from the crossroads of America and the hoer state of Indiana this is get in the podcast focused on the unfolding stories and extraordinary Innovations happening right now in the [Music] Heartland I'm Matt hunkler CEO at powdercake and I'll be one of your hosts for today's conversation I'm joined in studio with co-host Nate spangle yea head of community at powderkeg and on the show today we have serial entrepreneur Finance professor and good friend of mine Jerry Hayes your parents they told you how to be you had friends they told you par uh teachers professors all of this you've been told who you are and all of it is not necessarily who you are and you know to come to that sort of agreement with yourself gives you agency to reinvent who you are and what you can accomplish Jerry has been an entrepreneur for over two decades he has started two Venture back companies that were both acquired also bootstrapped a chicken company that also got acquired more on that later and he's also currently the founder and CEO at Doro Venture Labs Jerry's also a practicing professor of venture capital and entrepreneurial Finance at Indiana University which is where I met him I was a student in the classroom most of the time I made it to class and on the show today we are going to dive into all things funding and how it applies to you even if you aren't an investor or an entrepreneur yet I do think that there are some hypothesis on maybe everyone is going to be an investor entrepreneur in the future we're going to talk about things like VC crowdfunding Angel Investing and the biggest opportunities for wealth generation and I'm sure so much more I always have a a great time talking with Jerry and learn so much every time so I'm really excited to share this with all of you Jerry thanks for being on get in thank you very much we are really excited to talk to you and I'm just going to Dive Right In with questions if you're cool with that yeah let's do it um tell us a little bit about Doro um what is the idea what's the big vision for the company and then I'm also curious where the name came from sure well Doro is our sort of motto is win the future and so we're looking at those strategies and products and tactics to help everyone uh thrive in a future that's becoming increasingly uncertain and our sort of Mantra is one of those paths to success in an uncertain future is ownership and ownership can take multiple forms but what we're looking for is you know we're thinking about is how can people have ownership in the future in terms of what companies are getting developed and and when those companies get developed and those companies use AI to revolutionize an industry how can we create a bunch of owners that benefit financially from that versus a small select fi which we have right now I freaking love that uh tell us about the business model well uh it's a first it's an education forward business to be sure because um right now when you think about Venture ownership it's really in the hands of like 1% of the people out there you've got your institutional Venture Capital uh structure which we can get into what that looks like and then we have maybe 350,000 Angel Investors around the country um and then maybe a handful of smaller retail investors because crowd Equity funding is has come up so most people don't understand what it really means to own you know a a stake in a high return high-risk uh opportunity so we have to do a lot of education so we came out with our first product called fantasy startup which we are training people all over the world how to actually make startup Investments um we can go and geek out on what that looks like but thus far we've had over 6,000 people around the world that have played the simulation we're getting inbounds from all over the world to to to create competitions like we just had an inbound coming in from France for 400 Angel Investors to do this um and and so this is the sort of the step for us is like yeah just start making Investments you don't have to do it for real do it for fun and see what this is all about and then we have our second product is called qualify to credit an investor which is we call it venture capital in a box so within six month six weeks we can we can get you to the level of the highest level VCS and understanding how Venture Capital works one of the things I love about you Jerry is that uh you actually know what you're talking about when when it comes to VC Angel Investing there's a lot of people who have just gotten into it in the Last 5 Years uh since it started becoming cool uh quote unquote cool debatable whether or not it's cool right now just given what the market has done the last couple of years um and so I'd love to just learn a little bit from you knowing that you've been doing this since before it was cool and not only doing it but studying it the history of it and I know it has a direct correlation to the name of your company uh can you maybe tell us where the name Doro came from and a little bit of the history Venture Capital sure sure venture capital is still a relatively new Marketplace um not even 100 years old um a man named George dorio um he was a Harvard Professor who taught a class like I teach at IU Kelly um he's he actually was working in the Army he handled all the technology for World War II for the US Army oh wow and then he saw all this amazing technology go to the Shelf after the war and these entrepreneurs the the inventors couldn't go to a bank and get those Technologies commercialized so he he thought well what if we created a a new form of um of finance and and and back these high-risk High return Technologies and see what would happen and he had a theory that one or two would be very very big and pay for all the losses and so he started the first Venture CL Venture fund back in 1946 American research and development Corporation and he started making Investments and the entire world including the SEC they were like you can't do this this is wrong you're this is a a faulty business and he struggled a lot trying to prove this out and people like Mark andrees basically has been quoted to say George Doro carved this industry out out of sheer will and it's true okay and um but by the time he was dumb when they shut down American research and development Corporation he had earned 22% annualized raid return since 1946 wow beat the S&P 500 by like 13 points wow which if you know your sort of time value of money and interest rates I mean you it's a gargantuan difference in wealth between just one percentage Point how long did American research and