July Retro: What could have gone better?
12
740Ṁ130resolved Aug 3
ResolvedN/A
19%Other
17%
In-person recruitment didn't present a compelling use case
12%
Unclear whether we're supposed to be focusing on growth, fixes, or Manifund
12%
Market mechanisms still bad: DPM on FR, and MCM, and Numeric markets being capital inefficient
9%
Continuing lack of user growth
8%
failure to prioritize new user experience
8%
Should have created growth plan earlier
6%
No big wins
3%
slashing balances of matching IP address accounts
3%
Groups chat and other use cases not fully worked out
2%
Pool values are a worse proxy for liquidity in a world with limit orders
1.6%
Figuring out a standup time that includes everyone
Where did we drop the ball? The point of this isn't to point fingers or assign blame, but rather to identify where our processes and strategy are not serving us well.
Mostly, this market is for the Manifold team; don't expect the probabilities, etc to mean much other than like a subjective vote on how much you agree with a particular statement, or how much you want to discuss it.
Last time: https://manifold.markets/Austin/june-30-cycle-retro-what-could-have
This question is managed and resolved by Manifold.
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@Austin or to put it in maybe a more sympathetic way - aggregating market beliefs to create useful predictions *IS* a societal good in and of itself. Focus on actualizing that into the best version of itself - at least for the Manifold site proper. I'm not against the Manifund stuff in principle, but I think it's a distraction from building what could become *the* prediction market site.... if y'all get it right.
@Austin I think it's worth questioning your assumptions about the EA/rat folks being your biggest potential constituency. I don't know the hard stats, but my guess is the actual number of people heavily involved in online EA/rat stuff is small compared to the potential userbase of a very accessible prediction market.
On a similar note, while I understand that you're super into the idea of Manifold's mechanisms being entwined with EA and philanthropy in general, I am not convinced this is actually a productive area for the site to focus on. Or at the very least, you've got to figure out how to sell it to (for a lack of a better term, sorry) regular people.
@JamesGrugett This is the most important aspect other than what I've stated. The groups chat feature still works very weirdly in my experience.
[J] True. MCM is still a big step forward for user experience.
[S] Not that important. Don't need for Product market fit.
[Si] Accuracy is very important.
[A] People want to use numeric markets, FR, multiple choice. They ask what they care about.
[S] Is it blocking us? [A] Top of funnel or in the funnel. Making site better for experienced users.
[J] Should be able to solve this. Don't be unambitious.
@ManifoldMarkets Ownership of these areas is not clear as well
When anyone says this is a thing "we" need to do, bystander effect means it's a thing that no one does
@SG Didn't prioritize growth. We should all be concerned with growth.
[i] Iterative improvement doesn't necessarily get the 10x improvements, like Sinclair said.
[J] Prioritizing the new user experience, which is distinct.
@Austin maybe better to curate markets specifically for the in person event? In preparation for the event
@Austin I think signing people up with a specific, relevant market would give them a first step for how to use Manifold, instead of just having them scan the QR code, collect the mana, and leave. We sort of did this at Atlas — maybe we should have a market for signing folks up at each event.
@SG What timeframe you mean by "earlier" here? like a couple weeks earlier (July 1st?) or even earlier (June 1st? May 1st?)
@SG Clara Collier tripped over this, and also never realized. She was like "oh, it was so hard to make mana in the beginning"
Which is to say, there was little virality (people sharing Manifold markets with each other IRL); all the growth was driven by us pushing the referral links on people.
We could have had EAG markets on something that people cared about, but failed to make this happen. (And failed to present Manifold in a way such that EAG participants naturally did this)