Delivered October 2, 2025 @ 12:00pm

Weather in Bloomington, IN - Hot for October. 29⁰ C / 85⁰ F

Table of Contents

• What’s happening in the Democratize Venture space

• GameFi: The Future of Finance

  • The Venture Game: Teaching by Playing

  • From Classroom to Market: FantasyStartup®

  • Why Gamification Works

  • GameFi: Where Blockchain Meets Gamification

  • VentureStaking® - Gamifying Real Venture Investing

    • The Poker Analogy

  • What’s Next

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.

What’s happening in the Democratize Venture space

• A shout out to Kingscrowd for running a great program called Investment Crowdfunding Week 2025. Excellent content and speakers. I would highly recommend registering and accessing the recorded content. I learned a ton.

• And, the CfPA 2025 Summit is happening on October 21-22 in Washington, DC. It’s the premier event for investment crowdfunding. I’ll be there.

GameFi: The Future of Finance

I learned early on in my Venture Professorship that standing in front of a classroom and talking about how to raise money wasn’t enough. Students would nod along, but they weren’t feeling it — the stress, the pressure, the anxiety that comes with being a founder pitching for capital. Nor did they understand what it feels like to sit on the other side of the table — as a capital allocator, negotiating with real money on the line.

So, I created a game.

The Venture Game: Teaching by Playing

At Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, I introduced something I called The Venture Game — a classroom simulation that put students in the role of startup founders. They pitch problems, assemble teams, seek funding, and eventually transition into roles as venture capitalists and fund managers, voting on which startups should get funded.

Through game mechanics — role shifts, progressions, team formation, and investment negotiations — students don’t just learn how venture capital works. They feel it. The stakes are fictional, but the emotional investment is very real. Many students still describe it as one of their most memorable experiences.

That classroom experiment led to a deeper realization: gamified entrepreneurship and finance can do what lectures and textbooks never could. It fires new neurons. It accelerates learning. And it sticks.

From Classroom to Market: FantasyStartup®

Believing that the future of work lies in entrepreneurship and ownership, I wanted to build games not just for students — but for everyone.

My first global game was FantasyStartup®. In it, users are given $500 in fake money and presented with 50 real startup stories, all at the earliest stages. Their challenge? Decide how much to invest, if anything. Some startups go bust. A few break out. The game teaches a core truth of venture investing: the power law dominates — most investments fail, but a few big wins can drive the entire return curve.

Through thousands of user surveys, we’ve seen FantasyStartup shift players from “I know nothing about startup investing” to “I want to be a startup investor.” That’s the power of content gamification — making complex, high-stakes concepts intuitive, emotional, and actionable.

Why Gamification Works

Gamification is booming — and for good reason. It’s not just about points and prizes. It’s a strategic framework that turns engagement into meaningful action.

There are two primary types of gamification:

• Structural gamification: Adds scoring, leaderboards, or progress bars to existing tasks without changing the task itself.

• Content gamification: Transforms the task itself into a game-like experience.

The global gamification market is projected to grow from $43 billion in 2024 to $172 billion by 2030, with widespread adoption across industries:

• Retail: 28.5% market share in 2024 via loyalty and engagement programs (Meticulous Research)

• Education: Gamified learning improves student performance by over 34%

• Healthcare: 88% of Americans and 78% of millennials prefer gamified wellness tools (Growth Engineering)

• Enterprise: Over 70% of top companies use gamification for productivity (Build Empire)

It works because it taps into core human motivators: achievement, progress, recognition, competition, and storytelling. Mechanics like levels, streaks, quests, and avatars — once limited to video games — now drive engagement across platforms.

GameFi: Where Blockchain Meets Gamification

The next frontier is GameFi — a fusion of gaming and decentralized finance (DeFi). GameFi platforms use blockchain to let players earn, stake, or trade digital assets inside simulated economies.

Instead of passively learning financial concepts, players actively engage with them — managing portfolios, making investment decisions, and seeing outcomes play out. Real-time decisions. Real stakes. And sometimes, real rewards.

VentureStaking® - Gamifying Real Venture Investing

After FantasyStartup, I wanted to go further: build a real game that offers both education and economic upside, without requiring users to take on high risk.

The Poker Analogy

Here’s what I’ve learned: venture investing is a lot like poker. Success doesn’t come from winning every hand — it comes from playing many hands, minimizing losses, and betting big when the odds are in your favor.

Here’s how the two compare:

We designed VentureStaking to make this idea accessible.

Here’s how it works:

• Early Entry: VentureStakers make a small “ante” investment (e.g., $10) in a founder at the earliest stage to secure future optionality.

• Optionality: That initial stake grants the opportunity to invest more later (e.g., $100) — if the founder progresses, raises a round, and allows VentureStakers to participate.

• Informed Decisions: Stakers can track updates, view metrics, and observe community sentiment before deciding whether to commit real capital.

• High Upside Potential: A $100 investment in the right founder and market could yield significant long-term value — even exceeding $100,000.

This lets players get into multiple games, identify diamonds in the rough, and understand portfolio strategy through experience. And the best part? Every player learns why startups succeed or fail — because the founders are required to keep their VentureStakers informed. It’s part of the game and it’s entrepreneurship education disguised as entertainment.

What’s Next

This is just one half of the equation — the investor side.

Next week, I’ll share more about the other side: how we attract and onboard great founders into this new gamified venture ecosystem.

Wishing you a focused and fulfilling weekend,

– Gerry ([email protected])