Building a More Inclusive Future for Startup Investing with Gerry Hays

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. Today I’m excited for today’s episode. We’re talking to the founder and CEO of Doriot, and what he does is he helps every day individuals become early stage startup backers through venture staking, and that’s a model that he created.

To make venture investing accessible to everyone. So what he does is he shares practical funding strategies. He teaches the realities of startup ownership and he guides people through building their own financial stake in the future from the comfort of home, which is awesome. So I’m excited to be rocking up today with Gerry Hays.

Hey Gerry, you ready to rock?

Gerry Hays: Am Tim, thanks for having me.

Tim Melanson: Brilliant. So we always start off here on a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by.

Gerry Hays: Uh, well, I’d say the, the most inspiring thing about all this that I’m doing, uh, currently with Doriot is that everything came from my own imagination. When I started thinking about this, uh, the, the, the, this started as a 25 year journey. Just a thought came in my head [00:01:00] when I was doing my first startup and it was really hard to raise venture capital and it stuck with me.

And then fast forward to 2018, um, I wanted to go back and circle back to focusing on this particular issue. And I’ve been working at home since working on this. Um, but what I was imagining happening in 2018, it’s now starting to unfold today. So the inspiring thing about this is that entrepreneurship, no matter where you are at home or.

Wherever you are in the world, it starts with that mental game that, that uh, the imagination of what you wanna see happen in the world, what you wanna see built in the, uh, the world. And if you can get into that framework and that thought and that feeling around that, then think everything flows from there.

So anyone can do this.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, definitely. Uh, well, anyone can do this if with your help, right?

Gerry Hays: Well, any, any, the, the, the mental game is, is something that we can empower ourselves with. So I can teach people, you know, kind of, I teach, you know, also, uh, you [00:02:00] know, um, frameworks around this. But this is a, this is a game. Entrepreneurship, uh, self-sufficiency. It’s a game that anyone can succeed at. Um, if, if you’ve got it right between the ears.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think so too. So now. There are some things that don’t go as planned though on the journey, and we like to talk a little bit about the bad notes as well as the good notes. And so I’m wondering can you share something that did not go as planned and, and how you’ve recovered from that?

Gerry Hays: Oh, well, gosh, even in, in this particular, um, instance, it’s been seven years in the process and, uh, I’ve not been able to pay my bills. I have, it’s, this is a situation where. This has required a lot more r and d than what I could personally afford. So there’s been a lot of setbacks in that, in that, uh, you know, sort of situation.

Um, but, but I wanna turn back to the positive of this. And that is, so when you have this beautiful, amazing idea of what you wanna build in the world. Right. What you wanna see happen is [00:03:00] gonna be in the, in the future at some point. We don’t know how long that’s gonna take. We don’t know when it’s going to unfold.

And in between that is that gap. And that gap is where you have to fill that with faith and this belief that it’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of you doing your daily thing to get there. And as long as you can stay in the game, um, and you’re gonna hit a lot of roadblocks. Trust me, I’ve had a lot of roadblocks to get to where we are today, but if you stay in faith, um, it will unfold in your favor.

You just have to kind of work through those hard situations.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, that’s uh. Very similar to my story as well. It’s, uh, the, the faith part is just, it’s, it’s fascinating because, uh, the, uh, the, the, the fear of like, you know, it just not working out the way you need it to work out. You know, not having enough money to pay for like, next week’s bill, right? That’s coming out.

Or, or even like going into credit card debt and all [00:04:00] that kind of stuff is, is, is real. But on the other hand, you know. When you listen to, you know, all these entrepreneurs that have been through it, you find that many of us all have the same story and it’s just like you just stuck with it. Um, but now can, can you, can you share with me like maybe something like practical that you did when things were not, you know, you when it, you were worried, right?

Like, was there, like, was there like something that you did like a, like a, like a, a practice that you have that you do. When things are not working out well, that kind of gets you out over that hump.

Gerry Hays: Yeah. And, uh, for me in this situation, right, because what we’re doing is just, it’s just, it’s so hard. Um. When I get these setbacks and I get a lot of them, I get a lot of rejections. And, and so I have two, I have two practices. One is, is that, so when something happens to me, I just go, oh, is that so? So [00:05:00] I, I don’t attach emotional drama to it.

