school, did you get into Y Combinator?
And if you were selected in one of those two ways, then you're in the in the deal. But there's a lot of people who are never going to get those opportunities, right? 99. 9% of the people don't get those opportunities. And I want to give those get give those opportunities to people who don't fit the traditional venture mold. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Roots Reality Co.
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co or meet them in person at one of their upcoming investor master classes. More details on their website, rootsy. co. Let's get back into it. What's the smallest amount of money someone could get involved with with this? $10.
$10. A burrito. A burrito. That's like a double meat burrito at Chipotle, too. That's still like nine or eight bucks. Like, come on.
So, $10 and you buy a Dorio in Dorio. Yeah. Or a venture steak in Doro. A venture. Okay. What's the difference?
Well, Doro is the company. Yes. Okay. So, originally I thought that we were going to that you were thinking about calling it a Doro. Um, yeah. We thought it'd be a little bit confusing.
Yeah. And it's tough to give yourself your own nickname, right? So, uh, it may morph there, but really this is about venture. Venture stake. Venture staking. Okay.
Venture because that's what we're doing. We're venture staking. So, I'm going to take tomorrow. I'm going to take 10 bucks. Is that the maximum? No.
Maximum is a thousand. You can buy $1,000 venture stake in us. That gives you a right to put 10K into each of our future deals. Right. All right. I'm gonna take a undetermined amount of money thus far.
At least $10. probably I don't know about if we're at the $1,000 thrown around yet, but we're going to put some money and we're going to buy a venture stake in Dorium. Then let's say in a year from now, you go out to raise around. I can put let's say if it was 10, I could put 100 bucks in and then eventually one day down the road, whatever the event is, you go public and then it refund it returns not the original $10, but the $100 investment that I made, right? And hopefully it's a,000x return on that $100. Let's go, man.
Because look, listen, Angel List is valued at roughly $5. 5 billion dollars. They got 70,000 angel investors in their network, okay? They're based out of San Francisco. If we're able to unlock retail venture, a trillion dollar asset class, if we can unlock retail venture and give them a winnable game that's better than prediction markets, better than sports betting, better than trading, right? give them a winnable game to invest in entrepreneurs not only in their backyard but globally.
We can completely rethink how we fund entrepreneurs. What do you think the hardest cell is going to be in this whole is it going to be getting people like retail investors on the platform getting founders to learn this new thing and think about this new avenue? I do see two issues there like yeah getting people to put up money and getting founders to be like oh it's another thing I have to learn. Definitely a hard problem we're solving. It's a two-sided marketplace. We need both, right?
We're starting with attracting retail investors, which it means that your first opportunity to test our model is tomorrow, right? And you know what? If you can't I mean, if you can afford 10 bucks and down the road it doesn't work, it was 10 bucks. But if this does work and you have a right to put say $300 $400 into our our future rounds and we exit at 10 billion, you've turned your, you know, $300 or $400 into, you know, 100k. I mean, that's the game we're in, right? Yeah.
And the fact that I mean, to talk to you specifically, like that's really what I I would I am going to this is my official commitment. This is not financial advice. I don't know if I'm like liable to say that. Not financial advice. like, you know, play at your own risk or whatever, but you have a an outstanding track record of entrepreneurship education in the venture space. Like you talked about, you know, in 2018 you set out to you spent 25,000 hours across the last seven years learning about this problem.
Like that's really what I would bet on, right? Like it's I bet that even though like it makes sense to me. Yeah. Um but it's not like my like my calling like it's your calling. This is the thing that you're passionate about. So, so Nate and then the question is if you can attract the retail investors, right?
If we could prove this out, people venture stake Doro for example. All right, now we've got a base and we've got credibility, right? Now, we'll be able to put together a proper round and then really start expanding our retail base. Okay, the other side of this, how do we who who are we going to fund? So, I've had to study every venture model out there. Okay, so right now, if you're a venture fund, you have maybe one in 5,000 shot at at backing a unicorn.
