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[E4C65] From Idea to Launched Product in 18 Months, Mike Del Ponte of Soma

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E4C 65 Soma _Mike Del Ponte_fb_640x334My very special guest for today is someone who rocks both my worlds of social entrepreneurship and social media. Mike Del Ponte is the co-founder and CEO of Soma. Soma makes the world’s most innovative water filters and beautiful glass carafes to provide healthy and delicious drinking water. Previously, Mike led marketing at BranchOut, the largest professional network on Facebook. As an early employee, Mike helped grow BranchOut from 0 to 25 million users in 16 months. He is also the founder and former CEO of Sparkseed, a global nonprofit investing in the most promising young social entrepreneurs. Mike’s leadership earned Sparkseed a Financial Times Social Innovation Award and recognition in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Inc Magazine, and CNN. In 2010, Mike and the Sparkseed team hosted Dangerously Ambitious, the highly praised, invite-only summit for social innovators, investors, designers, and thought leaders.

In this very informative interview, you will discover:

  • 2:50 – How Mike started Soma and what inspired him to start this company.
  • 9:59 – Is urban water supply really safe to drink?
  • 16:59 – The five steps in building a product from an idea to its actual launch.
  • 18:06 – Two options in finding the best people to join your worldchanging team.
  • 20:46 – How a crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo can help with acquiring feedback of your innovative idea/product.
  • And much, much more..

You don’t need to do anything but to be the person you’re meant to be. – @mikedelponte
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Download the Audio Master Class

Check out Mike’s masterclass on Keys to Launching Your Social Venture with Kickstarter where you will learn:

  • 3:55 – Mike’s unique strategy in leveraging crowdfunding to finance the manufacturing of Soma’s water filters.
  • 4:39 – Three keys to success when launching a crowdfunding campaign.
  • 13:41 – How long should one take to prepare for a crowdfunding campaign?
  • 18:19 – Soma’s marketing approach in spreading word about their product.
  • 21:30 – Mike’s best advice to social entrepreneurs who are about to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the first time.

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Mentioned in this interview

Where to Find Mike

Full Episode Transcript

0:55 Lorna: Hello, beautiful change makers! This is Lorna Li, your host for Entrepreneurs for a Change and welcome to episode 65. I’m here today with a guest that rocks both my worlds of social entrepreneurship and social media. I’m here today with Mike Del Ponte, co-founder and CEO of Soma, maker of the world’s most innovative and sustainable water filters which provide healthy and delicious drinking water through beautiful glass carafes.

1:21 Previously, Mike led marketing at BranchOut, the largest professional network on Facebook. As an early employee, Mike helped grow BranchOut from zero to 25 million users in 16 months. That’s a lot of users, Mike!

1:36 Mike is a seasoned social entrepreneur, prolific speaker and adviser to impact ventures. He is the founder and CEO of Sparkseed, a global non-profit that identifies and invests in the most promising young social entrepreneurs. Before founding Sparkseed, Mike served as a Christian peacemaker in the West Bank, an orphanage volunteer in Jamaica, a microfinance consultant in Nepal and was a part of a team that created a child healthcare program for 355,000 kids in Kutch, India. He also serves on the boards of the Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship and Mobilize.org.

2:17 I want to make sure that you guys also have a chance to check out Mike’s masterclass on keys to launching your social venture with Kickstarter which you can access at entrepreneursforachange.com/65.

2:32 Mike, thank you so much for joining us today on the show.

2:35 Mike: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

2:37 Lorna: I am so curious about your entrepreneurial journey and I’d love to ask you more about what is Soma and what inspired you to start this company?

2:50 Mike: Yeah, of course. Soma is a company most well-known for the sustainable water filter that we launched a year and a half ago. If you haven’t seen it, go to drinksoma.com and you can take a look. Our first product is this beautiful glass carafe, the filtration device inside of it is actually 100% plant-based. It’s fully sustainable. It doesn’t include BPA or any petroleum-based plastics. It’s really the sustainable and natural way to filter your water. It’s something that we designed or we have a patent pending on it. It’s a really beautiful product. It’s a healthy and sustainable product and what’s really neat about this for every filter that we sell; we donate drinking water to someone in need through our partner, Charity Water.