development Corp how long was that in business for um he started the fund in 1946 and they shut the fund down in 1972 oh 22% annual I'm not a math guy but that math is math that that math is math totally nothing well so you're telling me that he was a Harvard Professor when he did this so you're saying VC didn't actually start in Silicon Valley it did not start in Silicon Valley wow yeah so there's the East Coast which is Boston um and then sort of moving into New York and guys like Fred Wilson he's a disciple sure of George Doro is that AVC yeah and so who taught the person who taught Fred the business learned from George Doro wow so so if you look at uh Fred's model of investing very much like Doro and but he's been incredibly successful right um then you go to the West Coast which is a little bit you know it's a different style and there's no judgment it's just uh it's a different approach to venture but they both have been successful can we just talk high level real quickly about like the strategy of VC right you say high risk High reward we've had an episode or two about PE private equity and the safer kind of return there what is just like the overall strategy when you think of of a venture capital fund and and the Investments that they make private Equity let's be clear you're raising money and you're buying a business and you're Levering that business up with debt and and so you're going to go on there and make operational changes find growth make it operationally perform better and then flip it back out into the market so it's an existing business and maybe some warts and things like that but it's an existing business you get into the startup world where you take something from nothing and there's a lot more risk it's a lot you know there's a lot more trap doors so when you put Capital to these kinds of projects you have to expect that 80% of them are going to fail now there's nothing wrong with that but the ones who do the the projects that do win will end up paying for all of your failures and you're going to make an outsized return and so the target for venture capital is still that 22 to 25% annualized rate of return but that can only be accomplished through diversification and gaining gaining access to a number of credible deals and putting a little bit into a number of credible deals so it's not about finding the one or two Ubers or Googles that are just going to uh you know take off and placing a handful of bets thinking okay one of these five is going to be the one yeah it that is a very dangerous investment strategy it's no different than being in the public markets I mean there's lots of people getting paid to navigate your capital in the public markets but if you just buy the S&P 500 you're probably going to outperform 90% of the stock Pickers on Wall Street same thing is going to be happening in Venture if you are going to be a stock picker your risk profile goes way up if you become unbiased and you start taking a look at the the the things that matter like can you know do you do you trust this idea does this idea make sense to you does the founder feel right to you I mean it these kinds of things where you can like use your gut um and then you understand that the structure makes sense to you is evaluation correct and then that all comes into is this a credible deal and every time you find a credible deal you just kind of have to like okay I'm in I'm into that deal so enough people got into this between 1946 and let's rewind maybe four or 5 years ago that we saw uh Silicon Valley and unal tech companies around the country around the world start taking off rates U we had never seen before how do we get to there and how did we get to the point where um it almost like overshot because we obviously saw a big Market correction a couple years ago um and maybe just giving us a little context there would be really helpful before we start uh digging in even more into like the fundamentals of good investing sure I I so Venture Capital has become you know the sexy business right everyone wants to be a VC I have more and more students who want to be in Venture Capital you know because who wouldn't want to be walking around with a checkbook and then like get to say yes or no to entrepreneurs I thought you were going to say walking around in their Al birds with their Patagonia vest you know I'm not going to go there EA some sweet green I I spent my time out in you know San Francisco I've seen it but got to have the VC starter pack yeah it's become a um a career okay so what what what what you do is you go raise you could raise $100 million and you could charge a two 2 and half% management fee that's $2.
5 million a year that you can pay salaries have an office travel go to conferences whether you make the right investment or not you know that's going to be a different story you got to be really good at what you do and you got to work really hard and um most people don't understand I I I'm not throwing any shade on anyone but most people in the Venture markets don't understand what they're doing but the ones who do are doing exceptionally well in good times or bad times I think that's super interesting um you say work really hard and it's like I I don't really know what hard work looks like in the as a VC like you're an analyst or you're whatever at a at a venture capital fund what does hard work look like there you got to be open and you got to be willing to take some risk with other people's Capital while being a fiduciary and balancing all that is a lot of work okay it just it really is what most DCS do is they wait for Signal like if Andrew recent horror WTS is in this deal they'd want to like Lop onto that or hey we're just going to invest in the best companies coming out of the Y combinator cohort and we're willing to pay $20 million in valuation per deal because that's just where the market is that's lazy VC making I'm sorry it is it's just lazy it's the lazy approach to to VC but those who go a step deeper and they're not trying to compete in those Waters where every all the other Capital allocators are and they're they're they they have thesis or their thesis and they're going out to conferences and they're they're meeting people and they're they're developing a network in a particular area and they're really working on their trade and and they're they're really trying to prognosticate about what the future is going to look like that's a lot harder to do than just to go around and say I got a checkbook and I'm into this deal and I'm into that deal if if we were to start a venture fund today which funds