Delivered May 15, 2026 @ 5:00pm ET

Weather in Bloomington, IN - Overcast, 20⁰ C / 68⁰ F.

It’s graduation week for most universities.

Table of Contents

• Letsbuyspiritair.com is not about an Airline

My name is Gerry Hays, Founder & CEO of Doriot® (pronounced “Doe-ree-oh”), named after French-born American U.S. General Georges Doriot, the father of Venture Capital. I’m also an author (First Time Founders’s Equity Bible), inventor (U.S. patents for ads on t-shirts, coat checking, and VentureStaking - pending), and 21-year professor of venture capital and entrepreneurial finance at Indiana University.

Democratize Venture is my platform to explore the venture markets and share the insights, strategies, and frameworks I bring into the classroom. It’s also a way for me to share principles of prosperity — because at the end of the day, venture is a pathway to prosperity.

Letsbuyspiritair.com is not about an Airline

Something important is happening around letsbuyspiritair.com.

Not because buying an airline is easy.
Not because this specific transaction is likely to happen cleanly.
And not because decentralized communities suddenly solved all the legal, operational, financial, and governance complexities involved in acquiring a distressed public asset.

They haven’t.

If anything, a transaction like this would be extraordinarily difficult and painful to execute.

But that’s not the point. The point is that it sends a message. A very important message.

For the first time, millions of people are collectively seeing that internet-native communities may eventually become capable of coordinating around real-world ownership, real-world capital formation, and real-world venture activity.

That is the signal.

And if that signal is real, then venture capital itself may be entering a structural split.

Institutional Venture and Decentralized Venture.

Both can exist.
Both should exist.
Because the incentives, priorities, structures, and decision-making systems are fundamentally different.

Institutional Venture will continue doing what it does best:
large funds, concentrated decision-making, institutional governance, elite networks, and highly structured capital allocation.

That model is not disappearing.

But alongside it, a second system may now begin emerging:
Decentralized Venture.

Trust Networks coordinating around projects, businesses, acquisitions, missions, geographies, industries, and communities they collectively believe in.

Not operated through back rooms where a handful of people decide what deserves to exist.

But through transparent systems combining:
Legal + Code.
Capital + Code.
Marketing + Code.
Governance + Code.
Democracy + Code.

And most importantly:
Trust Networks + Code.

Historically, managing massive shareholder participation would have been operationally impossible. Managing 500,000 participants on a cap table? Unthinkable even 10 years ago.

Today, with AI, blockchain infrastructure, automated governance systems, smart contracts, and digitally-native coordination tools, that assumption no longer appears permanently true.

Code changes the economics of coordination.

AI changes the economics of administration.

Blockchain changes the economics of trust and transparency.

And Social Media changes the economics of organization itself.

That combination matters. And, soon we’re going to see Decentralized Venture Infrastructure designed not only for investing, but for participation.

Participation in venture formation.
Participation in learning.
Participation in ownership.
Participation in community-driven economic coordination.

This is an exciting time in the evolution of what may be the most important layer of the global economy: venture and entrepreneurship.

Because ultimately, everyone is trying to accomplish the same thing:

build things,
create value,
and generate wealth.

The systems through which that happens may simply be evolving.

And if letsbuyspiritair.com represents anything historically important, it may not be the acquisition itself.

It may be the moment people realized that decentralized communities could eventually become real venture actors in the world economy.

Have a great weekend - Gerry