Just, okay, is that, so sometimes I’ll just go, that’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Right. Because that means, okay, that door’s closed, but that means another door is going to open. So it keeps me in the framework of just forging ahead. Okay. Uh, what we do, Tim, as entrepreneurs and, and a lot of times we do this in life, and I, I try to tell this to younger people, is that if you.

Um, you have this vision of what you want, but then you’re going to dictate the terms and how you’re gonna get there, and then those terms don’t happen the way you expected them to. You could create a lot of drama and you could create a lot of fear in that. Don’t worry about how you’re gonna get there.

You just keep forging ahead and so as things come your way, you’re more. Like flowing with it. Oh, okay. That’s not, that’s not the path, but there’s gonna be another path that’s coming because I know I’m gonna get to where I’m gonna go. I’m just waiting for that new path to unfold. So you’re really, you’re trying to kind of flow with it, not try to fight it.

Tim Melanson: Wow. [00:06:00] Yeah, I, I, I feel the same way. Like when something bad like happens, you know, I’m always sort of like looking at that. As, okay, something good is coming out of this. I know it. Right. And you’re, you’re kind of like training yourself to look for it. But I’ve also found that the opposite is true too. ’cause I, I, you know, I found myself on this massive rollercoaster of emotions where something good will happen and I’ll like over celebrate it, you know, and something bad happens and I, right.

And so it’s almost like you have to, like, when something good happens, you have to go kind of like, wait, uh, okay, I’ve gotta be careful here. Right. Have you noticed that too?

Gerry Hays: Yeah. And that’s, that’s a really good point, Tim, because you have to use the same framework for when good things happen. Is that so? Right. Um, because you, it, it, this is all a flow. This is not okay. You don’t stop. Progress doesn’t stop. When you have this great thing happen, you gotta go to the next thing, right?

Because, and to go to the next thing, you have to like, release this and move on. Thank [00:07:00] this and move on. Good or bad. Be grateful for it. Thank it. Uh, because it’s now a part of your journey, and then move on.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Because, uh, you know, the part of this journey is that kind of up and down of not only emotions, but also income too. Like sometimes you get these big windfalls and then followed by a drought. So if you kind of like over celebrate and spend a bunch of money that you just made, now all of a sudden you’re in another drought.

Right.

Gerry Hays: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, uh, you know, so you’ve got your income issues, you’ve got, you know, how are you gonna find your customers? How are you gonna, there’s a whole, uh, array of things, right? I just keep hammering back to this point. You know where you are, where you’re going, you know where this is. Taking you and just stay even keeled through all of it and enjoy every bit of it, because it’s a magical process.

You said something earlier I just want to hit on is that that, uh, many entrepreneurs have the same sort of story kind of thing. I call it going through the furnace, right? Because you [00:08:00] know, every entrepreneur is gonna have to go through that furnace, and most people are afraid of going through that furnace, but.

Through that furnace process is where you really start to identify or start to, to really see who you really are, what you’re really capable of. And we are, as human beings, we are capable of so much. It’s just that society is saying, you’re only capable of doing these things. You must have this, this, this, and that.

But that’s a, that’s a rule, a set of rules that. Certain people put out there because it benefits them. As entrepreneurs, we have to make our own rules and we have to see what we’re truly capable of. And, um, but to, to do that, you have to put yourself through a hard situation. I, I just, no one’s gonna get through this life without going through a furnace.

That’s my belief.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I agree. So, and, and I mean, you mentioned faith, so I, I think so I, I’m, I’m sort of like going through these, uh, lessons of trying to teach my son even some things about faith. And uh, and one of the things [00:09:00] that I think is a misconception is that I, or I don’t know if everybody understands that faith doesn’t necessarily mean.

You know, it’ll all work out and I’m just gonna sit here and wait for it to happen. Right? And I think that that is what some people think faith is. They think that it’s luck, right? It’s, it’s like, oh, you know, I’m just gonna sit here and it’ll all work out. And you know, the reality is that it’s pretty much exactly the opposite.

It’s like, I have faith that what I’m about to do right now is going to get me to where I need to go, so I need to do something right. Does that make sense?

Gerry Hays: Yeah. Uh, faith is the spiritual empowerment, but I would say worship means execution, right? Or execution is the worship. You have to have faith and you have to worship. So you’ve gotta do, you’ve gotta act. And George Doriot, the, the namesake of the, the company today started, he, he has a great quote.