3:38 That’s really what we’re super passionate about. It’s about the health and happiness of our customers and people around the world. In addition to our first product, the glass carafe, we have some new products that we’re rolling out in 2015 and all of them are around these core four pillars of health, sustainability, design, and giving back.

3:59 Lorna: Wow, I love it. One of the things that I was really challenged by being also a person that comes from the sustainability space, is the fact that when I had the Brita water system, it would just kill me every time–basically, like in a couple of months or so, I don’t know–maybe I was changing them a little less frequently than ideal but I would feel really bad about having to toss that filter into the garbage cans.

4:28 There were two challenges that I ran into. Number one was remembering when to change out the filter because I’m busy doing other things like most of us are and so all of a sudden, a month, two months, three months would go by and I’d realize I was still using the same filter. Secondly, it was just so much landfill stuff going into the garbage can just to get clean water.

4:52 I want to ask you, how well do your filters biodegrade? What exactly makes it sustainable?

5:00 Mike: Yeah, it’s a great question. There’re really two things that hit on this perfect. The first is that we actually have a filter delivery service so that you’d know if you forget to change your filter on time and our customers love that. It’s pretty amazing because just like you, I also had a Brita water filter. The whole story behind Soma came from me, hosting a dinner party about three years ago now and a friend asked me for a glass of water. I went into my kitchen, I opened my fridge, I reached in and I grabbed my Brita and I look at it and I’m like, “There’s no way I’m putting this thing on the dinner table.”

5:35 It’s made of plastic; there were black flakes on the water. I actually grabbed the glass wine decanter and I pulled it off the shelf and I went to put the water out of the Brita into the decanter and as I did, the lid of the Brita fell off, water splashed all over my floor, it almost knocked the decanter onto the ground and a friend walked in and I said, “Why don’t they just design something as beautiful and actually works? He said, “Why don’t we do it?”

5:59 I quit my job and we really have that vision for something that was so beautiful that you would put on your dinner table. It was made of sustainable materials. It was a convenient way to get your filters in the mail and that it gave back out and we’ve really held those values to be true to this day.

6:17 In addition to the filter delivery system which makes it really convenient, we focus on sustainable materials. First and foremost is the filter cartridge itself. It’s made out of only two materials. On the inside, we have coconut shell carbon where they actually just take coconut husks which otherwise would just go into landfill and they char them and they make a coconut shell carbon which is highly absorbent. When the water is passing through, it’s absorbing different contaminants like chlorine.

6:49 The second thing is they’re surrounded by a plant-based casing. Instead of using a petroleum-based plastic like some of the other water filters on the market, our cartridge for the filter itself is made out of plant-based materials.

7:03 Lorna: Okay. Does the plant-based material actually biodegrade over time?

7:09 Mike: Yes. The material that we use, we actually source from Germany and it is certified biodegradable material.

7:18 Lorna: That is fantastic. Great. I’m so glad that you guys have resolved a really huge problem and I can only imagine how many plastic cartridges that your product is actually keeping out of the landfills so to speak.

7:35 Mike: Yeah. If you think about it, there’s a lot of hype around plastic water bottles because we all know that a plastic water bottle can live up to a thousand years. Most of them don’t get recycled and they’re living in a landfill, living in the ocean or someplace else and causing a lot of harm.

7:52 When we think about it, how many water filters are out there especially since you supposedly change your filter every two months, millions and millions of people have these filters over the years. I mean, we’re talking about tens of millions; maybe even a hundreds of millions of these filter cartridges which are primarily made of petroleum-based plastics.

8:12 When you think about those and aware of those, probably some of the same places as these plastic water bottles and so, for that reason, we really wanted something that was plant-based. Meaning, that it’s not only better on the frontend because you’re making it out of a plant-based and renewable resources but there’s benefit on the backend as well.

8:33 Lorna: Wonderful. I am curious because I still know folks in San Francisco that drink water straight out of the tap and I remember a long time ago I was in my class around. I can’t even remember what class it was but I was doing my MBA program and there was a speaker from the San Francisco Water Department and basically, the premise was San Francisco water is good water, and there’s no reason why we should be buying bottled water except for convenience.

