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Table of Contents

• This week in the Democratize Venture space

• From Pivot to Scale: Doriot’s Point of No Return

• The Founder Who Has to Scale First

My name is Gerry Hays, Founder & CEO of Doriot® (pronounced “Doe-ree-oh”), a movement to break open the gates of venture and expand innovation and wealth beyond an elite few. Democratize Venture is my platform to explore the venture markets and share the insights, strategies, and frameworks I bring into the classroom. It’s where education meets execution—for anyone ready to play the startup game.

This week in the Democratize Venture space

• I’m disgusted by this idea coming out of Washington, D.C. It would destroy any incentive for the little guys to innovate and invent.

• If you’re interested in crowdfunding, SuperCrowd25 (Aug 21–22) is the year’s largest virtual impact event, uniting entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders to explore how crowdfunding is expanding access to capital and driving social change. The event is free and you can register here.

From Pivot to Scale: Doriot’s Point of No Return

In venture circles, you’ll often hear two words tossed around — pivot and scale. They’re not just startup buzzwords; they’re indicators to investors of exactly how their money will be put to work.

I’ve been thinking about these terms a lot lately, especially coming off our very successful VentureStaking® Reveal period.

At its simplest, a founder builds a product or service, takes it to market, and waits for the verdict. If the market isn’t in love — or worse, actively rejects it — the team has two choices: quit or pivot.

Pivoting is healthy. It’s how most great companies are built. Rarely does a founder nail it on the first try unless they have deep, lived experience with the problem or they’re improving a proven product in a market already primed to buy.

In my case, it took 7 years, 25,000 hours, and several pivots to arrive at the patent-pending financial game we now call VentureStaking®. We did it on a shoestring. If we’d relied on outside investors to fund our R&D, we would’ve been dead years ago. Revenue never covered our operations — we were always in the red — but the mission kept us moving.

Once you’ve locked onto a solution in a big market, the game changes. You’re ready to scale. Scaling means you can deliver your solution at high velocity — either by pushing into the market (big sales engine) or being pulled by demand. The pull is magical. Think Airbnb: once they hit on peer-to-peer lodging, the market rushed toward them. Their job was simply to keep up.

But here’s the truth: the transition from pivot to scale is treacherous. In software, people often think you can just hire a few more people and make it seamless. In our case — because we’re building an entirely new system of venture in a $100 billion market — we have to frontload with highly capable people who can lay the foundation for growth. That’s expensive, and raising capital for it is hard.

Doriot is now at that point. The VentureStaking® system will be unbelievably simple for millions to play — but behind the curtain, the infrastructure will be extremely complex. Technology, legal, financial, and go-to-market capabilities all have to scale in lockstep.

You can’t produce a new car at scale without first building the assembly line. For us, it’s like moving from a garage workshop to a 100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility overnight.

Thus, in the coming weeks, we’ll be looking for high-caliber individuals to join the Launch Team — people ready to wear multiple hats and help bring this new system of venture to the world.

The Founder Who Has to Scale First

And speaking of scaling, I have to admit — the person who needs to scale the most right now is me.

For the past seven years, I’ve been deep in the trenches of R&D, laying the roots of this new capital creation system. I’ve been building the intellectual property — patents, trademarks, trade secrets — piece by piece. I’ve been architecting the model. And I’ve been doing it in true Y Combinator fashion: by doing the things that don’t scale first.

That works when you’re inventing. It works when you’re testing. It works when you’re iterating without the weight of a big team. But once you hit the moment we’re at now, it starts to hold you back.

Founders can’t scale their companies until they scale themselves. That means gradually giving up control and empowering others. It means shifting from a mindset of “tight grip” to one of delegation and trust. It means building a culture where ownership and accountability live in every seat — not just the founder’s.

For me, this next phase will require three big shifts:

1. Mindset Shift
   I have to recognize that the same tight control that kept us alive in the early stage will become a bottleneck if I keep it up. The system needs room to breathe.

2. Embracing Delegation
   Delegation isn’t abdication. It’s training, empowering, and trusting the team to carry more of the load — and knowing they might do things differently (and better) than I would.

3. Redefining My Role
   My value now comes less from building every piece myself, and more from setting strategy, protecting the vision, and clearing obstacles so the team can move fast.

It’s not easy. Every founder feels the tension between letting go and staying involved. But scaling a company is a team sport. And if I don’t scale first, the system we’ve built won’t scale either.

This is the challenge in front of me now — and I’m ready to take it.

Wishing you a focused and fulfilling weekend,

– Gerry ([email protected])