It was without action, the world would just be an idea, right? So [00:10:00] your actions and your execution, that’s your worship.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, also sowing the seed, right? And all that stuff. Like I, I know that, uh, you know, that there’s a, you know, just a conversation I was just having like. It’s just so crazy with my son about how, uh, you know, w we have to enjoy life o obviously. I mean, there, there is, I mean, you, you know, you don’t want to spending 24 7 working, working, working, working and grinding and grinding and grinding.

Like, uh, you know, what kind of life is that, right?

Gerry Hays: yeah.

Tim Melanson: mean, we could be gone tomorrow. And, and then what? Right. So they have to find your joy in what you’re doing. But there also is a, a time when you need to be sowing the seed. And then there’s also a time when you need to be harvesting. Right. And, and, right.

And, and I

Gerry Hays: You gotta have both.

Tim Melanson: you have to have

Gerry Hays: have both. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Right? And, and I think that, I think that maybe in, in, in what I’ve noticed anyway, is that it’s like there. Actually, [00:11:00] there’s even seasons of it, of like sewing and, but also, you know, in the early part of your life, even there’s gonna be a little bit more sewing than there is gonna be harvesting, I think.

And then maybe in the later part of your life, if you do that properly, then there’d be more harvesting than sewing. Do you, do you find that too?

Gerry Hays: I think that’s the, the natural order of things, right? I think the, so the sowing of the seed’s an interesting one. What does that actually mean? Because we could geek out on that altogether, right? What does that actually entail? Um, and then, but your point, if you’re not ready to receive. What is created.

You’re not ready to receive the harvest, then it’s never gonna happen. You have to be willing to give of yourself, give of your time, give of your energy, but you also have to be receptive of people’s time, energy, and even their customer, even them as a customer or an investor. You have to receive that as well.

It’s all part of the organic process. You can’t have just all giving or all taking, you know?[00:12:00]

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, because, yeah, because I think that that’s another good point too, that there’s, there’s gotta be a certain balance with it. Because if you’re, I mean, I, I, I’m pretty spiritual as well, more of like universe rather than religion. And, uh, and when I think about it, if is that you’re teaching the universe how to react to you, I guess.

And so if you are constantly not taking anything, right, you’re not, you’re not harvesting anything, then you’re basically teaching the universe that you don’t want it.

Gerry Hays: Yeah, you’re

Tim Melanson: there’s gotta be a little bit of that. Yep,

Gerry Hays: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the, the universe is gonna respond to who you are, and if you’re just pushing it away, the universe isn’t gonna give you something you don’t want.

Tim Melanson: mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. And so there’s gotta be some sort of like, uh, you know, balance between that, where you’re taking some, but then the opposite is also true. If you’re constantly taking, taking, take, taking, you’re never giving, well then eventually that Well’s gonna dry. Right? Yeah. Wow. So that’s a lot of the mindset, I think.

Right. [00:13:00] And, and I don’t know if all this stuff is really, I, I, I wish it was taught in school, but it isn’t really Right.

Gerry Hays: It is not it. It is not. Have you ever heard of a, a man named Neville Goddard?

Tim Melanson: No, I have not.

Gerry Hays: You should look him up. It’s interesting. But he has framed this in a way that is, he’s frames it, he frames it in the, in the sense of the, the New Testament. But he was in New York City in the forties and the fifties, sort of as a mystic.

Okay. And he didn’t really talk about the Bible as a historical thing. He just talked about these are this, this process, what we’re talking about, plays itself out, out, over and over and over again. Okay. And it’s just this is that you have an idea of something. Right. We talked about that. You, you fertilize that idea with an emotion, not your seed.

You’ve just planted the seed, right? But you’ve gotta have a very strong emotion around that, otherwise that seed won’t take. Because if you just say, well, I want a car, you don’t really care. That seed’s not gonna take. But if there’s a particular car that you want, you can feel yourself driving it. You could feel, you know the color, all of that, right?

You [00:14:00] sow that seed, then you walk away knowing I’ve planted the seed, it’s going to come at some point in the future. And then you walk knowing that that’s gonna happen. And, and then when it does happen, right? Not through any work, right? It just, you’ve already planted the seed and you’re fertilizing the seed because you’re not, or you’re, you’re, you’re walking in faith, you’re not doubting it, right?

And you’re taking those actions to help you get there. Then it shows up and then you’re like, well, how did this happen? And then you look back and he was, he, he calls it the bridge of incidents. Like, yeah, that happened. That happened. That happened. That happened. But you could never have scripted it to get to that point.

