• Openness is advantageous in the beginning, but maladaptive later on
  • In the beginning, you have no brand to lose
    • OpenPhil, OpenAI are much less open than they used to be
  • In the beginning, you have less stuff to share so it’s easier to share all of it
    • Manifold codebase and Notion are super messy now
    • The ability to navigate an internal mess is a kind of power
    • Search, outlines, summaries, charts are a kind of openness
• It’s easier to be open about yourself and data that you “control”; harder for data that other people have given you, or data about other people
  • Privacy is a harmful meme; the idea of privacy makes people think “hey, you shouldn’t be able to say that about me”
  • Private pieces of Manifold mostly are “because of other people”
• Manifold aims for openness on:
  • Our source code
  • Our data
  • The knowledge of our meetings
  • Our financials (including salary, cap table)
• Paragons of openness:
  • Blogging on the internet (Holden, Jeff & Julia)
  • APIs
  • Our World In Data

Counterpoints

• Selective shared vulnerability might be a cornerstone of a relationship? If you’re as open about your thoughts with everyone as with your partner, what’s special about a partnership?
  • E.g. love letters, naked photos, sexual activity are valuable because they’re extremely exclusive

Misc

• If Manifold is open on our codebase/data/processes, where is its value?
  • Brand — people know about Manifold and trust it to be a good experience and providing useful knowledge
  • Team — both the individuals working on the team, and the relationships between them. The team can make changes on its existing codebase & data much much better than anyone else
  • Money — the team still controls where we spend money, who we hire (aka whose time we rent to further add to the Manifold platform)