Investing in Manifest

This year, we invested in Manifest’s seed round after being introduced to the company by Kalos Ventures, which Gratitude is an investor in through our emerging manager fund strategy. Manifest is an AI-powered learning and upskilling platform designed for small and medium businesses. It provides personalized tools and coaching for business formation, team training, and operational scaling. The company combines proprietary industry-specific data with task automation and contextual education to help small businesses navigate complex entrepreneurial challenges. 

Bridging the Wealth Gap

Small and medium businesses are a cornerstone of the U.S. economy; they contribute over 43% of the GDP and 39% of US payroll. Owning a small business is an accessible way to build long-term financial stability and generational wealth. Small business ownership can offer a way to generate revenue from skills and assets already in hand, such as trade knowledge, caregiving experience, or community relationships, and to directly control one’s income and economic destiny. When successful, small businesses can become stable employers of non-traditional workers, anchor institutions in communities, and sources of intergenerational wealth building.  

Why We Invested in Manifest

Experienced Founder with Strong Operating Background

Manifest is led by CEO and Founder Sarah Horn, an exited founder with deep experience building companies in the alternative education space. Sarah was previously the CEO of ReUp, which focused on students that have dropped out of educational systems.

Scalable Solution for Business Owner Upskilling

Manifest’s use of a Large Language Model (LLM) allows it to customize content for small business owners across different verticals at scale. Its high customer retention is a testament to the value its product is driving for busy small business owners. Manifest is leveraging AI to serve small business owners at scale, a group that without AI has a high cost to serve. Manifest has demonstrated that it can successfully leverage channel partnerships to add to its content, build its data moat, and reduce customer acquisition costs. 

Large and Underserved Market

Manifest is operating in a large market; we size the Total Available Market at $280B. Manifest aims to have highly diversified revenue streams across different industries in which small and medium businesses are the leading players; this strategy will help to insulate the company from technological, macroeconomic, or regulatory shifts that could impact any one industry.