So he says that process of creation plays itself out over and over and over again. And that’s what many of those stories are about.

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s really cool. Yeah, and, and it has all those aspects of it, right? It has the aspect of the desire. It has the aspect of actually doing something and not just [00:15:00] hoping it’s just gonna magically show up. Uh, and also having the faith that when you plant the seed, I mean, it’s just the same thing as in the garden when you plant the seed.

I mean, you can’t just sit over top of it and look at it, right? Like you have to have some faith that, you know, the, you know, nature’s gonna take its course and it’s gonna, it’s gonna bloom, right.

Gerry Hays: exactly. It’s all natural. It’s all all organic and we’re a part of the same process that you know of planting seeds in the garden. We really are.

Tim Melanson: Now, I think like a lot of the planting seeds I think in, in business has to do with the, the marketing side of it, the sales side of it, right. You know, finding people to talk to. And I think that nowadays, I, I think nowadays it’s, it’s, I don’t know, is it easier? Is it the same? I don’t, I, I don’t know. But, but it seems as though with social media, we are connected to a lot more people.

And, you know, the ability to find an audience is, is, is so much easier than it used to be. However, the flip side of that is that [00:16:00] because it’s easier, everybody’s doing it and the competition is higher. So you have to kind of, sort of stand out somehow. And how do you do that? Or how do you approach, you know, making those fans.

Mm-hmm.

Gerry Hays: Yeah. And, and, uh, to boot. Now with ai, the, you know, you’re flooding the system with content at a scale that none of us have ever been able to see before. So there are so many more voices now, and I’m just looking at, in the venture capital space, there are the, the voices have just increased, uh, exponentially because of ai.

People just. You know, pulling content and, and flooding LinkedIn or whatever the case may be, making our job incredibly hard. I, I would say this, that in any business that you do, um, you start. Very small, and you find your tribe. You, you just, uh, okay, you’re not gonna scale to millions and millions of people overnight.

Fine. Find your tribe. [00:17:00] And, and that is a process of iteration, learning what connects people to this, how. How this could, can connect to them and then they will start spreading that word. Uh, and, and that’s how you really have to build a sustainable business. ’cause you’re building, you’re building with people who are aligned with your principles.

Our principles are shared risks, shared information, shared prosperity, and I think that’s a message. That gets better told from human to human that, you know, join, we’re doing this for these reasons or whatever, but it’s really about starting getting a base and working from there. And that requires, um, a lot of person to person contact, a lot of engagement with individuals doing things like this.

Right. You know, me coming out and talking about. What we’re doing here. Right? That’s what this requires. Um, but you can get there. It’s just, um, it’s hard to get your big, huge group of fans overnight through social media.

Tim Melanson: [00:18:00] Yeah, and uh, like I think, I, I think that what you mentioned there is that the referral base, like I, I know I’ve spoken to quite a few people on this show, and most of us actually. Most of our business comes through referrals. It comes through other people telling people about it. And you know, I feel like that is also not necessarily something that is obvious to a lot of people.

A lot of people think that, oh, I’m just gonna throw money at it and I’m gonna, you know, get ads and all that kind of stuff. And they’re not necessarily getting the results that they expect to get. And I think that’s kind of the reason why, is because when I, when I think about it, even in my own life, think about yourself as a consumer, like.

Do you really respond super well to like the billboards anymore? Or do you kind of like go on social media and say, Hey, does anybody have a guy? I’m looking for a guy. Right. Or a girl. Right. You’re, you’re looking through your own network for people that do the things that you’re looking for nowadays, right?

Gerry Hays: Yeah. Yeah. E [00:19:00] exactly. And uh, you know, and then if it’s a product that doesn’t really exist out in the market, people aren’t gonna be looking for it. So now you’ve got this education component to it, right? It’s very exp very expensive to educate people. So you want your tribe that be a part of that education process as well.

So, um, yeah, it just, uh, again, I, I go back to this human to human contact no matter what it is. Really focus on that. And of course, if you’re looking for a pair of shoes, you know, you’re, there’s, there’s gonna be a lot of companies competing to sell you those shoes and using Google AdWords and ads and that kind of thing that’s out there, that’s for ripe market and you can play that game.

But when you have these sort of undefined products, that’s where, you know, human to human contact is so important.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. But now, and, and then when we get to the next part of it, which is how do you get the referrals? The referrals is really through just doing a really great job at what you do. Which is, I mean, come on. I, you know, I, I think that that’s kind of the. [00:20:00] Uh, the good news about where the world is going is that really all you have to do is just love what you do and do it really, really well, and that is just gonna magically work itself through, because people are gonna say, Hey, yeah, this is my guy.