Now, this was really interesting to me because it seems like the water utilities put chemicals into the water system and on top of that, there’s all kinds of other chemicals that actually go into our water that are not necessarily being tested for. So, even though we have great water coming from–I don’t know where the water comes from the Sierras or snow melt or whatever, that eventually comes to San Francisco, all the other stuff that appears to get put into the municipal water system does not sound very healthy to me and I don’t know if San Francisco is exempt from this or not but, Mike, since you are in this particular space, what do you know about urban water supply and how contaminated or safe it is to drink? Why should we consider using filters all the time?

9:59 Mike: The scenario that you provided is actually a perfect one. I live here in San Francisco. I grew up in the San Francisco bay area, the water taste fantastic and the water source is primarily from Hetch Hetchy which is Yosemite, it doesn’t get purer than that.

10:18 There are really two things that you should think about and even here in San Francisco, we have to consider them. The first is what you mentioned: how’s the water being treated. A lot of water in the United States is treated with either chlorine or chloramine. The intention of treating water is a good one. If there are bacteria, if there’s something that could make you sick, these chemicals will kill the bacteria, the downside of course is now you have a certain amount of chemicals in your water.

10:45 The second thing you have to consider is the pipes. How do you get that water from, where would that source is, [inaudible 0:10:19] glass that you’re drinking out of. It could be the pipes in your house and here in San Francisco, we have these very old Victorians, it could be the pipes where the water is transmitted.

11:01 Every municipality, every city, every county is different but if you go online, you could just Google statistics regarding water contamination. I personally believe everyone should drink filtered water. There’s no downside of having a filter but the upside is that you’re taking up some of these things that are quite ubiquitous in our water systems.

11:23 Lorna: What about fluoride in our water supply? Do you know anything about that? Why it’s still getting put into our water system allegedly to help prevent cavities, which I’m a little uncertain about?

11:37 Mike: Fluoride is something that we’re looking at Soma right now. Our filter does not currently take up fluoride. We try to use all natural ingredients and we haven’t found an ingredient to put in our filter that would remove fluoride that is plant-based, renewable, sustainable or natural.

11:59 Now, there’re people on both sides, it’s actually interesting. It’s similar to the debate around vaccines. If you think about it, fluoride is added to the water to have some health benefit, one of which could be dentally-related but then there are other people that say it actually has neurological implications.

12:15 So, there’re people actually on one side that say, “It’s absolutely important. We must have it in the water”, and then others are saying, “This is actually really bad. We have to take it out of our water.” We’re actually exploring an opportunity for people to have a choice, a filter that would reduce fluoride in your water so that if you wanted to take it out, you can.

12:38 Depending on where you live, there are places where legislation has been passed where you no longer find fluoride and then there are other places where fluoride is still on the water. For all these things, you can find just with a click Google search, information on your water source.

12:55 You can definitely look online to see what kind of contaminants might be in your water, if you’d like to test your water, you can, but one small anecdote I’ll give you which is really amazing, I told you I grew up here in the bay area, I live here in San Francisco and I’ve always thought that the water tasted so good.

13:11 After using my Soma water, I can never drink tap water even here in San Francisco because I can taste the chemicals in the water. It’s pretty amazing how immune we get to the things that are in our water and once you start drinking filtered water from somewhere elsewhere, you can really taste the difference.

13:30 Lorna: I can’t wait to test it out. I actually saw your product in a friend’s house and I was like, “Oh my God, I’m going to interview Mike really soon.” So awesome.

13:40 Does your product work only with treated urban water supplies? Because I would love to imagine – I’m a digital nomad, I’m location-dependent, I’ve been living overseas for the past two years and there’s a lot of places, a lot of countries where the tap water is just not treated and it is not drinkable and I would love to imagine being able to take a product like yours around the world with me and know that I could filter out tap water anywhere.

14:10 Mike: Our product is sold primarily in the United States and it’s really focused on water that comes from municipal sources, so we recommend that you don’t use it for say for camping and we haven’t done tests internationally. For example, if you’re in another country and they have different treatment processes that didn’t filter or treat water as well as we do in the United States, we haven’t tested that.

14:35 As of now, we’re really focused on serving our customers in the United States where water is typically “safe to drink” but probably still housed different contaminants like chlorine that have actually been shown in certain studies to be detrimental to your health and that’s why we believe our water filters are so important.

14:56 Lorna: When and if they make a travel version, please let me know.

14:59 Mike: You got it.

15:02 Lorna: Mike, one of the things that I find most intriguing in social entrepreneurship is how to leverage product design and innovation to address serious global problems.