all let's let me reframe the question if you were to a venture fund today uh which funds would you be emulating at the seed stage um you know if you're starting a seed stage fund which ones do you see doing it right okay well clearly why combinator is doing it right yeah and so why why do you say that well they have developed there's two models out there that really impress me what why commentator no question so but what you got to understand why commentator has built a game for them to win they don't everyone else they can like hey you guys can do your own thing but we're going to get the best companies in the the world the best Founders in the world I don't care if you have an idea or not we're just going to pick the best people and then we're going to throw we're going to invest 150k for 7% of the business okay then we get most favored nation rights so when you go out and you raise more money we get to participate at the same deals as everyone else so we get to continue to ride that horse if it's doing well if it's not doing well we don't but they're buying into the best companies in the world at $1.
9 million yeah the best that's how you win the game that's incredible you're getting you're getting great valuations and they were able able to do that largely because of Paul Grahams uh personal brand early on and just being there early yeah I mean they they they invented sort of the model of how you can bring you know enough people into a room and create that sort of competition iron sharpens iron yeah so the interesting about interesting thing about why commentator is that it's yeah you could say hey can you make an appointment with this person that potential customer and that kind of thing and they'll do all that but really what their the basis of their value is they bring everyone to a room and it used to be every Tuesday night for dinner and then every Tuesday night the every team had to show up and talk about what you did last week and then what you're going to do next week and then the next week you had do what did you do last week you said you were going to do this did you do it and then what are you going to do this week and then what they found is that over time over the 90-day period less and less companies that showed up to do that but the ones who did and end up winning really winning really big so accountability not everyone is going to want to get onto that Cadence and you know drive but they found the five to seven companies that are really driven every cohort and that's all you need wow what about funds started in the last decade it's not a fund but I'm highly impressed with uh the teal Fellowship so Peter teal has a sort of a it's a I don't know if it's a political commentary or just a commentary in general about uh going to college that you know just go become an entrepreneur MH don't go to don't waste your time in college that can be argued and disputed in a number of different ways sure okay but he will offer if you get uh you can apply and you get um $100,000 for a two-year period $50,000 a year you have to figure something out and and and so if you take a look at the metrics y combinator mints four unicorns per 100 mhm the teal Fellowship mint seven unicorns per 100 unicorn being a billion doll valuation company yeah yeah wow and so they have two years to come up with a startup idea yeah launch it yeah and there's seven out of a 100 are becoming billion plus a bunch of others that have reached like multi-million dollars and like figma like figma yeah absolutely figma was a teal Fellowship wow those kind of numbers give us an idea of sort of like how the game is played right you're you're you're placing a lot of bets mhm and hoping that in in the best possible case scenario you're getting four to seven out of a 100 that are really hitting a big yeah that's that's the math that's the math okay but if you get one of those four out of a 100 I mean that that could be 15200 X return on your $100 investment so think about it if you put $10,000 into 100 credible startup deals and four ended up becoming unicorns and you're getting on on balance you're getting somewhere if the pricing is right you're getting in at5 million or below you're earning anywhere from between 80 and 100x on those $100 for those particular deals you're going to turn your 10K into 35 40K yeah that math maths yeah and if you get one deal that just blows it out then maybe you turn it into 100K the numbers don't lie we're going to be releasing a white paper here at the first of the year that everyone should be putting 8% of their net worth into startups and and you can you can actually achieve three to four percentage points higher and and an overall turn when you're looking at a 30 to 40e time frame wait but Jerry what if I I'm sorry that uh I just know there's a lot of restrictions right accredited investors and like all of these things that that make it the barrier to entry into investing in startups really hard right and like I don't know very very much about this or like friends and family rounds versus institutional investment but I know that like I can't just go out I don't think anyway and write a check into whoever the the fastest growing Silicon Valley startup is so the question being is like how could how could I as a retail investor start investing 8% of my net worth into startups you want to learn to drive before you get behind a Ferrari fair you need to be in a position maybe in your position right now you don't have the money to to strove Big checks and I get that I mean even at my age I don't cut massive checks right I do Small Checks and but I'm very early right I'm very comfortable being very early what you need to be doing is learning the business and you and and you you need to make a decision first and foremost that you're going to be in this economy starts with making a decision now once you've made a decision that you are going to be in this this ownership economy now you come to us and we will show you okay we'll get you into playing fantasy startup play the game see you know is this really your cup of tea get qai certified right you may start a company at some point either side of the table you should really know what you're doing when it comes to how Equity Works private Equity works right and then with us for Doro you can join Doro Venture Club where we bring one deal that's available to the public we look at we scour hundreds of deals a month that are on the regular reg CF platforms and we bring one deal that we think has true Venture potential and then we break it down do a 25-page analysis we do an