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Section 6: Budget Framework

This budget section defines trigger-based scale decisions tied to observed early behaviors in the case set. No primary artifact in this evidence set publishes a canonical spend split for this category, so this section avoids fixed percentages and uses explicit budget gates tied to cohort/liquidity outcomes. E3 E4 E2

  • Polymarket/Kalshi/Novig: manual operator distribution and onboarding support appear first. E34 E58 E59 E60 E65 E66
  • DraftKings/FanDuel: use as historical control for launch sequencing only (narrow initial formats, staged expansion), not as direct current channel/budget calibration for 2026. E46 E49 E50 E51 E90

References: E8 E9 E3 E4

Budget Triggers (First 6 Months)

Before increasing any line item, require all three checks:

  1. Cohort quality is stable or improving (not just top-of-funnel growth).
  2. Liquidity quality metrics are stable or improving on core markets.
  3. Risk/compliance load from that channel is still within operating limits.

1) Liquidity and Market Quality

  • Increase only when spread/depth/fill reliability improves and retained cohorts are also improving. E3 E4
  • Freeze/reallocate when retention rises but book quality worsens (or vice versa); both must hold.

2) Founder/Operator Distribution and Community Operations

  • Maintain launch budget here while thread-level support and operator-led activation remain strong. E58 E59 E60
  • Cut when top-of-funnel engagement does not convert into funded first trades or retained activity.

3) Referral / Incentive Programs

  • Fund only qualified acquisition (deposit + first trade + retained activity threshold). E4
  • Apply hard stop-loss if incentive cohorts miss retention and liquidity contribution gates.

4) Paid Acquisition

  • Keep in experiment mode until onboarding conversion and payback are stable by cohort. E2
  • Never scale paid spend just because CPM/CPC improves; require retained-quality proof.

5) Programmatic Discovery (SEO + PSEO + LLM SEO)

  • Allocate budget only to quality-gated publishing systems and editorial QA.
  • Reject thin/unverifiable generated pages; monitor answer-engine crawler/referral share and ranking-update cadence continuously. E6 E83 E84 E91

6) Trust, Risk, and Compliance

  • Treat as non-discretionary baseline coverage from day one.
  • Increase budget immediately when dispute latency, abuse flags, or incident volume rise. E10 E11

Pre-Launch Budget Use (Monthly)

Before mainnet, budget is for validation only:

  • First-trade activation quality
  • Operator-led community pull
  • Market-definition and settlement clarity
  • Instrumentation for liquidity and cohort quality

Operating Rule

Budget follows evidence and cohort quality, reviewed as an explicit decision loop:

  1. Scale only what improves liquidity + retention together.
  2. Keep paid/performance in experiment mode until quality gates pass.
  3. Keep programmatic discovery quality-gated (SEO, PSEO, LLM SEO) from day one.
  4. Freeze any channel where compliance/risk load rises faster than qualified activation gains. E10 E11

References: E2 E3 E4 E6 E91