He loves what he does, and he does a great job, right? W why would you not refer that person right?

Gerry Hays: Yeah. Yeah. And in our case, venture staking, this is a whole new product, right? And the, the ba, the, the basic product is this, A venture stake is backing a entrepreneur early by giving them a grant. It could be as small as $10. It could be as, you know, as large as 10,000, right? But what you do is you lock in two things.

A, you lock into their journey. So now that founder that you’ve venture staked now is sharing with you each week. How they’re building their business. So now you’re gonna get that benefit of understanding what they’re doing. Their failures are ups, you know, all of that, right? The, the sort of the faith worship journey that we were talking about earlier.

You get to see that. Um, and then [00:21:00] if they come up on the other side, have, and they’ve discovered something really amazing and they’re gonna go raise around a capital to do that, you have a right to invest and buy stock in their company. Where VCs would wanna come in there and get that. You have a, a right to buy into that.

So I’m my first product, right? People venture stake to me. And I’m, each week I’m providing them an update about what’s happening with this business. And I love it. Right? And I look forward actually, to my weekly update. Every Friday at six o’clock, I release my weekly update and I love it. And, but from that we’ve had 323 Venture Stakers.

That are in there, but I’ve been getting invited to go to, to, to speak to Cornell. I’ve been, I mean, there’s a lot of things that are coming from that because people are seeing. This process, they’re learning about what we’re doing and they’re going, huh, well, maybe we should, maybe I should invite ’em to go talk to these people, or whatever.

And it’s that organic process that’s that’s happening, right. But I have to be the [00:22:00] product. I can’t just sell something as an idea and not have a real product that people can kick the tires and see.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I, I like what you’re doing ’cause it’s, it’s, uh, like you say, you’re educating people. You’re doing something that doesn’t already exist out there. ’cause like you say, I mean, you know, if I got another pair of shoes that are just better than the other guy’s pair of shoes, well then this is something that people already know.

Now I’m just putting myself in, positioning myself next to everybody else. But for something that’s brand new that nobody has heard of before, this is an idea and you have got no market. So I assume that what you’re talking about now is that your market is people who believe in you or believe that this is a good idea, right?

Gerry Hays: That’s exactly right. I am in, in part the product. Right. Um, but we as humans are the product first and foremost. People buy from people. You know, kinda like in the, I was in the food business for a while, fried chicken business. And what I, what I [00:23:00] learned about that business is that people eat with their eyes.

They always eat with their eyes. And if you’re, you know, we are selling to big grocery stores. And I would tell the, the leaders of the stores that if you’re not presenting this beautifully. Or for people to see this, you’re not gonna sell anything. So people eat with their eyes when it comes to food. But when it comes to buying products, people buy products from people they don’t, you know, in, in, in most cases,

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Now, so on your journey, do you, I mean, do you have coaches? Do you do mastermind? Like how do you learn all this stuff?

Gerry Hays: I. Well, there’s a lot of self-study. Um, I really try to, um, uh, read a lot of books around the mental game. I do believe, I, I think I hit a road, uh, I hit a, uh, a big wall, Tim, I wanna say back in 2015 and like, gosh, I am working my tail off. I am crushing it. And, but yet. There was no harvest. I mean, there, there was a harvest, but not to the [00:24:00] extent that I thought, you know, and I’m just like, what?

What’s happening? I, I’m getting older. I can’t keep working 90 hours a week, and there’s something, there’s gotta be something different. And, and, and then I really started switching and sort of looking at the mental game of all this. Right? And so I did a lot of reading. I’ve listened to a lot of YouTube stuff.

Um, listened to a lot of podcasts around this. But I’ve had coaches. I, I was in a group of other, uh, uh, founders. For about seven, eight years where we just kind of talked about these things. Um, I do have a coach. I actually actually have two coaches, um, right now. Um, and you know, I don’t, you know, I kind of work with them like once a month or whatever, but there’s sometimes I just go, I’m losing my, I’m, I’m losing it right now.

I am totally losing it. And they’ve hold, they hold space for me, right. And that’s what their job is. And I, and I would recommend for everyone who’s doing this. You go on this, you’re gonna go through a furnace, you wanna be an entrepreneur, find a couple people, whether they’re coaches or not, [00:25:00] people, to hold space for you as you’re going through it.