15:09 Now, one of the companies that I absolutely love who has done a great job with this is a company called Embrace Innovations, where they actually created a baby warmer. It’s like a baby wrap using this wax, that is a phase change material that gives off heat at a constant temperature that you could then wrap premature babies and premature babies are highly susceptible to the cold and they can’t regulate their body heat and because of that, many premature babies die.

15:42 You can check out more about my interview with Jane Chen, one of the co-founders of embrace innovations at entrepreneursforachange.com/37. Now Mike, I’d love to understand from the initial idea that you had at that dinner party where you were pouring, your Brita water into this crap, how did you go from there this idea to actual launch, to identifying these materials that you now have used in your product to prototyping it and then to releasing it to the market?

16:14 Mike: It’s mysterious to be honest when you haven’t opted out the product, taking through all the steps from design to engineering to manufacturing, to packaging, to shipping, it’s actually one of those things that’s not intuitive. I know there’s a lot of information. If you want it to say, start a software company, you can find plenty of material on that and it’s quite accessible to network with people.

16:45 The supply chain industry is a little bit more mysterious. It’s definitely one of those things that there’s not a thing like physical product that years as produced.

16:59 I’ll break down the steps and then, I’d love to answer questions on each of those steps or the parts that you think might be helpful to your audience but essentially, once you get an idea, there are five steps that you want to go through. The first is design and it could be simply sketching out the product, it could be using renders, we can visualize with the product what it would look like when it’s finally produced.

17:23 The second step is engineering and prototyping. So this is where you actually take those designs and put into computer language called CAD where you can actually visualize this 3D and this is what you’re going to give to the manufacturers. From there, you’re going to actually make prototypes with this 3D print made out of clay whatever you like, so you can start using it.

17:47 The third step is pulling things. So this is where you’re making the moulds for the product that you’re going to create. The first step is manufacturing of what you’re doing in production while you’re putting this clay together and then fifth step is packaging and shipping.

18:06 When you think about it, the real challenges of an entrepreneur with an idea wants to get it off the ground is not doing those three or those five things himself or herself is actually finding the best people in the world to do those for you and there are two directions you can go. One is work for a specialist on each of those five areas and that’s the route that we take. The second is to go try turning key where you would basically outsource that process on someone else who would handle all of those elements and you would pay a certain fee on top of that.

18:38 We choose to do the first route because we feel like we can find the experts. Our designers to Joe Tan and Michael Siebel are literally two of the best designers in the world and we want to work directly with them and make sure they designed beautiful and that works perfectly and so we have them handle just the design and we have partners for the other four respective steps as well.

19:01 Lorna: Wow, that’s really interesting these two approaches. Do you find that going to turning key approach would involve compromising the quality of your product?

19:13 Mike: It really depends on the partner. For us, we like to be intimately involved with every step of the process, we make the Soma water carafe right here in the bay area, so even our manufacturing is done here, we can go visit our factory anytime, we have personal relationships with everyone throughout the entire process. It is different than, for example, sourcing a completely turnkey product at maybe made overseas and maybe you don’t have a relationship where you actually don’t’ get to watch what happens. We love being able to go and they’re doing production runs when we’re doing pack outs, when we’re packaging everything else up into the boxes, that we ourselves have designed.

19:53 We like having back and troll but there are certainly partners out there who can do it and make your life simpler. If you’re a small company and you want to focus on the brand and marketing and distribution and you want just to outsource the whole product development side to someone else. That’s a great solution. As long you find the right partner.

20:13 Lorna: So how did you go about finding the right people in the beginning stages? So I imagine from the concept then afterwards, you needed to go into some phases of market research to understand whether or not, there is a demand for your product especially if your product is priced higher than the generic competitors out there. And then secondly, how did you identify that they were indeed in more sustainable materials that you could use and then go about in creating that design?

20:46 Mike: Yeah. Absolutely. One of the things that I think is just one of the best gifts in terms of learning how to get feedback from the market would be a crowd funding platform like Indiegogo or Kickstarter. We did a Kickstarter very early on. We already had the designs, we have prototypes, we did not go the manufacturing and we put the project up on Kickstarter and fortunately, we have thousands of people purchase it in a very short amount of time.