Okay, one in 5,000. Y cominator you have four out of a hundred reach unicorn status odds much better. There's one model that's even better than Y cominator that no one really talks about. It's the Teal Fellowship. Yes. So Peter Teal has this sort of commentary on education.
Don't go to school. Come raise 100,000 bucks for me and then go figure something out. What's What's their model of to unicorn status? Seven out of a hundred. How many how many fellow Tal fellas have there been? Have there been over a hundred?
Oh yeah, maybe three. 300 or so. Okay. Ethereum came out of the teal fellowship. Figma came out of the teal fellowship. Oh, yeah.
Okay. So, what we're going to fund are people who simply are done with the corporate grind. They want to start a company. They come to our marketplace. They they're locked in on a problem. We've vetted them for, you know, we've done background checks on them.
We've, you know, we're not going to have drifters. You just can't come to our marketplace and just start pitching, right? You have to Well, and the thing is the money doesn't go to them in the first place anyway. Right. So when they Well, yeah. And so when they come to us, they're coming to you and say, "Hey, Nate, I've got this problem.
This is my background. I want to solve this." And then within 30 seconds, you're like, "Ah, I'm in. I'll put 10 minutes behind that." So the interesting piece to me, they come to you, they might sell a 100red venture stakes in their company. So it's at $10, that's a,000 bucks.
We need 15 25,000 people on this network. you come and you're raising 150 minimum, right? To get So what you're buying, you're buying time to figure out the business plan and and and it's the R&D capital, which is traditionally family and friends. Oh, okay. I'm getting as the founder, I'm looking to raise a hundred grand. Yeah.
From a thousand people, maybe 5,000 people. 5,000 people putting in 20 bucks. Is that the math there? Well, it depends on We We think there's going to be new funds that will be raised around this. They You could sell a $10,000 ventures thing. Okay.
But the thing I was thinking was does do you where where does that money go? Because it's not equity. That first piece is not an equity stake. Like I still own 100% of my company and it's people that are betting on me. So that money goes in but it's coming in as revenue. It's not equity.
Oh that is okay. That's how you get the founder. That's intriguing to me. Does do you guys take like a piece of that? Yes, of course. Okay.
So it's like a a transaction fee or whatever. We handle technology distribution all the the sort of the platform to manage this entire process. Yes. Okay. Now it makes okay. Okay.
Now it's all click. So from the founder side, I come to you all. I have an idea, maybe a little bit of traction, maybe an MVP, something like that, you know, and I'm like, you know what? What we really need like I need to go full-time on this. I need 100 grand. Uh, right?
That would get us through another year. I come with Doro and maybe I have a big LinkedIn following or a big anything, you know, post on there. Hey, buy a venture stake. This will give you rights to when I invest my first round or when I raise my first round, you'll get a chance to put money in, right? Uh I raise that 100k in cash to bridge the gap until I get to my first financing round. Then I can go back to everyone and say, "Hey, things have been going pretty well.
You now have the chance because you helped me get here. You have the chance to put in a hundred bucks." Yeah. And you'll be on the cap table. That's right. Interesting.
And if you're a retail investor, you're scrolling like Tik Tok. There may be three or four deals a day and you're just looking at who's got the passion, who's got the ambition to win, who's Yeah. What does that look like? What is that feed of deal flow look like to the retail investor? Our ambition is we're going to get a million people that are going to venture stake, right? So that is a that's that's you know potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of firepower.
Another experiment that we did is that we ran we did a almost 100 deals on Rugc CF and I created what are called venture pools. And I went out and I went to my community and said, "Hey, listen. I'm gonna go look at deals and I'm gonna put my money into these. You want to follow in as a syndicate? And what we found is that on average 20% uh of the people that are in the network will fund a deal. So what we know is that if there's a million people that are venture staking, 20% of them may be interested in any particular deal.