That’s a super important component.

Tim Melanson: I think you’re right, and especially in this home business space where you’re kind of alone, right? I mean, that’s a thing, you know, there’s who do you relate to right? When you’re, when you’re sitting there? But if you have, I mean, the good news now is that we do have Zoom. I mean, we do have this video conferencing thing where you can actually, you know, get that coffee, coffee, uh, what is it called?

The, the, the water cooler feel, where you can actually go and hang out with some people that are similar minded. Because, I mean, there’s that part too. It’s not even just that you need someone to like coach you and mentor you. Sometimes you just need to like talk to somebody who is in a similar place, right.

Gerry Hays: Exactly, exactly. And a lot of that is for you just to talk out loud. What’s going on in your head? Just get it out there. Right. You know, just vomit it out and then it’ll help you sort of make sense of it, and then you can move on.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Awesome. So it’s time for your guest solo. So tell me what’s [00:26:00] exciting in your business right now.

Gerry Hays: Uh, what’s exciting in the business right now is that we are on the precipice of creating an an entirely new system of capital creation through entrepreneurship. Um, traditionally the venture model has been reserved for. Um, the elite few, um, who can aggregate a lot of capital who come from very wealthy families.

And if you’re a founder or an entrepreneur trying to access that capital, you had to have been, you know, come from Harvard or Stanford or MIT and it’s a very closed knit system. Uh, that’s for the 1%, but for the 99% it’s really hard. It’s really hard to get the capital to get started. And uh, this system is designed to bring in millions of people to participate at a level that they can afford.

But what they’re doing is they are buying rights to invest and entrepreneurs in the future, or they’re reserving their rights to invest and [00:27:00] they’re getting people started for as little as $10. But then you could put a hundred dollars into their startups in the future. And there’s that sort of relationship between the founder and the venture stakers where the, they’re sending the founder off on a journey kind of frontier entrepreneur.

And then the, the entrepreneur can turn to their, his or her community and say, here’s what’s happening here. You guys. We got something great. You know, and everyone’s like, and everyone can make a decision. Yeah, let’s put some more money in. And let’s keep this going. It’s sort of this very grassroots, organic way to get, you know, problems solved in the world.

Tim Melanson: So you’re probably looking for people on both sides of that spectrum, right? You’re looking for people that want to like be the. And you want people that want to be the inventor, right?

Gerry Hays: That That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And the cool thing about this, uh, Tim, is that this is all done through sort of a, uh, a foundation. So it’s a, so every time you venture stake, you’re [00:28:00] actually making a contribution into the capital creation system for tax deduction. That gives you venture staking credits.

And then there’s these founders who are coming to what we’re calling arenas. Now arena could be formed around regenerating the earth. The an arena could be, uh, formed around. Um, you know, the Indian di Diaspora, right? Where we’re gonna, we’re going to focus on, uh, funding those entrepreneurs. And that particular mission or geography, your venture stakers then can, with their credits, could enter into those arenas and maybe put a little bit of venture staking credits into someone and now you’re tied to that journey, right?

So it’s all gonna happen through these arenas. So these partnerships that are gonna happen out there are through these, uh, arena partnerships that we’re forming.

Tim Melanson: Wow, that’s really cool stuff. So now is this, like I’m up in Canada, you’re in the States. Is this something that is worldwide or is this only in the States right now?

Gerry Hays: Well, this [00:29:00] is, well, we, we, we’ve revealed the system. It took seven years to reveal the system. Now we’ve closed the reveal process. Now we’re into the launch mode. So now we’re in the process of forming some early, um, arena partnerships. But this is gonna be global. We’re gonna be global from the very beginning.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. Right on. So anybody can participate on both sides of it, I imagine, too,

Gerry Hays: On both sides. Yes.

Tim Melanson: So you’d be able to invest in companies around the world as well.

Gerry Hays: That’s exactly right. Now the cool thing is, what I’ve discovered in all of the research that I did around venture capital is that there’s one model that works better than any other model out there in terms of companies that are have having success, and it’s called the Teal Fellowship. And so it’s this guy, Peter Teal out in San Francisco.

He has a whole commentary about don’t go to school. I’ll give you a hundred thousand bucks. Just go figure something out. Just by getting ambitious people, a little bit of money in runway and an opportunity to focus on something [00:30:00] that’s generated really great outcomes, we wanna scale that model globally.