21:15 That is enough confidence and know that this is the product that people really desired and there’s no replacement for having someone pull off of credit card and purchasing your product and the benefit of using a platform like Kickstarter is that you can actually get all of these orders and feedback before you have to cut the big check to go to manufacturing.

21:35 The worst case scenario of course would be to design, engineer and produce something no one wants and putting some idea up on Kickstarter is a great idea. If you want to learn about our Kickstarter campaign, you could Google Soma Kickstarter, you could also go to Tim Ferriss’s blog and look up hacking Kickstarter to understand how we are able to raise over $100,000 in nine days.

21:59 Lorna: Yeah. I’m really said about that story too so I can’t wait to converse with you during your masterclass which folks, you can access at entrepreneursforachange.com/65.

22:10 So prior to your Kickstarter campaign, how did you find the designers that you were able to create the prototype from whose designers are able to create prototype from. Did you go to LinkedIn, was it referral-based? How were you able to find the best designers for your product?

22:30 Mike: There were two things that we did immediately when we got the idea for Soma. The first was, we called Scott Harrison and at Charity Water and told them about what we’re doing because we knew we wanted to partner with Charity Water to give people a clean drinking water around the world and fortunately, he was excited and passionate about the idea. We formed a great partnership and they’ve been fantastic as a partner for us.

22:56 The second thing was that we knew we had to find a world-class designer and fortunately, through our network, a friend of a friend of a friend became our designer and that’s how most of our relationships have been. If you have a clear idea in your mind and very high standards for whom you want to work, then it’s just a matter of going out there and having in those conversations. It helps a lot if you live in a major city or in a hub where these types of things happen.

23:24 Here in San Francisco, there are a lot of great designers and so, we’re able to work our network to get to the right people but if you have a vision for what you want, then it’s just a matter of persistence to go out and get it and what it looks like for entrepreneurs is telling your story over and over again whether that’s through or phone calls or coffees or formal meetings and we were able to create an incredible team by just going out there and telling everyone we knew what we’re trying to accomplish with our vision and who we needed in order to fulfill that vision.

23:56 Lorna: I love it. I really love the fact that you are for profit company and you got a great partnership with a non-profit organization with such esteem as Charity Water. So I’m curious to know, how does this works so that for every–is it every filter that you buy? You provide clean water to somebody else?

24:16 Mike: It depends on the different campaigns of Charity Waters’ doing. We do make a donation for every single product that we sell whether it’s the Soma carafe itself or a replacement filter. But we’ve done a lot of limited edition products. We were able to do very big donations. For example a year ago, we launched a limited edition Charity Water carafe and that was a Charity Water yellow and for every product that we sold, we made a donation of $12.50 which essentially is enough typically to give one person in Cambodia access to clean drinking water.

24:54 We did something very similar where this year, we had a product called Soma black and Soma black was a limited edition black Soma water carafe and that one, we donated $15 and we also targeted Cambodia. So for that one, it was a pier “1 for 1” or we could say for every Soma black that you purchase, there would be one person in Cambodia who gets access to clean drinking water. We focus on a variety of different projects and a variety of locales.

25:25 We worked in Ethopia, we worked in Cambodia, we’ve worked in different parts of Africa and what’s really amazing about Charity Water is that for every dollar that we donate, a 100% of that dollar goes to the field.

25:36 So it’s not that we donated dollar and fifteen cents goes to the non-profit marketing and ten percent goes to the rent. This goes directly to the field and Charity Water has this amazing partners that just all the implementation for the variety of projects that we fund and we’ve been lucky, and we’re a pretty young company. We’ve only been fully launched for a year and a half and we’ve already now given thousands of people clean drinking water and the goal is to build the company to give millions of people clean drinking water.

26:05 Lorna: Wow, that is so awesome. I love your vision. So Soma is clearly one of the string of impact venture that you’ve been involved in which shows me that you’re undoubtedly purpose-driven entrepreneur. How did you discover your purpose and your calling?

26:22 Mike: From me, there’s nothing more important than one’s calling and if there’s one thing that you can do in your life is to find out the way to put earth to do and I was very fortunate to have different mentors throughout my life who have helped me discern this. I remember I went to college at Boston College which is a Jesuit Catholic school and in that tradition, it’s incredibly important to just discern your calling and turn typically uses vocation. And I remember the very first that I got there, I was at student orientation and they said, “You know what? We’re not here to help you to get a job. We’re here to help you to find your calling.”