hour conversation about it and then you can make a decision does that deal make sense to you and you could go put $100 into it can you break down what regg CF is for those of us who aren't down the rabbit hole as far as you are sure okay this would be a good time to talk historically contextually going back to how so dorio started the business it was a publicly traded company and then the entire Market went private so all the subsequent Venture Capital firms set up as limited Partnerships which basically meant they only could bring capital in from wealthy individuals and then eventually institutional investors so it became a cottage industry okay an Institutional venture has now into what we have today where you want to raise bigger funds because you get the management fees because you can get salaries and but you've got a big problem it's deployment of that capital and my our part of our thesis is you know when AI comes into the fold we're going to see billion dollar companies built with 10 people or less yep that's that's absolutely going to be the case you won't need 10,000 people like you did I absolutely believe that the other piece is is that everything's going to go on chain there's not going to be this idea well hey let's go set up a special purpose purpose vehicle and let's get a bunch of people together and try to invest in this startup everything will happen by the click of a button and you will have a security token that you own for that particular company and if there's a payout immediately comes into your bank account it's going to be frictionless and seamless and that's how the blockchain is like actually applicable and provides utility as a technology that's exactly right that's exactly right so the ideas of having a bunch of spvs or llc's that you're members of that's going to go away when I don't know there's going to be custodial services around helping people manage their equity and just for those that maybe uh haven't raised a round of funding or participated SPV is like a a special purpose vehicle that is uh kind of a company basically that is Created from a group of individuals High net worth individuals who pull money together and the purpose of that company is basically to invest in another company that's right and that's just because the old tools that we had and still kind of have as like the deao way to invest that's right that's what's happening today and and so what crowdfunding is and what I what what crowdfunding represents to me it's the dawning of decentralized venture capital okay right now I would have to say that Reg CF regulation crowdfunding which was a law passed by the SC by the by the jobs act when Obama was was President still rules were pated by the Securities and Exchange Commission that allows entrepreneurs to go out to the public and Pitch their startup to raise money from the crowd so think about we funder or start engine or um Republic these are three platforms that right now that you could go to and you could look at a bunch of offerings that are available it's kind of a petri dish right now the reg CF Market is because there's a lot of people going there with frankly not the best offerings like I would not invest in these deals right so what we do is we're we're creating a filtering service or our members that we will look to see which deals you you know have the most legs and then we'll talk about those as opposed to like Nate you going to Republic and saying I'm just going to invest in startups and you're just like cruising around like a candy store like I don't know what I'm doing you know what I mean kind of kind of like my Robin Hood right where I'm just like oh I like this I I buy so I buy stuff from Kroger I I want to be an investor in Kroger I'm retail Joe yeah for sure okay yeah so exactly that's what regulation crowdfunding is but I think it's going to be it's going to be there's going to be next iterations of this where it's all going to be on your phone you're going to have trusted whether it's AI empowered or trusted advisers that are like bringing deals to you and then you can make a decision whether you're in a deal within you know five minutes or less and then it just added to your portfolio and because you know what you are in the business of is acquiring a chip in the game of a number of companies that are going to transform our Industries and they will get transformed with AI machine learning every industry is up for you know transformation this these last couple years in particular seem very interesting when you look at the world of startups and uh private Equity investing through Venture Capital reg CF type offerings we saw an explosion of activity over the last decade of investing in startups can you break down kind of what happened from your vantage point when you look at just how much the market has changed in the last 18 months and the the leadup to that because it seems like if you look at 2019 2020 even 2021 all kinds of new funds coming onto the scene everyone's thesis is we're going to invest in places that people aren't looking underrepresented communities areas outside Silicon Valley there were some early players in the game you know the the M25 groups the fly over capitals that were rise of the rest that were doing this kind of before everyone else but now I mean there's like hundreds of funds that have spun up over the last decade and then all of a sudden it it's like that that Capital dried up um well it didn't dried up it's still I know it's still there but checks stopped being written MH can you just break that down for people that maybe maybe they're an employee at a startup they don't exactly know why their CEO wasn't able to raise that round of funding or they don't know uh maybe it's a CEO or entrepreneur that's in the trenches and they're like why is this taking four times as long as it did before can you give us a little bit of context I think that there's a lot of euphoria with raising Capital being in the Venture Capital world that entrepreneurship has been on you know just sort of celebrating entrepreneurship but we're seeing a lot more programs at the University level come online more accelerators all of that activity creates more opportunity to you know aggregate capital and deploy capital I think it goes back down to the same challenges it's great to have a VC fund you know but to actually deploy that capital capital in a way that is going to work and and smartly do it it's a different matter and and I again I think too many people got into this game that really don't understand the economics adventure and I I'm