Gerry Hays has spent 25 years building and selling companies. He now teaches entrepreneurial finance at Indiana University. His latest venture is a bet on a simple, contentious premise: that the most interesting part of venture capital is not the capital, but the discovery. Doriot, his Bloomington-based startup, is selling a $10 ticket to that process.
At its core, Doriot is a marketplace for options. Its mechanism, branded as VentureStaking®, allows a user to pay a small amount today, as little as $10, for the right, but not the obligation, to invest a larger, predetermined sum in a startup’s future funding round [Doriot, retrieved 2024]. It is a call option on private company equity, stripped of the institutional paperwork and minimums. The company positions it as infrastructure for a game-like discovery of founders, explicitly invoking the legacy of Georges Doriot, the so-called father of modern venture capital [Doriot, retrieved 2024].
The Mechanics of a VentureStake
A VentureStake is a derivative contract. The terms are fixed upfront: a user might pay $10 for the option to invest $100 in a company’s next priced equity round. If the round happens and the user exercises the option, their $10 stake converts into a $100 investment at the terms of that new round. If no round materializes, or if the user passes, they are out only their initial stake. The model is patent-pending, according to Hays [Work at Home Rockstar Podcast, retrieved 2026].
For founders, the pitch is access to a new class of micro-angels and a form of validated interest long before a formal raise. Hays describes it as a way for founders to raise small grants, typically between $25,000 and $100,000, by pitching to a community where contributions start at $10 [Dealquest Podcast, November 2025]. The first VentureStake currently on offer is for Doriot itself [Doriot, retrieved 2024].
The Research Engine: FantasyStartup®
The product did not emerge from a vacuum. It is informed by a parallel, gamified simulation called FantasyStartup®. This platform, which has recorded over 1.5 million simulated investment decisions from more than 13,000 participants, serves as a live lab for testing retail investor behavior and educating users on portfolio diversification and startup terminology [Doriot, retrieved 2024]. It is, in essence, a sandbox for the psychology Doriot aims to monetize.
This educational layer is a deliberate wedge. It builds a funnel of informed users and generates the behavioral data that underpins the VentureStaking model’s design. The simulation has also driven social traction, with Doriot claiming over 200,000 views across TikTok and Instagram [LinkedIn, retrieved 2026].
The Founder’s Track Record and Early Traction
Hays is a serial operator, not a first-time founder. His background includes multiple exits across sectors like food service and media, experience he brings directly into the classroom at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business [Indiana University, retrieved 2026]. He is joined by technical co-founder Akram Mnif and a small team of fellows [Doriot, retrieved 2024]. This operator-educator hybrid profile is central to Doriot’s credibility.
Public traction metrics are early but pointed. Beyond the simulation numbers, the company reports over 200 early adopters have purchased a VentureStake [LinkedIn, retrieved 2026]. The sole disclosed institutional backing is an undisclosed grant from FinTech Frontier in late 2021 [Crunchbase, November 2021]. The company’s funding strategy appears to be leaning into its own model, using the sale of VentureStakes in Doriot itself as a capital source.
Where the Model Faces Friction
Doriot’s ambition runs directly into the most guarded gates in finance: securities regulation and liquidity. The company is navigating a space crowded with registered crowdfunding platforms like Wefunder, Republic, and StartEngine, which facilitate direct equity purchases. Doriot’s options-based approach creates a different regulatory profile and a longer, more complex path to any investor payout.
The risks are not theoretical. They are structural:
- Regulatory complexity. Selling options on private securities is a novel activity that will attract scrutiny from state and federal regulators.
- Liquidity horizon. A VentureStake only pays off if a startup raises a subsequent priced round and that round provides a path to eventual liquidity.
- Founder quality. The model’s utility hinges on attracting credible founders who will go on to raise institutional capital.
Hays’s answer is the educational funnel and the simulation data, which aim to cultivate a more sophisticated retail cohort and identify promising founders earlier. The bet is that discovery, gamified and systematized, can de-risk the earliest stage of investing before the professional money shows up.
The Next Twelve Months
The immediate roadmap is about proving the model with its own currency. The success of the Doriot VentureStake offering will be a critical signal. Converting the 200-plus early adopters into a meaningful pre-seed or seed round for the company itself would validate the mechanism’s utility as a fundraising tool. Concurrently, onboarding the first external startups to offer VentureStakes will test market demand on both sides of the marketplace.