London Manifold.love dating shows

Project summary

Two manifold.love prediction market dating shows in London with live-betting on Dec 19 (event page) and around St. Valentines day (TBD, somewhere around Feb 7..14). Each dating show runs for 1.5 hours and followed by 2-3 hours of socialising, typical meetup style.

The format of the show. 3 women and 3 men come to the stage of Newspeak House to maybe find love. The show is co-hosted by me and Rachel Clifton. We run the show in such a way to support the participants and provide entertainment for the viewers. We help participants put themselves out there and show their personality by asking them questions and guiding the discussion.

Live betting. Throughout the show the audience bets on pairs of participants mutually liking each other. The live stats are projected on the screen. At the end of the show participants privately input who they would like to go on a date with — and if there is a mutual match, we announce it. The mechanics here are similar to speed dating or Tinder allowing the audience to get a pay off in the end by seeing their prediction become reality (or not).

The first show is already scheduled to happen on 19th of December and is going to use this exact format. We might change the format somewhat for the second show depending on how the first one goes.

Project valuation. On a call Austin suggested multiple ways to value the project, one of them is taking a typical ticket price for similar things like $25 and multiplying it by the number of participants. We’re expecting ≈30 people during the first show and 60+ people during the second one. Austin also mentioned that they’d pay several hundred dollars for quality marketing materials (videos, substack posts) — and we intend to create these. (30 + 60)×$25 + 2×$400 = $3050 — this our initial valuation. We are only selling a small percentage of equity (15%) because we don’t need the money upfront and we’re confident in the quality of the product we are creating: our show is going to be a blast.

What are this project's goals and how will you achieve them?

Help participants — hopefully — find love! Provide high-quality entertainment to the audience.
Promote Manifold.love, Manifold Markets, prediction markets in general, and using prediction markets for personal questions.
Sign up people to Manifold.love and Manifold.markets.
Get people to have interesting discussions about dating, social technology and political technology.
Explore live-betting as a key event mechanic and as a key event mechanic for dating shows specifically.
Generate marketing materials for Manifold.

How will this funding be used?

We’re primarily going to compensate ourselves.

I currently don’t have a full-time job and even preparing for the first show took 50-60 hours:

Figuring out the format and its implication
Finding participants, I talked to dozens of people and I lost count how many times I opened the discussion with “Do you want to find love?”
Writing proposals for Newspeak House and allocating space there
Coordinating with participants about which days work for them
Creating event pages, promoting the show in various groups, etc
Actually running the show on the day, setting up for it, winding it down

Who is on your team and what's your track record on similar projects?

We have two people.

Sasha Putilin (me). I successfully ran several 30-50 people events at Newspeak House (examples: 50+ people unconference, 30+ people meetup). I have a year of Improv Comedy experience (3 levels of classes) — very comfortable being on stage in unusual situations and quickly thinking on my feet. I am a writer on psychotechnology, i.e. have experience expressing thoughts on complex topics while being entertaining. I am a big fan of prediction markets, and I have a 290+ days streak on Manifold Markets with 100k mana in profits.
Rachel Clifton. She is a very alternative executive coach & entrepreneur who specialises in helping the most successful men of today & tomorrow come alive, claim their innate purpose & power, and transform their relationships with women. She worked with dozens of clients over several years. Here is what her clients say about her: example 1, example 2, example 3. Extensive set of her links.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails? (premortem)

I’m confident in the project's success, and not expecting catastrophic failures here. Here are some examples how the shows can fail:

Significantly less people come on Dec 19 than RSVP’d because it’s so close to Christmas and it’s awkward for the participants
Participants weird out each other with their answer, someone cries and leaves the stage and it’s awkward for everyone involved
Live betting ends up a distraction for participants and the audience, people are weirded out by the betting dynamics
Some kind of harassment happens during the first show and we have no option but to cancel the second one in response
Both hosts fall sick around the show dates

What other funding are you or your project getting?

I am a resident fellow at Newspeak House, aka the London College of Political Technology. We run 250+ events per year on the intersection of politics, science, technology, civic tech, and so on. From EA and Rationalist events to direct action group discussions.

Newspeak House will provide physical space to host the shows. The max capacity of the space is 100.