And so people who get to an arena, if they can get enough venture stakers to back them with credits. They raised a $200,000 grant to get started to conduct r and d. Then after they discover an opportunity, that’s when they come back to their venture stakers and saying, Hey, you guys, here’s the business opportunity.

And then you could decide whether or not you want to invest in that opportunity or not. No obligation, but you buy sort of a, a right if, if you will, um, a, a reservation to participate in that deal.

Tim Melanson: Wow. So how do we find out more?

Gerry Hays: Well, uh, first, uh, come to, uh, Doriot.com, D-O-R-I-O-T. Right, check us out. Um, and then, um, subscribe to our newsletter. And, um, uh, every week I’m put putting out a new newsletter and yeah. And. Start getting some information about what we’re doing and I give you some updates on [00:31:00] how things are progressing and then, um, you know, you just start organically just getting yourself acclimated to this new system of capital.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Now, so I mean obviously this is not a get rich quick or any type of like, uh, you know, it, it is a bit of a gamble, I’m sure. ’cause uh, you know, we are betting on people, uh. So I, you know, I think that, uh, it’s one of those things where if you don’t have the money, don’t go for it. However, on the other hand, uh, you know, if you’ve got a dream, this is a great place to go to go for it because I know that there are a lot of people that do wanna bet on people, right.

Gerry Hays: Yeah, and I think this is really important, Tim. So the venture system is not brand new. It’s been around since 1946, since Joe, uh, George Doriot invented it. Okay. The numbers speak for themselves, okay? Uh, investing in these deals, if you do it correctly, you can earn 10, 15 percentage points above what you could earn in the stock market.

Okay? You don’t put a hundred percent of your money into this, but you should be putting. [00:32:00] Maybe three to four to 5% of your net worth into backing the future. If you think about where the future’s heading, ai, blockchain, all these industries are gonna get reimagined. That’s all gonna happen through entrepreneurship.

If you’re not investing in the entrepreneurs that are re-imagining the world, you are losing out on a massive wealth creation opportunity. But what we make it available for you is if you can only afford to put a hundred dollars and buy a hundred dollars worth of stock. You are buying the, the stock at the same level as someone who buys a million dollars of stock.

You get the same exact deal terms, which means you get the same returns, right? And so this gets you into this game of having a financial stake in the future of our society in a way that’s accessible no matter where you are in the income level. It’s just, you just have to get yourself into this game and understand you should be an owner in human innovation, not just a watcher or a seer.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think that’s great. And, and I mean, I think that the, it’s the price point, right? I mean, [00:33:00] like, you know, if you’re trying to invest in, you know, brand new company, you know, typically I think it would be a lot of money. But I mean, if you can throw 10 bucks in, you know, that’s something that’s pretty affordable for most people.

I mean, if you’re saving a certain amount of money per month and you’re throwing it into, you know, mutual funds or whatever it is you’re doing, your 401k, whatever, it’s, uh, you know, if you take a little small little chunk of that and you put it into people, I mean, that, that’s kind of a cool little diversity ski, uh, uh, plan, right?

Gerry Hays: And not only that, but your immediate product, the immediate return on investment is that now you are gonna be educated on so many entrepreneurs out there trying to build things, and you get to learn all that in real time. It’s like having a real. I like reading a book in real time about entrepreneurship.

So you’ve got this massive flow, and right now in this world, all that, uh, education, it just falls out. We capture it right and deliver it. So people who aspire to be entrepreneurs could be venture staking, and when they’re ready, they could enter an [00:34:00] arena and they are so well poised to succeed because they’ve been learning about what other people are doing, the, the what they do right, what they do wrong, so on and so forth.

Tim Melanson: Wow. I love that. Alright, this might be the toughest question, but who’s your favorite rock star?

Gerry Hays: Oh my favorite rock star of Roger Waters.

Tim Melanson: Nice right on Pink Floyd.

Gerry Hays: yeah, yeah. He’s my favorite of all time.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, he is. Uh, man, I mean, some of his lyrics are pretty relevant even today, isn’t it?

Gerry Hays: Absolutely. He’s timeless.

Tim Melanson: That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for rocking up with me today. This has been a lot of fun. Gerry.

Gerry Hays: I really appreciate it, Tim. Thank you.

Tim Melanson: Great. To the listeners, make sure you go to work@homerockstar.com for more information and to subscribe to our podcast and we’ll see you next time. I.