Mana Industries — Application Draft
Send to: why@mana.inc, j@mana.inc Apply page: https://mana.inc/apply Status: DRAFTING
1. Do you have a personal website or CV?
[Panat — fill in your personal site URL]
2. What is the best way to contact you?
[your email / phone]
3. What is the name of your company?
Script Wizards LLC — operating as Dungeon Books (retail) and Guild (platform). Domain: dungeon.club
4. How did you find out about us?
[fill in — how did you actually find Mana?]
5. Give us the one-liner for your company.
Guild is a membership and loyalty platform for independent shops that own their customer relationships instead of renting them from a SaaS vendor.
6. What is the day-to-day like at your company?
We run an independent sci-fi/fantasy bookstore in Jersey City. Every design decision in the platform comes from operating the shop — we feel the pain of existing tools daily, then build what should exist. Carrie manages the store and leads the nonprofit incorporation. I architect and build the platform. We sell books, run D&D nights, host author events, and ship code. The feedback loop between “what does the shop need today” and “what does the platform do” is measured in hours, not sprints.
7. What does execution look like to you?
Ship working software against real transactions. Guild’s loyalty engine processes actual Square POS sales, syncs to real Stripe subscriptions, and pushes member data back to Square’s customer directory — all running in production at our store. No mockups, no waiting for product-market fit surveys. We built the membership tiers, launched them, and are iterating based on what our members actually do. Execution means the system works today and we learn from it tomorrow.
8. Do you believe you’re solving a meaningful problem?
Independent retail is the backbone of livable neighborhoods but has no shared infrastructure for customer retention. Chains have billion-dollar loyalty programs. Indie shops have punch cards or nothing. The existing tools (Square Loyalty, FiveStars, Stamp Me) are generic, extractive, and use dark patterns — expiring points, manufactured urgency — that directly conflict with the values indie shops exist to uphold. There’s no ethical, shop-owned alternative that’s actually good. We’re building it.
9. Is this company critical to the world or just nice to have?
Independent shops are critical to the world. The infrastructure that helps them survive is critical. When a neighborhood loses its bookstore, its game shop, its cafe — that’s not a market correction, that’s community erosion. The loyalty and membership tools available to these shops are designed to extract value, not build it. Guild exists so that independent shops can build durable relationships with their communities on their own terms. If independent retail dies, it won’t be because people stopped caring — it’ll be because the tools were built for someone else.
10. What differentiates your company from other alternatives?
Three things:
First, we’re the customer. We own and operate the bookstore. Every feature is built because we need it, tested on real transactions, and validated by our own members. No indie shop loyalty platform is built by people who actually run an indie shop.
Second, no dark patterns by design. Points never expire. No “use it or lose it” urgency. No manufactured scarcity. The loyalty engine is designed around celebration and return, not anxiety and loss aversion. This is a philosophical commitment, not a feature toggle.
Third, the architecture. Guild is multi-tenant from day one, built around Square POS (what most indie shops already use), with the loyalty engine decoupled from any single payment processor. Shops define their own tiers, earn rates, and rewards. The platform doesn’t homogenize — it amplifies what makes each shop unique.
11. What does your environment look like?
Two people building from a bookstore in Jersey City. Carrie runs the shop and the nonprofit incorporation. I build the platform. We use Claude Code as a force multiplier — it lets two people move like a team of six. Remote-first engineering, in-person retail. The store is the lab.
12. Do you know other companies in your space?
Square Loyalty (built into Square, basic stamp-card model, no real customization). FiveStars (acquired by SumUp, generic, chain-oriented). Stamp Me (white-label, transactional). Punchh (enterprise, acquired by PAR Technology). WithFriends (membership platform — I’ve worked on their codebase and know its limitations intimately). None of these are built by shop owners, and none of them treat the shop’s identity as something worth preserving.
13. Why is the right time to build this company now?
Square’s API surface is finally mature enough — custom attributes, webhooks, Terminal API — to build real integrations that give shops visibility into member data at the register without leaving Square. The “buy local” movement has cultural momentum but zero infrastructure. And AI development tools mean two people can build what previously required a funded team. The window is open for a small team that knows the domain to build the right thing before a VC-backed company builds the wrong thing at scale.