again I'm not trying to dunk on anyone I'm just saying that this is what we have seen and as a result they're not going to raise followon funds they're considered sort of zombie Venture funds and that's all going to go away and you're going to still have your Mainstay funds that are here for the long term and they are continuing to drive value and I'd say there's an amazing opportunity for anyone still in this space but you have to you have to really go back to First principles Adventure not just celebrating yourself because you cut a stroke a check and a you know a secondary round from you know SpaceX you know yeah so talk to us about the the the founding principles we we already covered a couple of the really important principles of venture you know it's it seems to me that education is a key component diversification is key component M truly like researching the companies and deal sourcing uh having access to the deals um when there are so many places entrepreneurs could raise capital from and take meetings from and uh everyone's kind of competing for time on the on the calendar what are some of those other things that if you're an Institutional Investor or even as an angel investor that wants to participate and get in on something early on as you're building out your portfolio so this is really an interesting question because you've got uh Venture funds that are set up to be traditional series a which if I I I think it's important to just Define what series a means okay it's sort of like a point in time with a company it is the point in time where you have product Market fit and you're ready just to throw a bunch of money into scaling and growing okay so you're talking about adding on team members and and um you're generating a burn but your acquisition and your growth acquisition is so strong right because you know exactly your customer and you know how you can actually profit from this okay pre-series a being in that seed stage is you're still trying to figure out product Market fit okay and then pre-seed is you don't have any product Market fit you probably don't even have a product in in market and so I think everyone sort of starts off that we're going to set up a fund for the being in the traditional series a space that space becomes highly competitive because everyone wants the company that's making money and ready for like rapid scale yeah okay you have to be really good to go find deals so you come to the Midwest right there's deals to be had in the midwest right you go into places that they're not looking or you go to you go to China back in the day or Singapore now I mean you're so you have those that are going to go look for those traditional deals and then if you're not getting that then you try to go Upstream go into seed and now you've got a bunch of company or VCS competing in the seed space and they're overvaluing these seed companies because they're thinking that this is this is the next series a yeah it's it's it's almost like a series a and it's not when I think about where institutional should be I think they should stay in the series a space I think that's what they're really good at they're good at series A B C take them to an exit okay if you're an angel investor you're not going to be that you're that's not what your job is you are in the seed stage and you're trying to Mentor if you want to be an active angel investor you're mentoring you're helping them think about things right higher risk but you get you know lower valuations for the rest of us when I think about like the retail where we can absolutely dominate is preed we can we absolutely can get if we so for example um we as in the Royal we or we as in Doro we we as in you know everyone when I think about all of us retail investors so let's imagine this 8% of your your income let's let's just be audacious give us 25,000 people okay each with a budget of $500 to invest in startups in a single year okay I do the math on that I don't know how big that c a is okay assets under 125 125k 125k 25,000 500 people is that 125 125 million I don't like live math public math is so hard yeah but anyway you get my point okay you're not investing that money but now you have a filtering service where we go out and we find you know these really strong teal fellow type individuals y that they're coming in like okay we're just going to give you a couple hundred thousand bucks for two years figure it out and while doing like 50 of those deals a year I guarantee you that and then you could decide individually do you like you want to put 100 bucks into this one you want to put 50 bucks into this one right and so basically you're making bets across the board of a number of Founders not only here in the US but globally and all of the equity is being managed on your behalf all you have to do is say I'm in or I'm not and then you get to watch their Journeys unfold over the next you know ensuing years MH and I guarantee you that we're going to find a unicorn plus in that you know every year we would find a unicorn plus if we could back 50 young kids I've been around these kids for you know since 2004 and I work with them and and I I can tell I know which ones are going to are going to crush it and I and we could bet on these kids you know heck we could bet on a 28-year-old right we could bet on a 32-year-old right just I don't they don't have an idea or they haven't fully formed it you know you're just coming in we just all right let's Aggregate and everyone's putting in 2550k or $25 50 but in the aggregate we're investing 200k zero risk on everyone's part but if he yeah right if it blows up you know we can hund X our money or thousand XR money yeah it's a a night out on the town like 50 bucks 100 in Indiapolis that might be two nights out on the town no that that's that's Chipotle being delivered come on let's be real yeah yeah that's true that's it's like he reads your credit card statements Nate yeah I got my Chipotle wrapped I've got a 15-year-old man I know yeah right I think I think that's so interesting though because you talk about like the knowledge and the research and like as you get to like seed and right series a it's all about doing all this research and knowing so much about the company but what you just said and the the definition you just gave was find the person you're a preed investor find the person you want to bet on yeah find the kid find the 32-year-old whoever it is and I think that there's a lot of people I just like met through the days where it's like dang if I could buy stock in you I would you know it's like if I could just have