To the investors of Manifold:
Top asks
Key developments
- LK-99: The drama surrounding the replication of the LK-99 room temperature superconductor has been the single largest growth event for Manifold, giving us 5.6 million views, 277,000 unique visitors, and ~3,600 Twitter followers in total in the last 30 days, as well as a peak of 3,500 DAUs. The event has spread Manifold’s name far and wide across the internet, reactivated previously churned users, and lead to an outpouring of investor interest.
- Angelic Visitation: A new angel, Liron Shapira, has come in with a $10k check at a $35mm valuation cap, up from $25mm.
- HostedOnsite: Puerto Rico (August 1 to 14) + Meetup
- New features: Fixed-payout free-response markets, polls, managrams, user reviews & reliability ratings, feed UI + algorithm tweaks, db performance improvements
- In the pipeline: Dashboards, [archived] Manifest 2023, Content strategy, feature freeze + bug fixing
Quick thoughts
- LK-99 vindicates the original idea and strategy behind Manifold:
- User-created markets meant we had high-quality superconductor content to promote before the newscycle even began.
- Play-money ensured we could seamlessly and instantaneously onboard new users in response to Twitter traffic.
- Play-money also meant we did not have to wait for regulatory approval and thus miss the newscycle (ahem, Kalshi).
- The probability changes in our markets became a news item in themselves, driving further virality.
- The only surprising thing about this episode (given that our entire business strategy was premised on achieving virality in precisely this fashion) is why we didn’t go as viral with previous markets. My best guess is that it’s a combination of
- LK-99 being a rare example of uncertainty about a highly important topic with no credible epistemic authorities to tell us about its plausibility.
- Our increased Twitter presence combined with a slow build-up of credibility among well-connected internet personalities having finally reached an inflection point.
- In any case, our social media outreach approach centering on Twitter seems to be working, and we intend to double down on it.
- We’re also experimenting with traditional online advertising, and I’ve hired a consultant to help (who also happens to be a top trader on Manifold!).