Flight to NYC + Dinner with Tim Ferris & Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit

[Davidla]

I entered a challenge yesterday, and the winner gets to go out to dinner with Tim and Alexis as well as round trip airfare to NYC. The challenge is a fundraising contest for Donorschoose.org, a kickstarter for classrooms.

To win this challenge, I need to get as many people to donate $1 through my fundraising page. I want to ask for your fastlane support, and in return I will do the following if I win:

1) Write a comprehensive post about the experience and what I've learned.
2) Take the top questions from the donors, and ask Tim/Alexis especially for you.

All you need to do is go to my giving page, and donate as little as $1 to an education project of your choosing! It takes only one minute.

I am very determined to win this, as meeting Tim in person would be an amazing experience and dream come true for me. The competition started 10 days ago, and the leader has 40 donors at the moment. I started yesterday, and already have 13 donors - so it's definitely possible with a lot of hard work.

Many of these projects are in poor areas, where the teachers are only asking for basic writing/reading aids for their projects, and the money goes straight to the teachers as opposed to organizations and middlemen.

Appreciate your help! the page is:

CrowdFunding Meets Public Schools.

UPDATE: made a short video about it, check it out:

[video=youtube_share;vGulU60UtLU]http://youtu.be/vGulU60UtLU[/video]

Thanks,

David

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Thread moved to off-topic. (Donated as well.)

Good luck!!

 

[Davidla]

Thread moved to off-topic. (Donated as well.)

Good luck!!

Thanks MJ!

A little update:

Up to 29 donors. The #1 place currently has 49. Working on a 1 minute video, hopefully will be ready by tommorow and I"l post it here.

 

[MikeC]

Donated!

 

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[theag]

Will donate if I like the video

 

[Davidla]

Here's the video, check it out!

[video=youtube_share;vGulU60UtLU]http://youtu.be/vGulU60UtLU[/video]

 

[ZDS]

Let's help David win this! Think about what an awesome write up that would be for the forum to have! Not to mention, David goes to BnP so I' m sure David would be willing to do a presentation on what he learned if he wins!

 

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[Jonleehacker]

Donated, best of luck with the contest.

 

[Runum]

Donated, you are at 42 donors now. Good luck.

 

[Likwid24]

Done! Good luck David!! And if you make it to NY, Don't forget to call me!

 

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[jon.a]

Done...
I hope every little bit helps

jon

 

[Davidla]

Thanks for the support guys! Currently at first place with 64 donors.
Here's the leadersboard:
The 4-Hour Chef Giveback Campaign

Done! Good luck David!! And if you make it to NY, Don't forget to call me!

For sure Sal

 

[theag]

Donated. You got your first project completed

 

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[Davidla]

Donated. You got your first project completed

Thanks Theag!

Looks like its gonna be a close competition, #2 is catching up real fast. Do you guys have any ideas on how to reach more people with the campaign and get them to donate?

 

[Milkanic]

Donated. Have you tried posting this on Reddit?

 

[Davidla]

Donated. Have you tried posting this on Reddit?

Thanks!

Not yet, that's a good idea! Will do today.

 

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[LightHouse]

edit, donated, good luck dude!

 

[Milkanic]

Thanks!

Not yet, that's a good idea! Will do today.

Post this link back here so we can up vote it on Reddit also.

 

[snowbank]

I want to see David win this thing— he's very close.

Takes like a minute, and it's for a good cause.

For some incentive— reply letting David know you contributed— I'll pick someone at random and hop on a 15 minute call and give you feedback on whatever business project you're working on.

1 day left to help David win.

 

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[Jake]

Donated. Hope you make it to NYC!

 

[FreeMan]

Donated. Good luck!

 

[Mrs. BRKb]

Donated.

Let's do this! Now's the time.

 

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[Davidla]

I want to see David win this thing— he's very close.

Takes like a minute, and it's for a good cause.

For some incentive— reply letting David know you contributed— I'll pick someone at random and hop on a 15 minute call and give you feedback on whatever business project you're working on.

1 day left to help David win.

Thanks Billy! It's great to have all of this support from the Fastlane community. The competition is very close, but hopefully a strong final push and a little last-minute surprise I have planned will do it.

 

[Yankee427]

David, donated as well. Good luck on the contest.

It's always interesting living in New York to think of coming here seeing anyone as a big deal. I always forget New York is a huge mecca for business and its probably a good place to start one. I just take for granted everything I have access to here I guess. I just hop on a 20 minute train ride and Im in Manhattan.

 

[Davidla]

Unofficial results came in, and it looks like I got 2nd place in the competition - lost by a pretty big margin. Thank you everyone for the support! It has definitely been an interesting experience that made me step out of comfort zone on quite a few areas. Of course, the good that has been done for poor public schools is surely not overshadowed by losing the competition.

A few afterthoughts about the competition:

- Competing against other Tim Ferris fans is definitely challenging . Especially when going for quantity of donors - in hindsight should have probably went for total funds raised, as there was potentially less competition there.

- I failed to implement some of the teachings of Tim Ferris in this competition. That is, using automatic/smart methods to gain the desired outcome. I definitely hustled, but didn't capitalize on some opportunities to gain MANY donors with little time investment through a creative method - even though I was presented with a few ideas to do so. There was some risk involved with these ideas, as they could've not worked at all, and that threw me off. Instead, I chose to go with simple yet time consuming and unscalable ideas like going around bars with an Ipad to and selling people (LOL).

- Didn't shoot for the stars. I entered the competition after 10 days, and seeing that the #1 spot had 33 donors. From standard calculations and adding some margin, I figured 150-200 should be enough to win (ended up getting 255. First place had 430). If I aimed at doing something really incredible like 1,000 donors, I would have probably had to think more outside the box and could have won easier.

That being said, again it was a very good experience. Thanks again for helping me out - I really appreciate it.

- David

 

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