So, these deals will sell out quickly if it's a really strong founder and you're locked in on a problem that matters to people. Did you know that Indiana has been a hub for sports innovation for over a century? Starting with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where pioneers tested gamechanging tech like seat belts and anti-lack brakes. That forward-thinking spirit is still in overdrive today and Sports Tech HQ is at the center of it. They're on a mission to scout the most groundbreaking sports tech that is shaping the future of sports and to bring those innovators right here to Indiana. Guess what?
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What are you most worried about? What like what scares you or like in maybe not scares, but what are you like the biggest challenge that you're facing? We have to open people's minds to this innovation economy when we've had Washington DC, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley all saying, "Give me your money. give me your agency, give me your attention and we'll handle everything else. And we have now um with particularly with our young people convinced them that you need to be a billionaire to have any agency in this world. And that's wrong, right?
We need to go back to grassroots entrepreneurship and it can't just be someone running to a VC and raising money. We need communitybacked entrepreneurship to reimagine what humanity looks like in the future in amongst artificial intelligence. And I believe there's a massive opportunity, but it's to wake people up. It's to wake people up. I think uh from the outside looking in, the biggest issue that I might see is taking this really really massive innovation concept change and making us understand it in less than 40 minutes, you know? Yeah.
And like cuz it's 30 seconds going to decide, you know, I'm assuming you're going to have ad spend out on all the app stores, all the stuff like that trying to get people to download this. And that's going to be the the hardest convincing part. Yeah. like how what's the copy? What's the creative? What's the marketing campaign that gets people to download the app that could change their life?
I can't sell this. People who want this will have to sell this for us, right? So, my job is to go find those people who are early adopters who get this, they get this quickly, and they tell their family and their friends like, "You should do this." Because you're also explaining like the thesis of venture. Yeah. Which not everyone I doubt all of our listeners even know that where they they think it's like oh you know VC companies because you only ever hear about exits and wins.
They don't realize that they're spreading their portfolio and 95% of that money just vanishes but the 5% return their entire fund. Cuz what people are going to think is like a company failed that one went bankrupt. That one and it's like like investing in venture doesn't mean that everything wins. It's just you find the biggest winner, right? And then you keep piling more and piling more. I think that's also it's like explaining that in an easy way.
But that's why you have fantasy startup and that's why you have a lot of educational uh pieces like that was the base layer of Doro, right? Yeah. Exactly. And we've pulled and surveyed like thousands of people who played fantasy startup. We have successfully moved the needle from I don't know anything about this to please let me be an investor. Right?
So we through fantasy startup we can unlock a tremendous amount of demand to get into this game at price points that people can afford. Right? But the most important thing is Nate. It's a winnable game in my opinion from what I've studied and seen. Right? Even angel investors they're not in a winnable game.
The the traditional venture model for angel investors is very difficult unless you are worth lots of money and you have tons of connections to get into lots of deals. For most angel investors out there that are passive, it's a game that's hard to win. And I think they'd be here and and saying, "Yeah, you're right. It's really hard. Venture staking is a winnable game. For 10 cents on the dollar, get a position, lock in a position with lots of companies and then hold most of your capital back.
Wait, watch. See, see what the crowd sentiment is, see what they're accomplishing, and then go, you know what? Dang, they're Yeah, I'm in. This is this has just been like a really interesting conversation and and again coming in I was like okay we're gonna have to take this really big concept and make it uh digestible to everyone and it's still a challenge but I I I it's clicked for me. I think that I'm curious to follow on where I I want to see the first outside company besides you like at first you're starting by eating your own dog food. Cool.
