It has been a success as far as I'm concerned, in that it's still up and running almost 20 years later, and it has generated a lot of discussion about long-term topics, which is our goal.
But at the time I hoped it would turn into something much bigger. Lots of bets! Lots of money on table! Secondary bets! Maybe even options! That was definitely not the case. It has stayed niche, and so have prediction markets generally. I think there are good reasons for that.
Checked it out. I think this is a great idea! Why do think it's stayed niche? There IS real money at stake, albeit philanthropic donations.
My personal feeling: people do not want accountability, and to paraphrase Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, they can't handle the truth. I think that's the real reason the Google prediction markets died: managers prefer to do what they want to do, regardless of whether it's going to work or not. Perhaps someone can theorize as to why that's a good thing? I can't.
That is definitely a key component. Getting an actual bet requires two very dedicated and thoughtful people to negotiate terms and commit to possibly looking foolish down the road.
And I think you're also right about what managers want. I was very involved in the Lean Startup movement, which had a few years en vogue a while back. Core to it was being very disciplined about stating and testing hypotheses as quickly as possible. Used right, it can work extremely well.
It got some uptake in startups, but not as much as I expected. And even less uptake in more established companies, although the methods work well there too. Why? My take is that it's not just about managerial desire, although that's important, but also managerial status. For rising through the ranks it's much more effective to talk a big game than a modest and humble one, even though the latter traits are more likely to lead to success.
I hate it, of course. But we can look at examples like Theranos, Uber, and WeWork. None of them ever turned a profit, and it's possible none of them ever will produce a net return. The first CEO got caught eventually and might face some consequences one year or another. But the other two ended up incredibly rich. Who am I to say that bullshit doesn't pay?
It has been an interesting exercise, and our largest bet was over $1m: https://longbets.org/362/
It has been a success as far as I'm concerned, in that it's still up and running almost 20 years later, and it has generated a lot of discussion about long-term topics, which is our goal.
But at the time I hoped it would turn into something much bigger. Lots of bets! Lots of money on table! Secondary bets! Maybe even options! That was definitely not the case. It has stayed niche, and so have prediction markets generally. I think there are good reasons for that.