• Synthesized takeaways
  • What’s Manifund’s current edge:
    • Community:
      • Close link to Manifold comes with built-in audience
      • Genuine community ties to EA/rationalist world
      • Uniquely high-quality network to many high-net-worth individuals
    • Capabilities/experience:
      • Ability to surface ideas that are “weird-in-a-good-way”
      • Offering agency and participation
      • Beautiful UX and gamification
    • Mindset — willing to do things that traditional philanthropy treats as taboo for idiosyncratic reasons
  • Evaluation of strategic options given that edge:
    • Expanding to traditional philanthropy is more difficult than we originally hypothesized:
      • Run by individuals (’the true client”) with strong pre-existing beliefs about:
        • What causes and ways of supporting them they should pursue
        • What the goal of philanthropy is and the role of profit-seeking in it
        • In other words, funders “fund what they [already] want to fund”
      • Follow a process is unfriendly to new entrants, especially intermediaries:
        • Usually have a few favored organizations they partner with that act as gatekeepers
        • Skeptical of intermediaries that promise to add value in exchange for fees
        • Usually unwilling to share credit/process/ownership of an issue with others, making them skeptical of things like regranting and impact certs
        • Most only willing to pursue genuinely innovative ideas if they’re vetted by the largest philanthropists — and see themselves as innovative already
    • By contrast, expanding within current community (EA) and adjacencies may be easier
      • Many potential high-net-worth individuals that would be interested in charitable impact but by definition not part of traditional ecosystem
      • Manifund’s offerings are more likely to be compelling to individuals who care about impact and betting on beliefs
        • Can begin by demonstrating potential for impact, not convincing them of underlying theory of change
      • Even if ultimate goal was traditional philanthropy expansion, likely that demonstrating impact and building name recognition within EA ecosystem and adjacent communities first would make it more plausible to capture opportunities with traditional philanthropy
  • Additional marketing feedback:
    • Work on elevator pitch and “what’s your edge” for Manifund as a whole
    • Lead with “what problems this solves” for nonprofit ecosystem or a given donor
    • For each of the existing product offerings, come up with a very tight description of how it works and a basic comparison page with checkmarks for how it compares to traditional philanthropy
    • Consider analogies to crowdfunding, not just traditional mass philanthropy
    • Change logged-out / first-time user experience: current view too busy and projects might be confusing. Pick a few of the most compelling stories and put them up front; hide rest on another page
    • Support proposers of projects — create nudges/feedback mechanisms to cause them to highlight impact — not just “write a report”

Previous notes:

• Takeaways from interviews:
  • From Peter:
    • Associate the brand of Manifund with the successful orgs related to it (e.g. LTFF, Lightcone)
  • From Roger:
    • Mega foundations are pretty competed for; think about what our edge is, and also how we can raise from them
    • Roger’s reaction to “what Manifund is most like” — Kickstarter or Gofundme
      • [D] Not sure, but “buy-in into the success specific project” is one thing to consider
    • Elevator pitch needs work and “what’s your edge”
      • Elevator pitch:
        • [A] Process-wise beginning to end didn’t seem to work; better to start with “Scott Alexander has a pile of money, how does he distribute it”
        • Lead with “what problems this solves” on fixing nonprofit funding [D] this drives more passion

      • What’s your edge:

        1. Genuine community ties to the EA world, which also surfaces weird-in-a-good-way ideas that more traditional venture phil doesn't
        2. A feeling of more agency/participation -- enabled by a beautiful UX and some gamification -- than the other options in the EA world have (which are roughly "yeah, you should just give your donation to the top GiveWell charities)
        3. A model that you could extend into other communities that have a parasocial relationship with something like a Scott Alexander figure (e.g., Yglesias? -- We could probably get one meeting with him via my friend Dara Lind if that's helpful, but that's a one-time card to play probably so I wouldn't recommend doing it until we're buttoned up)
        4. The connection to Manifold Markets, which draws in audience and makes people believe that they should bet their beliefs
        5. I think Manifold actually has a uniquely high-quality network, including some exited tech founder types (eg Emmett Shear dropped by to speak at Manifest). Roger said something like "this won't work unless you happen to know any billionaires" and I thought "actually I'm pretty sure there are nonzero billionaires who spend time on Manifold...", and that some of these rich folks are also the ones who like experimenting with new funding mechanisms

Other marketing materials to consider creating:

• some basic comparison page of "impact cert vs traditional grantmaking" might be helpful for the "why are you better" part of sales

Appendix

All interviews:

• Interview with Peter McCluskey
• Interview with Roger Low