a just a small little slice because I think that you're going to do something crazy I think that's that's a really great way to think about it as like the retail that throwing a $100 yeah and and there's another little secret here so I'm going to like share the secret with the world yeah give us all the secrets the secrets everyone in that sort of investor group has what's called PR rites which means when that individual who's winning and they need to go raise another 500 then we could all pony up to our ownership percentage and keep investing in that particular deal the one that already has momentum that already has momentum that already has product Market fit it's getting product Market fit and we become you get more ownership right you get more ownership and still maybe it's $100 this time but it's not going to break the bank but you know that okay this $100 I I think I can get 50x on this 100 bucks mhm right because that's what it really comes down to yeah that makes a lot of sense interesting and it's like the part that you talk about like Risk it's like 50 bucks you know like especially with the rise of things like DraftKings or all like you can lose $50 like not even trying to lose $50 right this is a fun game because you can actually get returns and you're you're helping you're helping shape the future right you're shaping the future you're adding to the economy help create jobs of that immediate hit though like the immediate dopamine of like did the Colts win on Saturday you know so Nate and that's what get gets back to okay owners versus renters okay so when you think about what's the definition of a renter versus an owner a renter is someone who's instant gratification so unfortunately a lot of young white men are into betting right it is a nonproductive use of their time they're going they're losing a lot of time and they're losing their money The House Always Wins day trading again a nonproductive use of their time because it's not it's eventually the house is going to win so but an owner is okay I'm willing to to plant this tree today and let this ride for 10 years and see where it takes me but in the meantime I get to watch this tree grow or die either way I get to learn something and along the way you can help water it right along the way you can help water it and and nurture it right now can you imagine in a kind what would you rather have a let's that's let's fast forward 20 years from now okay the institutional economy where you get a salary you get paid every two weeks and like we all know that's going to be a diminishing path uh to wealth creation right just AI eventually I mean 50% of all people hate their jobs AI is going to wipe that out immediately let's just agree with that right people don't love what they do in this new world what if you owned a hundred different companies that were each generating $1,000 of income for you a year I'd be pretty happy no complaints out of my corner and then you and and then you'd be buying then you'd say Okay I want to I want to own a thousand companies that are paying me $1,000 a year in profits and imagine as the founder all right I I'll play the game right imagine as the founder you had a thousand people that had a share of your company that you could like put out your blast of like hey I your investor update goes out to like I need an introduction to so and so so and so I need some help with this and it's like they get the chance to help you water your idea and your vision like I'm bought in exactly right take my money well the I mean the beauty of it is it's you're it's not even take my money it's like use my money and if it pans out return the money with join the movement Nate yeah that's it just join the movement join the movement Nate's Chipotle budget is gonna go down he's gonna carve some out for Doro gosh I I already just closed out my DraftKings account it's done it seems say it's a waste of time it seems to me that um one of the biggest barriers for this e economy really getting to a flywheel motion um it feels like very much early early Innings still uh we're not at the exponential growth curve yet although exponential growth curves are shorter and shorter these days with new technology uh the internet AI but it does seem to me that that human psychology is probably the one of the bigger barriers because of what you exactly said not everyone thinks of themselves as owners have you thought about how people can start to um develop this muscle of thinking of themselves as an owner well that's a really hard deep question and it's what I'm here for and it's yeah and that is the that is the quintessential question right how do we start preparing everyone to have that sort of ownership mindset and it's a combination of of making decisions combination of taking actions right you have to build skills you've got to build your confidence I mean you're not if you wanted to run a marathon you're not going to run 26 and a half miles or what 26 and a thir miles or whatever you know on day one you may be running don't don't tell Nate that cuz he'll he'll try right so there's that piece of it there's so we're we're creating those tools just to get people like okay I can do this I feel comfortable but the whole other mindset of this is um and interesting you say that I'm recalibrating my class this year it's entrepreneurial finance and venture capital we are going to and and they have to pass the qai exam that's how they're going to get scored in the class that's qualified accredit investor program that you develop here's your book and here's here's your practice quizzes and all that but you got to pass that exam okay that's on you yeah in in class we're going to be learning about other things so we're going to be learning about for example sort of consumer versus cultivator approach to life you know what's consumption what's cultivation we're going to learn about how our personal identities are impediments to our fure future opportunities to create Prosperity when we say we can't or I can't or I'm not an investor this really bothers me more so um I like to see more young ladies in my classroom I always ask them do you see yourself as an investor they say no like no you can't exclude yourself from this economy I don't care if you're black white I don't care male female it doesn't make a difference you cannot exclude yourself from this economy just basically because you think I'm not that this or I'm not that when we say we're not this or that it's only because we have an identity for ourselves and we have to like sort of unravel the identity a little bit and