mana.inc

Mana Industries — VC fund and studio. #1 fundraising target for Dungeon Books / Guild.

Fund thesis

“Investing in paramount technologies to improve the quality of human life and progress.”

Mana Industries Fund 1 LP — dedicated to technologies that augment and improve quality of human life while respecting individual agency.

Focus areas:

Cognitive tooling
High performance computing
Decentralized technology (explicitly includes web3, cryptocurrencies, protocol tokens, digital assets)

jeromy-johnson — first employee at Protocol Labs, led development on IPFS, Coinlist, Filecoin. Much of the web3 ecosystem builds on his work.
jimmy-lee — built technical foundations at 8+ venture-backed startups as early employee. Runs intdev and mentors aspiring webmasters.

Company	What they do
Bluesky	building a social internet
Coordination Network	collaborative tools for solving complex problems
Doola	tools to start your US business from anywhere
General Fabrication	machine tools for permanent industrial revolution
Glif	foundational tools for Filecoin ecosystem
LigandAI	predictive interactomics for therapeutics
Lightcell	engine that uses light to make electricity
Orchid	whole genome screening for embryos
Ordinary Objects	next-gen design tools for AR
Volantis Semiconductor	semiconductor chips for AI
Whenere	fans mod, share, and distribute story worlds
Wilderness Labs	embedded-IoT for .NET developers
YellowHeart	ticketing to empower fans, artists, sports teams

Individual agency — members own their XP/loyalty data, not locked in a shop’s database. Direct thesis alignment.
Decentralized tech — Solana-backed points ledger (hackathon entry) makes cooperative cross-guild network trustless.
Portfolio pattern — YellowHeart (empowering fans via ticketing), Whenere (fan communities) = take broken consumer experience, give ownership back to people. Guild does this for indie retail loyalty.
Bluesky parallel — Bluesky lets users own their social graph. Guild lets members own their loyalty reputation. Same ownership thesis, different domain.

Collaborative — “support is more valuable than just capital.” They build alongside portfolio companies down to the project level.
Expert — core team has deep technical expertise, leveraged not just as advice but through building alongside teams.
Long-term — importance of long-term bets, safe space for experimentation.

Mana is #1 target. Not ready for formal pitch yet — need 2-3 businesses on platform first.
Jimmy already engaged — see jimmy-lee for relationship details.
Solana Frontier Hackathon (April–May 2026) gives a concrete reason to be in touch now.