I'm in on that. I'm going to bet on I'm going to bet on you. But then like down the road, who's gonna come and be like the first movers and shakers where I can like start to get into some deal flow? Because 10 like 10 bucks every like I mean you're talking about like five in a day. Like I I think that's still like a ways out. But if even if it was one deal a month Yeah.
like 10 bucks a month that's Netflix like to have the opportunity down the road. That's intriguing to me. Well, I appreciate you coming on. How can the community support and uh get behind you and and Doro? Well, uh, just ask everyone to come to the site, uh, doryo. com, but it's spelled doriot.
com. So, come to do riot. com. do driot. com. Okay.
And for those who don't know, the the name Dorio comes from George Doro. He invented the game of venture capital back in 1946. Completely unlocked all sorts of innovations. We're going to unlock future innovations through uh, sort of this community investing through venture station. And you actually got permission from his family to use the name, right? That's right.
The family's involved in this uh behind the scenes of course, but yes, they we have an arrangement with the family. That's awesome. And where can people find you at? Uh you can find me on LinkedIn, just Jerry Hayes. Ge R Y H A Ys. Yeah, I'm mostly on LinkedIn.
I used to be on X. I mean, he's uh you're uh you're ripping the 75 hard right now. I am ripping. What day? Let's see. Two weeks from now or whatever that's going to be.
You're going to be 20 days in probably right around there. Yeah, something like that. You're in the thick of it. You just got to get past that first month. We do have some fun questions here on on the end here, Jerry. So, explain a cap table to a fourth grader.
How would you like to own a piece of that candy right there? That's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. We're going to break it up into bunches of pieces and you get a much bigger piece tomorrow with a little tiny piece today. So, you take my candy and but in the future, you buy a little bit into this candy, but we're going to grow it really big and then break it and you get a big chunk. There we go. I love that's a good one.
Uh, this question is brought to you by our friends at OR Fellowship. They're a great organization here in Indiana helping develop young business leaders across the state. Jerry, what advice would you give to your 22-year-old self? Get into as many uh wealth building games as you can. So, stock investing, you know, if you could get into some form of real estate, buy Bitcoin, buy into these games that the wealthiest of the wealthiest are playing because that's how they gotten wealthy in the first place. I think that is actually uh spectacular.
like really practical financial advice. I think there's just uh maybe a little bit of fear that it's like, oh, it's super complicated. Like I was really interested in real estate investing, so I went out and like learned a little bit, but I'm also like a risk taker. I was like, what? I was like, basically, will this bankrupt me? Will I have to move back in with my parents?
No. Like I can figure it out. Cool. And like I bought a couple rental properties with a good friend of mine. And it's like we got them in 2019 and 2020. So like they've been really good investments for us.
Uh which is fun. But it was like I kind of and that's just because my risk tolerance is high and my thought was like well even if they go to zero and whatever happens with that I was like I can always go make more money but this is what I see the wealthiest people doing like buying the Bitcoin like being in this that and the other thing and that's the problem Nate is everyone thinks they have to be millionaires to do this right that's why venture staking this is a winnable game without being millionaires you could buy Bitcoin tomorrow just buy $10 worth of Bitcoin buy $25 every month right over time that's going to add up time yeah and And it's like it's not going to go to zero. No, no, no, no. It's not. So you got to look at historical patterns, right? The stock market continuously has grown 8 to 12% over the course of decades.
Just for example, Google went public in 2004, right? If you just bought a share of Google every month for the last 21 years, it' cost you around 24K over the course of, you know, 20, you know, 20 years, right? The value of that stock or the value of that stock today would be $1. 19 million. And for like a couple hundred bucks a month. Yeah.
Just buying a share of stock in Google once a month. Just be in the game. Like Bitcoin. And now with like things like Robin Hood or whatever, you can buy like fractional shares. Fractional shares. Yeah.
Fractional shares. Put yourself in games because once you put yourself in games, you're going to start understanding them better. And once you understand them, then you understand the risk. Yeah. And I think like uh thinking through the idea of um patience. Everyone wants to get into GameStop and make $10,000 in a day and it's like I just put my stuff over there and I just forget about it.
