He swapped a research desk for a pool you swim in, filled with plastic sprinkles. The spreadsheet skills came along for the ride.
FOUNDER // OPERATOR // EX-BANKER // ART-WORLD CONVERT
The in-house "MJ" of Museum of Ice Cream. Yes, that is his actual job title around the office.
The signature move at Museum of Ice Cream is the sprinkle pool. You take off your shoes, you wade in, and you are submerged to the waist in antimicrobial plastic sprinkles. Grown professionals do this voluntarily, then post it. Manish Vora co-built the company on the bet that they would, and a few million of them have.
He runs it as co-founder and co-CEO, and he sometimes gets introduced to guests as the company's in-house "MJ." The staff means it as a compliment about energy, not a job description, though at Museum of Ice Cream the line between the two is thin. The brand calls its venues "experiums," a mashup of experience and museum that Vora and co-founder Maryellis Bunn pushed into the lexicon because "museum" undersold what was actually happening inside.
What is happening inside: unlimited ice cream, a Fenway-inspired carnival in Boston, seasonal flavors tuned to each city, and an exit through a gift shop that exists because the whole place is engineered to be photographed. The visit runs 60 to 90 minutes. The afterglow, if the marketing is right, runs longer.
Today the footprint covers New York, Singapore, Chicago, Miami and Boston, with Las Vegas, a ground-up Los Angeles build, and Orlando in the pipeline. The parent company is Figure8, an "experience-first development company," and Vora co-leads it. The job is part real estate, part theme park, part brand studio, and entirely about the same thing: getting people to drop their guard in public.
He grew up in Wayland, Massachusetts, which is why he framed the Seaport location as a homecoming. "Going into Boston was a treat," he told CBS. "That's where the culture was." The Boston build is two stories and, by his account, the company's most advanced yet.
Each city gets its own dialect of the same idea. Singapore, opened in 2021, was the first stamp in the brand's passport. Chicago followed in 2022, Miami in 2024. Boston tucked in a Fenway Park-inspired carnival and rotates seasonal flavors as local tributes. The constants are the unlimited treats, the photogenic rooms, and the sprinkle pool that closes the loop. The rest is tuned to whoever happens to live nearby.
The logic is older than the pastel suggests. Vora spent years learning how attention moves before he ever sold a scoop, and the company he and Bunn built treats a venue the way a magazine treats a cover: every corner is a decision about what a visitor will feel and, crucially, what they will share. The sprinkle pool is not an amenity. It is the headline.
Vora started where ambitious economics graduates start: a desk at Citigroup, then a research director seat at boutique firm Monness, Crespi, Hardt. The market taught him to read demand. He decided the most interesting demand was for things you cannot download.
So he went to the art world. He co-founded GREY AREA, a contemporary art platform that brokered unlikely collaborations - pairing fashion houses like Helmut Lang and Stella McCartney with institutions like the Guggenheim, and brands from Smart Car to Bergdorf Goodman. The skill he was sharpening: making culture and commerce shake hands without either looking cheap.
Then came Lightbox, an experience-tech venue in New York where he served as CEO. He moonlighted as a culture correspondent for NBC New York. By the time he met Maryellis Bunn, who had run forecasting and innovation at Time Inc., the two had the exact complementary toolkit a sprinkle pool requires: one who could imagine the feeling, one who could underwrite it.
The summer that got out of hand
In July 2016 they self-funded a pop-up in New York's Meatpacking District. It was supposed to be a temporary thing. Lines formed, resale tickets appeared, the press arrived, and the temporary thing refused to end. By 2019 they had spun up Figure8 and closed a $40M Series A at a $200M valuation. The press started calling Bunn a "millennial Walt Disney." Vora kept building the machine underneath the magic.
The split of labor became the company's quiet advantage. Bunn supplied the vision and the design language; Vora handled the part that turns a viral moment into a real estate portfolio - the partnerships, the operations, the rooms that have to open on time and stay clean. American Express, Target, Mars, Unilever and Sephora all signed on as collaborators, which is not the guest list you assemble by accident. It is the kind you assemble when someone in the building speaks fluent boardroom.
He keeps a foot in the civic world too. He was a founding board member of UNICEF Next Generation, serves as an Arts Advisor for Times Square, and sits on American Express's Platinum Collective. The recognitions stacked up alongside: a place on Ad Age's 50 Most Creative, a nod from Fast Company's Most Innovative. None of it required him to leave the sprinkle pool.
"Ice cream takes you to another place. It takes you out of all the adult worries, the traffic on the Mass Pike."
"Ice cream, toppings, candy, sweets. There is an entire universe of treats."
"Going into Boston was a treat. That's where the culture was."
He has put the brand next to American Express, Target, Mars, Unilever and Sephora. Pastel rooms, blue-chip logos. The art-world reflex never left.
Named to Ad Age's 50 Most Creative and recognized by Fast Company's Most Innovative - awards usually reserved for people not standing in a sprinkle pool.
Founding board member of UNICEF Next Generation and an Arts Advisor for Times Square. He also sits on American Express's Platinum Collective.
"Museum" implied looking, not touching. He wanted a word for a place you enter and act differently. So he helped make one up.
Raised in Wayland, Massachusetts. The Boston Seaport build wasn't just expansion - it was personal, and he said so.
Colleagues describe a heart of gold and an energy that makes everyone in the room feel great. The brand's whole product, basically, in one person.
Strip away the pastel and the thesis is plain: adults are starved for places that let them play without explanation. Vora is in the business of supplying those places and charging admission. Figure8's pipeline - Las Vegas inside Area15, a ground-up structure in Los Angeles, Orlando on the way - reads less like ice cream and more like a new kind of attraction category being built city by city.
The bet is that the experience economy is not a fad and that the hard part is not the sugar. It is the engineering of joy at scale: the lighting, the flow, the unlimited treats, the exact moment a guest decides to take the photo. He has done it roughly ten times now. The map keeps growing.
When Figure8 announced its Series A in 2019, it framed the mission around a generational shift: millennials and Gen-Z would rather spend on a place to be than a thing to own. Vora has been making versions of that argument for two decades, first to art collectors, then to brand executives, now to anyone willing to take their shoes off. The pitch has not changed much. The audience has only gotten bigger.
It is tempting to read the resume as a swerve - banker, art dealer, then ice cream - but the through-line is consistent. He keeps finding the seam where culture and commerce meet, and he keeps building a doorway there. At GREY AREA it looked like a Helmut Lang collaboration. At Lightbox it looked like a tech-forward venue. At Museum of Ice Cream it looks like a pool of sprinkles with a line out the door. Same instinct, louder colors.