How Polymarket Cracked the Viral Code and Raised $70M

The Emotional Triggers and Election Cycle Driving Polymarket’s Explosive Growth

Polymarket is all the rage these days.

It recently hit $470M in volume in August, more than NFT volume on all chains combined ($378M).

It’s gone completely viral this election cycle, with very few people realizing it’s a crypto app.

How did they do it?

Polymarket has built-in virality, which is the grail for any SaaS or crypto founder.

Not every app needs marketing early on; Polymarket is a great example.

Let’s explain how they got to this point and what's next.

What is Polymarket?

Polymarket is a prediction market that enables users to trade outcomes of various world events.

Founded by Shayne Coplan, Polymarket recently raised $45M, for a total of $70M, from Peter Thiels Founders Fund, 1Confirmation, Dragonfly, and Vitalik Buterin.

Prediction markets may seem like a shiny new toy, but they’ve been around for a long time, dating back to 1503, when people bet on who would be the papal successor.

There are even records of election betting on Wall Street dating back to 1884.

Anyways, why is Polymarket such a viral app?

A few factors are at play, and the ingredients for its virality are the following:

• Human emotions

• Current election cycle

As humans, our psyche hasn’t changed much over the last 200,000 years.

Emotions still drive all of our decision-making.

Humans make emotional decisions and then use logic to justify them.

During an election cycle, quite a few emotions are flying around, and Polymarket taps into several BIG ones:

Excitement and Anticipation

Betting on real-world events creates a sense of excitement because people have skin in the game.

That’s the same business model for fantasy football and gambling.

Gambling adds a layer of engagement to football games that no one would usually care about.

It’s like engagement crack, which is why ESPN launched its own betting app.

They create content for people to consume, and then people use that information to bet on games.

The same goes for Polymarket and betting on real-world events.

You’re locked in for the whole cycle when you bet on the presidential election.

Gambling taps into a wide range of emotional triggers, including:

• Excitement

• Anticipation

• Hope

• Fear

• Joy

• Relief

• Fomo
  

There are others, but I think you get the point.

Curiosity and Trust

Even if you don’t bet on the election outcome, most people are already locked in because the stakes have never been higher.

At least, it feels that way for most people, thus increasing their curiosity.

Additionally, trust in MSM and institutions is at an all-time low, triggering anxiety, fear, and doubt.

To curtail these emotions, people constantly seek something neutral or not manipulated.

That’s where Polymarket comes into play.

Intellectual Stimulation

Data attracts people, especially researchers, journalists, and content creators.

Polymarket is another data point people can use to support a well-written article, video, or X thread.

When you add data to your content, it adds more trust and authority.

This leads to intellectual stimulation, which leads to excitement, curiosity, or satisfaction.

Fear

Everyone is afraid that their lives will drastically change if their candidate loses. 

This level of fear is potent and will ensure people keep checking back to see who is ahead.

This creates a viral confirmation bias loop.

Most social media algorithms are built on this principle because it ensures people stay on the platform, creating a tribe.

Social media tribes will seek out data points that support their worldviews and ignore the ones that don’t.

This triggers social sharing.

The people who think Trump will win will share screenshots whenever he’s ahead.

Whenever Harris pulls ahead, that tribe will share data those data points as well.

All of the above creates a viral, social sharing loop that draws more people in, leading to more people using Polymarkets data and writing content around that data.

When people go out of their way to share posts and screenshots, that’s when you know you’ve hit triggers.

In other words, that’s true virality.

And if Polymarket nails the election predictions, it will only add gasoline to the fire.

The stakes have never been higher, and I’m excited to see what happens next.