To the investors of Manifold:

Top asks

• Reply if you’re interested in posting a listing on Manifold’s upcoming Job Board.
• Intro me to anyone who worked on Reddit Predictions.

Key developments

• Sweepstakes shutdown & return to play-money: Mana forever!
• Metrics

  • New user conversion and total site usage are up after deprecating sweepstakes (Feb 12 → Mar 4)!

    

    • Daily bets: 5k → 22k (over 4x!!)
    • ND1 (new user day 1-day 2 retention): 8% → 14%
    • Activation rate (percent of users who signup who go on to bet): 48% → 66%
• New features
  • Numeric & Date markets: the right way
  • Boosts: the right way
  • Market movement notifications (a huge feature we somehow never implemented)
  • Improved homepage design & algo
• Manifold.Love has been spun out as a new business run by Sinclair Chen, a former Manifold dev. Manifold has taken a 10% stake.

Quick thoughts

• We’ve shutdown sweepstakes and returned to play money.
  • Why? Firstly, the regulatory and competitive landscape has changed significantly since we began down this path. As late as last fall, CFTC regulation prohibited election and sports markets, and sweepstakes were a legally-tested way around these restrictions. In our brave new Trump world, all these regulatory guardrails are off, and incumbents like Kalshi are better positioned.
  • More importantly, sweepstakes usage fell short of expectations. Sweepstakes made our product more complex and confusing to use. Additionally, the Manifold brand is so strongly associated with play money that users found it difficult to adapt to the change.
  • We know made the right decision because metrics tracking new user conversion and internal site usage are trending up for the first time in months following the shutdown!
• We’re now going to monetize through B2B income.
  • Manifold has one of the most accomplished userbases of any online platform, with a significant fraction of active users coming from OpenAI, Anthropic, Bridgewater, Jane St, Google, etc. Instead of treating our users as just another group of speculators to monetize, we should embrace what makes our community special.
  • In the short-term, we think focusing on recruiting and brand awareness for tech and finance firms is our best path to profitability. We plan to launch a job board and host sponsored forecasting tournaments on behalf of these companies.
  • We are also changing our growth strategy to match this vision. Instead of casting a wider net that could dilute our user base, we'll focus on attracting users from the tech and finance sectors.
  • We plan to become the leading platform for AI forecasting and discussion, which aligns perfectly with this strategy.
• We’re going to win.
  • After cutting sweepstakes, we’re leaner, meaner, and more productive than ever before as a three person team.
  • Our release velocity has only increased: in the last three weeks, we’ve shipped numeric markets, market boosts, and many core product improvements.
  • Manifold's brand and community are as powerful as ever; the prediction market industry continues to grow and reach mainstream adoption; and we have many exciting ideas to explore: Manifold’s future is bright.

Thanks for your support, and may all your bets be in your favor!

Stephen

Founder & CEO of Manifold