say okay let's we have an identity which is cool but there's more there can be more facets to our identity we can expand our our breath of focus Beyond something sort of linear or myopic are there any books um podcasts or blogs that you've read or consumed that have helped you develop an ownership mentality over for the years there's not a whole lot on the ownership the ownership mindset I think this is a new and emerging you know and I think there's a few people out there using those words but it's not anywhere near sort of mainstream so we're not getting that but if you look at some of the mindset stuff which I think is equally as important is to re-engineer your mind re-engineer your human intelligence around where the puck is heading and where the success is where people are succeeding that is um there's a number of different places you can go to I like listening to Tom Bilu for example he's really gone a very deep into the psychosis of success as an example and how we really have to think about ourselves is that the impact Theory podcast yeah that's that that's a good one I listen to a lot of old school stuff I listen to Alan Watts and Neville Godard for example these are old school Mystics if you will they have all their lectures on YouTube and I'll go for a run and I'll listen to Alan Watts talk for 45 minutes and a lot of that he talks about look you can peel back the onion let's just peel it back and what you're going to find at the very bottom is that your identity is a construction of you had Parents they told you how to be you had friends they told you par teachers professors all of this you've been told who you are and all of it is not necessarily who you are and you know to come to that sort of agreement with yourself gives you agency to reinvent who you are and what you can accomplish I love that thought that was like a mind mind shift change mindset shift that I've had this year and it was like when I saw people doing these like crazy cool things and like before probably yeah before this year 2023 right I was kind of like oh that could never be me like I could never do X or Y or Z and now it's like just switching the vocab of like internal dialogue from like no I I don't say that couldn't be me it's not me right now now but like waking up at 5:00 a.
m. or running a marathon or doing all these things I'm like I could do that if I like how how could I do that and it's like figuring out the steps you have to take to become the investor to become the marathoner to become whatever that is you want to be but it was just the subtle shift and vocab in my internal conscious of like never saying oh I couldn't do that or that could never be me uh crazy it was just like a like you're saying this and I'm like oh my gosh is he like is he like reading what I'm like thinking in my head right now that's it's really smart because you're giving yourself again agency to take your game to a whole new level and we all have that ability now the counterbalance to this you guys and this is where it gets really rough okay when we talk about being an owner what do we own as individuals we have money okay maybe some more than others we have our time we have our data these are the three things that we own what are we doing with our money what are we doing with our time and what are we doing with our data and there are companies out there and the centralized system that we have today the institution that we have today is that there are companies who want to get your money they want to get your time and they want to get your data and they're making boatloads of money off of it right meta only cares if you're staying on meta right they're going to do everything they can to keep you on one of their channels um Tik Tock the first trillionaire is they expect him to be a trillionaire by the age of 44 okay head of Tik Tok okay because he has monopolized people's time and their data right um and so but as an owner we have to look every day okay we own our bodies too like what investments are we making in our body what investments are we making in our mind what investments are we making with our time what investments are we making with our money on a daily basis and so where the the world around us the the businesses around us the algorithms which what the thing I fear most about artificial intelligence is that I don't mind AI it's the algorithms that they're learning off of because everything is like Doom and Gloom today we're all tribalize we're all haters you know it's all I mean I don't want AI to learn from those algorithms I want ai ai to learn from algorithms of the most uplifting parts of us as humans because that is you know empowering for for everyone but that's not what keeps people on a page that's I mean and so that's that's the scary thing so you you you have to make daily decisions whether you're going to give your time to Tik Tok or you're going to give your time to reading a book for an hour it seems to me that one of the other things that we own is our results um if what we want to do is learn and that was something I remembered from your class which was um oh that's okay you know it this is not what your class was like oh that's okay let's not worry about that loss let's just go on to the next thing it was okay how do we how do we learn from this and how do we get better at what we're doing and rather than blaming the system or blaming the the game is rigged or you know blaming the entrepreneur uh you know which all of those things might be the case but what that does is um gives away your ownership of your participation in the game that's right of business um how can people reclaim their ownership of their results and use that to develop some of the things that you talked about right um I think the first step again is like um kind of something you did Nate right you just sort of said hey I can do this okay that was just basically um a decision that you've made about yourself you can do way more or you could do that thing over there that thing over there open your opening yourself oneself up to doing more it flips this idea that everyone else is to blame because I think ultimately our biggest competitor is is the mirror right we just have to look at ourselves like are we giving our best are we doing our best is this where we want to be because we are exactly where we are because we put ourselves there sure and um we only delay the process if we blame others and we're just pushing they're kicking the can down the road to you know a realization that eventually most of us will make unfortunately some of us make it a