14. Can you give us your most authentic vision for the future of your company?
In ten years, Guild is the Shopify of customer relationships for independent retail. Not a marketplace, not a network that commoditizes shops into interchangeable nodes — a platform that gives each shop the tools to build its own membership community with its own identity. The bookstore’s loyalty program feels like a guild. The coffee shop’s feels like a regulars’ club. The game store’s feels like a league. Same infrastructure, completely different expressions. And underneath, a shared layer that lets a member who’s loyal to one shop discover another — a neighborhood network that makes being local more rewarding than being convenient.
We’re also building Dungeon Books into a cultural institution — 501(c)(3) nonprofit for programming, expanded space, exhibitions, archive. The bookstore and the platform grow together. The store proves the model. The platform scales it.
15. Where will you be in 10 years?
Dungeon Books is a cultural landmark in Jersey City — expanded space, permanent collection, year-round programming, a destination. Guild is running loyalty for thousands of independent shops, with a network effect that makes local commerce competitive with Amazon Prime. Carrie and I still own the bookstore. The platform sustains itself and the shops it serves. No exit, no flip — durable businesses that compound.
16. Is your company healthy?
The bookstore is open and operating. Revenue covers rent and staff. The platform is functional and processing real transactions. The nonprofit is incorporating. We’re not burning runway — we’re bootstrapping from a real business. What we need is capital to hire and accelerate platform development while the market window is open.
17. Do you have any previous rounds or milestones?
No previous funding rounds. Milestones:
- Dungeon Books open since October 2024
- Press: IndieBound Featured Bookstore (Feb 2026), NJ.com, JCity Times, Shelf Awareness, Patch
- Grand opening attended by two JC councilmembers and an NJ state senator
- Guild loyalty engine: full lifecycle functional (subscribe → earn → redeem → upgrade → downgrade → cancel), Square + Stripe webhooks live, 28 unit tests, E2E tested
- Nonprofit attorney retained, Dungeon Arts Inc. 501(c)(3) incorporation in progress
- Professor Dungeon Master (hundreds of thousands of YouTube followers) ran a game at our anniversary event
18. What are your most meaningful metrics?
[fill in with real numbers — these matter most]
- Monthly store revenue: $___
- Number of Guild members: ___
- Member retention rate: ___
- Average member spend vs. non-member spend: ___
- Events hosted since opening: ___
- Repeat customer rate: ___
Honest note: we’re early. The platform is built but the membership program is just launching. The metrics that matter most right now are store revenue (proves the business model), member signup rate (proves demand for paid membership at an indie shop), and member spend lift (proves the loyalty system works).
19. What is your ideal check size?
100K.
The store is self-sustaining (6K expenses, trending stronger into summer). This is platform investment capital, not retail subsidy.
What it covers:
- 12–18 months of full-time Guild development (replacing current contract income)
- Part-time engineering contractor to accelerate platform buildout
- Launch costs (hosting, NFC hardware, marketing to initial shops)
We’re not asking for runway to find product-market fit — we’re asking for the capacity to go full-time on a product that already works at our own store.
Notes for Panat
Tone: Mana’s portfolio and copy suggest they value authenticity and builders over pitch-deck polish. Jimmy Lee runs internet.dev, a 7-person engineering shop — he’ll appreciate the technical depth. Jeromy built IPFS — he cares about decentralization and ownership. Lead with the fact that you built this for yourselves and it works.
What to emphasize:
- You own the shop. This isn’t a hypothetical.
- No dark patterns is a design philosophy, not marketing copy.
- Two people shipping production software against real payment APIs.
- The nonprofit angle makes this more than a SaaS play — it’s community infrastructure.
What to be honest about:
- You’re early on members. The engine works, the program is launching.
- You need the money partly to exit a contract gig. Frame it as “dedicating full-time to this.”
- Metrics are thin. Lead with what’s built and what’s real, not projections.
Potential concern: Mana’s portfolio is heavy on deep tech / crypto / biotech. Guild is indie retail infrastructure. The bridge: Guild is about ownership — shops owning their customer relationships the way Bluesky lets users own their social graph. Decentralization of commercial relationships, not just protocols.