The crowdfunding campaign on Republic.com must be initiated within 6 months from market creation (otherwise this resolves N/A). The valuation cap for the raise will be $50mm. The amount raised is prior to any fees. (If exactly $500k is raised, this resolves to the higher "$500k - $1.2mm" option and similary with $1.2mm.)
Note that Republic is capable of sourcing investments from their own community.
Related questions
@SG And apparently Fishtank: https://wefunder.com/fishtank
I think the Republic website has better UX but agree that the client list on wefunder looks much better
@Austin The conditions for investors seem effectively equivalent to The Republic's https://help.wefunder.com/#/investor/investing
Wefunder takes a maximum of $100 from a bank transfer from investors.
How much cash fee and equity do they charge the startups?
If your annual income or net worth is less than $124,000, you can invest 5% of the greater of your annual income or net worth; or
If both your income and net worth are equal to or more than $124,000, you can invest 10% of the greater of your annual income or net worth, not to exceed an amount of $124,000.
(no limit for accredited investors)
https://republic.com/help/how-much-can-i-invest-0b155a4c-a309-4127-b5a8-bdf73b09e592
We just had a quick call with the Republic team on how this would work (notes here: https://manifoldmarkets.notion.site/Mikaela-Republic-44edcbabea1b42db8f56bf533620f1b0?pvs=4)
Excitement for Republic crowdfunding:
This would let lots of our users buy some equity in us, even if they're not accredited. I like that it would let all y'all buy in to our vision, literally
It seems like a cool thing to try! Very in the Manifold spirit
We might learn some things about crowdfunding eg for making Manifund and Manifold better
I'm pretty impressed with Republic's website fwiw
Republic claims that ~half of contributions come from Republic's community, so this could increase the total amount we raise
My primary reservations at this point:
Timeline/attention costs: this would take a while, seems like ~2 months, and fundraising is famously attention-draining. Our best alternative to running this would be to take a few quick angel/VC checks as SAFEs, and then apply for SFF funding + others next year
Bad reference class: Crowdfunding might be a market for lemons, and it's possible VCs would see this as negative evidence for investing in Manifold. I'm curious to talk to other top startup founders, I don't know any who have gone through crowdfunding.
Fees: 7% cash + 2% equity isn't cheap, when the alternative is a bunch of SAFEs
Lock-in: Both technical (are we tied to Republic now) and legal (how does a Crowd SAFE actually work?) I had a bit of dream of registering our own crowdfunding portal and just offering our own secondary equity; or setting up a liquid marketplace for mana <> equity. This might complicate that by a lot.
@Austin Mana <> equity ❤
(That or any other way for non-accredited investors to get Manifold equity would be amazing!)
Asking other top startup founders makes a lot of sense of course. But Manifold might be different because some lemons (or what I'm thinking you mean by that) could be very motivated and effective at helping make Manifold go viral once they have equity. I'd guess that would be less true the less social-networky a startup is.
@SirSalty Complicated -- on one hand, getting some early traction through our angels on Republic would help build hype. On the other, it's somewhat more expensive for us to take large angel checks through Republic, which charges a 7% cash fee and 2% of equity
IMO this market should resolve to whatever number is shown on Republic's dashboard. If we make agreements with VCs/angels off Republic platform, those aren't counted for this market.