little bit later too late and some make it earlier um but UL Ely It ultimately you will be able to achieve anything you want to achieve in this world if you make the decision and you're willing to put in the the the time and you're willing to focus on that as opposed to like wanting to have you know sort of all every you know um the instant gratification like let me let me just take it back easy days hard life hard days easy life if you're willing to do the hard things every day your life is really easy if you're going to do all the easy things every day and kick the can down the road your life is going to be hard you're always going to be chasing your tail financially you're going to be struggling you know you're always sort of fragile in in a lot of ways ego and otherwise and and so um making those Investments every day but making that decision and then just saying I'm going to I'm going to make my days you know worthwhile on going to invest even though I don't have any of the returns yet can you tell us uh a little bit about how people can get involved with Doro sure um so you can go to dor.
com there is a u a free book you can get first-time Founders Equity Bible and and that is spelled D o r i o t d Riot d r d rot do do yes and uh you can you can download that book it's free in partnership with Elevate Ventures which is cool um and uh if you could just read the book just as a Founder first-time Founders Equity Bible like okay here's the Journey of a Founder going through raising capital and how do you deal with boards and how do you deal with equity and how does Equity work in valuation it's like 100 pages right I think I'm on page 40 I think I saw an an levate email come out and I was I'll start reading this and the nice part about it is you don't have to be super plugged in or like know everything cuz it puts it in a very digestible manner y it's not like speaking over my head it's like oh okay this is super interesting and I think I'm yeah four four10 of the way through and uh it's not too bad it's actually really good thank you yeah and um and so you can also sign up for our we we do a a Weekly Newsletter um with Doro Venture club which is free very interesting deals in there yeah and and um and if you want to continue on with our journey um we're again building kind of this first Venture fund where people can like let's all come together and let's go like take Peter Teal's model it's proven and let's go create our own and it' be so awesome if we were like even funding a bunch of people in the midwest to go start companies yeah um CU I'm I'm super bullish on the future I believe trillions of dollars are at stake and I dang it I want to get a little bit of that I think probably everyone else does too um so join us on that Journey um and if you want to get even to a higher level of of understanding then um get Qi certified um I that's available I I really feel strongly that Founders should be QA certified yeah I'm in the process yeah a lawyer should be uh Qi Certified Financial Advisors um frankly VCS if you can't pass this exam maybe maybe manage millions of others put it this way if I was an LP I would say are you Qi certified like you want my money I want to know that you know what you're talking about yeah right Angel Investors too so our first cohort we just did last uh last um quarter we have 50 all basically the 50 top startup ecosystems in the United States someone is getting Qi certified that's great and we're also in India and Alan and and so now we're gonna we got our next cohorts coming up we got a few folks from Singapore um you know we're we're making inquiries into Nigeria and UK I mean we want Qi to be the standard um in the market and this will get spun out of the of the lab Doro Venture Labs into its own sort of educational Cooperative where staying in true uh sort of an alignment with uh owners that everyone who's qi certif C ified we'll get to be able to own part of the stock of Q so as more people get educated the earlier folks that get in get to financially benefit from that I love it that's a great call to action we'll link it all up in the show notes for everybody we are almost done but uh Nate has his favorite part of the show so we have three questions for you quick rapid fire answers uh there are no wrong answers so don't feel uh don't feel the pressure there but we're going to need to start with the lightning round outside the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem what is Indiana known for Hospitality oh I love that answer that's great what is one Hidden Gem in Indiana the people well hey that Segway us perfectly into this um who is someone we need to keep on our radar someone who is doing big things I think about thought leaders right now I say uh Noah yal Harari I would pay attention to what he's saying is that uh the guy who wrote sapiens mhm yeah you know absolutely he's a thought leader and what's happening in the transition from AI into and what's happening to humanity I think everyone should should listen to him ooh I need to I need to follow him cuz I'm just waiting for the books and by that time it's probably too late yeah all right we'll link that yeah that was I did not see that one coming I'll be honest I love that we'll have to link that up in the show notes Jerry this was awesome thanks for coming on the show man thanks guys congrats on everything and thanks for helping create a better future thank you so much yeah man all right this has been get in a powder kick production in partnership with Elevate Ventures and we want to hear from you if you have suggestions for our guest or segment reach out to Matt or Nate on LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana check out our newsletter at powder.
com newsletter and to apply for membership to the powdercake executive Community Check out powder. com premium we'll catch you next time and next week as we continue to help the world get in since you just listen to this podcast you might be thinking about starting one for your company lucky for you our partners over at casted have you covered casted is the first and only podcast in video marketing platform made specifically for B2B Brands I love this about them the platform makes it possible to publish Syndicate amplify and measure the value of your podcast and video content in fact we use it for our podcast here at powderkeg and if you're a startup you should listen up because cassid for startups is definitely for you they are offering exclusive deep discounts of up to 82% off retail price for qualifying startups connect with casted at cd. uspw