I'm like whatever. I'll check back in in 20 years, you know? Like and I almost like actually it's actually really good for my like mental health on the fact of like set it, forget it, go focus on how you can make more money today, but then like take that what do I need to live on today? Cool. And then I'll just throw it somewhere else like out of sight, out of mind, like go do whatever money stuff does. So, you know, putting some money into Doro, putting some money into Bitcoin, putting some money.
This is not us saying like, "Oh my gosh, go get into every meme coin and this that the other thing." It's like do a little bit of due diligence. Look what really smart, intelligent, wealthy people. And not like the get-rich quick scheme. It's like, okay, over time, you know, I assume that in 10 years, Bitcoin will be worth more than it is today. I assume that my house that I bought like a rental property is not going to be at zero in 10 years, right?
because 10 years ago it was not at zero. Yep. You know, I think that's good advice. Yeah. And and I and I tell this to the students. You have two accounts.
You got your consumption account and you got your capital account. You want to be a sports better that's in your consumption account. That is not your capital account. Capital account is long-term investments that are growing while you sleep. And there's just no other better way to grow your wealth than in to be in venture. Right now, it's going to take 1015 years.
But if you can turn a $100 into $1,000 or into a a th000x $100, you want to be in those games. You'll be kicking yourself, right? Like, oh man, all taken was $110. Yeah. To,000x my money. Like, seems like a good deal to me.
All right. You live Do you live in Bloomington? I do. All right. Give us uh when we next time we visit Bloomington, what's one spot that might be a little bit off the beaten path? What is your hidden gem in Bloomington?
I go to C3 a lot. What is C3? C3 is just sort of this little upscale sort of bar that's restaurant that's just like literally my wife and I walk there, you know, it's right down from our house. So Oh, yeah. That looks that looks fire. They got a great outdoor patio.
How long have you lived in Bloomington? Since 2017. Where? Okay. Where were you at before that? Up in Caramel.
Up in Caramel. Okay. What's been your favorite? So, you've been there for eight years. What have you loved about Bloomington? Wait, were you still a professor at IU in living in Caramel?
Yeah. So, what finally got you to make the jump? Um, I was just ready to start on this and focus on this and I felt like I could do this in Bloomington better than anywhere else. So, yeah, I moved to Bloomington to focus on Doro. Okay. What have you loved like what has Bloomington opened your eyes to living there?
It's an international town and you just would not believe the connectivity from Bloomington to all over the world, right? It's a glo it's a global town and so um you get the flare of you could be walking down the street and listening to two people talk French, for example. It's just really a cool uh environment and it's a I'm a cerebral person. I I like thinking. I like thinking about ideas. There's a lot of people that are very committed to their crafts and and just they're interesting people to talk to and you just meet really super interesting people.
I have heard that it is a very um international, you know, culture down there and it's it's a and it's beautiful. You can't beat that part. Like even the surrounding like go out into the sticks just a little bit. I was over um I was down in Green County this past weekend and I was at the Yoho General Store in Salsbury, Indiana. Okay. It's like probably 25 minutes back past Bloomington.
I don't know if you heard of this. Uh Cook has like their community foundation or whatever fund. I don't know what that thing is actually called. CFC. Uh they've put some money into it and redone this thing. There's not another restaurant within like six miles of it.
And it's crazy cool. like it's like this really really nice looking local cafe out in Salsbury and it was phenomenal. Like you have to drive past Bloomington like outside 30 minutes to get to this thing. But it was just like oh the Cook uh Cook Medical has just put so much uh time, effort, money into making that whole area amazing. So that's my subtle plug for Yoho General Store. Jerry, thanks for coming on.
Uh guest times two. Uh, it was awesome learning more about what you're doing with Doro and how we can all get involved and how this can really change the game for, you know, the the common the everyday Hoosier. So, appreciate that and I'm excited to keep following along as you continue to grow. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this episode of Get In. If you like what you heard, make sure you leave us a review wherever you listen to podcast.
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