How to Raise $100K in 10 Days (Mentor Fishing)

Mike Del PonteCo-founder of Soma $100,000 raised in 10 days via Kickstarter
Published July 14, 2023 by Niall Doherty

In the book Tools of Titans, author Tim Ferriss writes about Mike Del Ponte, one of the founders of Soma…

[Mike] raised $100K on Kickstarter in 10 days, and I asked him to share some of the best tools and tricks you can use to replicate his success. 

Soma makes water filters; see their Kickstarter campaign from 2014.

One of the tips Mike shares in the book

planning and running a Kickstarter campaign is often done in a haphazard fashion. To prepare for ours, we didn’t want to leave anything to chance, so we interviewed 15 of the top-earning Kickstarter creators. 

It’s a simple but effective hack: before starting any business venture, reach out to people who’ve already done what you’re trying to do and ask if they’ll jump on a call with you.

I did this myself a couple of years ago when I was thinking to start collecting and publishing student reviews on my website

(Before then each review was just an editorial. Our review process has since come a long way.)

I made a list of people who already had established sites built on user reviews, then emailed them individually and asked if they’d be willing to jump on a call with me.

I call this Mentor Fishing.

And it works best when you bait the hook

Part of what I wrote in those emails…

If possible, I’d love to pay for an hour of your time to hear about the challenges you’ve had growing [your site], and how you’ve overcome them. Especially what has and hasn’t worked for generating user reviews.

That would be very helpful to me as essentially we’re thinking to build similar to [your site] but for a completely different niche.

Let me know if you’d be willing to jump on a call. Any insights you share with me would be kept private, of course.

And if you’re too busy or would just rather not for any reason, no worries at all. I’ve learned a lot already just from browsing your site and going through the interviews you’ve done.

Thanks for your time and keep up the great work.

Thanks to those emails, I ended up on several insightful calls, and only one person accepted my offer to pay for their time.

But even if they had all asked me to pay, it would have been worth the money. There I was learning directly from people who had done exactly what I wanted to do

Give this a try yourself if you have in mind a particular business you want to build.

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