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- A New Model of Venture - That is not Silicon Valley
A New Model of Venture - That is not Silicon Valley
Delivered November 15 @ 5:00pm ET
Table of Contents
Happy Friday everyone! My name is Gerry Hays, Founder of Doriot (pronounced: dor-ee-oh). At Doriot, we believe venture should be innovation-driven and permissionless.
More specifically, given the uncertainty artificial intelligence creates around how we spend our time and earn a living, it’s crucial to equip future generations with a venture mindset and provide platforms that allow them to activate their imagination, talent, and capital to bring new ideas and value to the world. Right now, only the wealthy and well-connected have this privilege.
Thus, in addition to launching a venture empowerment platform through Doriot, the weekly 'Democratize Venture' Insider is offered as an free tool for anyone ready to embrace the future and start down this path.
And I’ve elected to share net subscriber numbers on a weekly basis because, if you’re reading this, you are what’s considered an innovator on the innovation adoption curve. So, to you, in the words of Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has.”
Let’s welcome our 2 new members to the Democratize Venture movement!
What’s been top of mind this week.
Open AI’s decimation of Chegg: LinkedIN Post
How Americans spend their Days: LinkedIN Post
A new model of Venture - That is not Silicon Valley
In 1946, Georges Doriot launched a revolutionary idea: invest in building bold, high-risk, high-reward companies. Few know that the first-ever Venture Capital Fund, American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC), was publicly traded, opening venture capital to everyone - not just the elite.
During its run, ARDC delivered 22% annual returns. For context, $1,000 invested in ARDC would have turned into $37,000 - a 3,591% return - while the stock market during that same period would have returned just $8,574.
ARDC wasn’t just allocating capital. It was building companies, hands-on. In many ways, Doriot’s model was the first startup studio, and frankly, it worked.
Doriot’s principles were simple:
Bet on a cohort of talented individuals.
Work relentlessly to help them succeed.
Open the doors so everyone - not just the wealthy - could share in the upside of what’s created.
Now compare that to what we see today.
Silicon Valley: A Closed System
Silicon Valley has strayed far from Doriot’s vision. It’s a closed system - built by elites, for elites. Venture capital is dominated by graduates of Harvard, Stanford, and MIT, with ~70% of Silicon Valley VCs hailing from these schools. The elites fund their own.
But it’s not just about who profits from building the future - it’s about who decides what the future should look like. Right now, too much power is concentrated in the hands of far too few people with a very elitist bubble. And that’s a problem.
A New Model: Global-Local Venture
We need something different. Something bold and inherently decentralized. A venture model for the rest of the world that doesn’t copy Silicon Valley, but outperforms it. A grassroots model built on Doriot’s proven principles and scaled globally:
An organized process to identify and invite a new class of Founder/Builders through an application-based cohort system, designed to participate in a new kind of venture—one centered on collaboration, collective business building, and shared upside;
Provide these Builders with a scalable support infrastructure that allows them to focus on what matters most for their businesses (i.e. revenue and customers).
Offer thousands of retail investors within the community a new and compelling venture investment vehicle, making it attractive to back these companies as they launch and grow during their formative years - offering access to true venture capital returns with collective downside risk.
When structured right, local communities can fund and support startups to self-sufficiency. They don’t need Silicon Valley’s approval - or its capital. Risk is spread across thousands of people, and so is the reward.
A Cooperative Future
But this can’t stop at the local level. To truly scale across the globe, we need to think bigger. What if every community participating in this new venture model was connected via a branch system - sharing resources, technology, and expertise?
And, here’s the radical part: tokenize the entire system. Let every participant - founders, backers, builders, learners - earn equity in what I’m calling a Global-Local Venture Cooperative (GLVC). Imagine millions of people building the future together at the grassroots level, while also sharing in the upside of what is collectively built Globally!
How this might work - Sarah’s Story
Imagine Sarah, a recent college graduate, working full-time. She doesn’t know much about venture so she joins the GLVC Branch in her community, playing venture games and simulations with others to learn the basics on the side. Through membership and learning, she starts earning tokens - a share in the GLVC.
As her interest grows, Sarah invests $1,000 in the latest cohort of founders, earning additional tokens. Through a process called Venture Staking™, she votes on which founders advance and selects the ones she wants to preference for potential profits, knowing that her downside risk is shared equally with all investors (they sink or swim together).
Inspired by watching the founders’ journeys in the cohort, she earns her GLVC Venture certification and applies to the Branch’s next cohort. When she’s accepted, she earns an even larger allotment of GLVC tokens. All the while, her $1,000 investment continues to grow.
Sarah has since become an investor in every cohort, a cofounder in a thriving company, an active participant in a supportive innovation community, and a regular attendee of GLVC Global Summits, where she draws inspiration from others around the world.
With billions of dollars in capital aggregated within the GLVC System and thousands of backed companies succeeding, the system has led to a record number of new companies being launched. As a result, Sarah’s tokens in GLVC are now worth enough to pay for her daughter’s college—on top of the equity she owns in the local companies and in her own company, which gives her a profound sense of purpose.
This is how the system works - giving motivated people the opportunity to learn, invest, build, and thrive while shaping the future.
Everything we need to make this happen already exists.
The blueprint, the education programs, the tools, the frameworks, the technologies—all of it exists today to make this happen. And with the rise of no-code and AI, companies will likely require far less investment capital to reach escape velocity, potentially eroding Silicon Valley’s capital advantage.
So, ask yourself: Do you want to watch the future unfold, controlled by an elite few, or do you want to help build one that is permissionless (and empowering) to all of us?
If it’s the latter, share this post via email, LinkedIn, X, Facebook - wherever you connect. Invite others to join this movement.
Have a great weekend, everyone! IU Football is still rockin it!!!! 🏈
Sincerely, -gerry ([email protected])
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