26:59 There were three questions that our professors shared on how to find your calling and the first is, what is my best at? The second is what brings me joy and the third is, what does the world need and those three things: What is my best at, what brings me joy and what does the world need. If you answer those questions at the intersection of the three answers, you will find your calling.

27:23 Lorna: That is just so powerful and so succinct. Thank you so much for sharing that.

27:31 Wow. I didn’t quite get that approach in my education at my Jesuit University which was Georgetown but I got a lot of other great things from that too you but what a blessing to have a teacher to inspire to think about these big and profound questions that can totally transform the course of your life at an early age.

27:58 Wow. I do want to ask you also, I’m sure along your path, there were some other thought leaders that have had a really powerful influence on you. Would you mind sharing some of those inspirational leaders with our audience?

28:16 Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Of course, the mentors that we have in our real lives that we need regularly, in order the mentors that we may not have ever met in person but have had a huge impact in our lives.

28:33 For me, recently, I just read Peter Thiel’s book, Zero to One and I think Peter’s philosophies on earth and change in the future are fascinating and he forces us to dream big, to think critically about what are really impacted us in the world and I’d highly recommend Peter Thiel’s book and his lectures and anything that you can find on him, I think he’s absolutely brilliant.

28:57 He’s one of those people that’s more of a distance mentor and then there are other people in my life that really have a profound impact on me and they’re committed to make a difference.

29:08 I have a teacher here named Bryan Franklin who is absolutely incredible. He’s helped coached seven companies to grow a billion dollars in revenue and he’s really committed to his life to impact and making ensure people are living with purpose and I’ve been really fortunate throughout my life to have a lot of different mentors like I said, I went to Boston College and there have been many Jesuit priests who have really inspired me to live for purpose and closer to home.

29:39 I think that was really fortunate to grow up in a household with my mom who just always believed in me and supported me in whatever I did and led by a good example of loving people and caring for them and giving back. So it really varies that a few others are maybe more accessible if you just want to find some materials I think Tim Ferriss is absolutely incredible. Now, he’s a great author, he’s a great marketer, he’s a great investor and what he has done for non-profits like Charity Water has been phenomenal.

30:12 Donors Choose is another one. He has driven a lot of money to their philanthropies. He’s someone you can study and follow and emulate so that you can have a big impact as well and then for entrepreneurs, guys like Ido Leffler from Yes To, Neil Blumenthal from Warby Parker, Eric Ryan from Method, these people has built fantastic businesses and every single time you support them and purchase from them, you know you’re good.

30:42 Lorna: Wow. Excellent. Thank you so much for all those awesome people that we can go check out and learn more about how they are also changing the world. Now, I’d love to leave you with my favorite question as we end this segment.

30:59 Mike, what do you think is the most effective way to change the world?

31:03 Mike: You just find your calling and have to do it. You don’t need to do anything but to be the person you’re meant to be. To be a social entrepreneur is a really hard impressive thing but that’s actually not what everyone’s called to do. Everyone just called to be themselves and regardless of what that is. That’s incredibly important whether that’s running a company or being a teammate in a business or in an organization, being a teacher or stay at home parent. Whatever it is, you have a purpose and by finding that and doing it to the best of your ability, that’s the number one. That’s the best you can do to have an impact.

31:41 Lorna: Thank you so much for your words of wisdom here. So, folks, for those of you who are listening, if you want to hear Mike’s secrets on how to launch your social venture with Kickstarter, please do check out the masterclass.

31:56 Now, in closing Mike, how can we best stay in touch with you?

32:01 Mike: If you haven’t been in the drinksoma.com, go there. It’s really the place where you can learn the most about Soma and order some water filter. If you’re on social, our handle is @somawater. In particular our Instagram is fantastic, I would highly recommend it but if you were to follow at Soma online or if you want to find me @Mikedelponte, you’re very welcome to and the company again can be found at drinksoma.com.

32:29 Lorna: Awesome. Thank you so much and you have a beautiful afternoon.

32:33 Mike: You too.

[END OF RECORDING]

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E4C 65 Soma _Mike Del Ponte_fb_640x334My very special guest for today is someone who rocks both my worlds of social entrepreneurship and social media. Mike Del Ponte is the co-founder and CEO of Soma. Soma makes the world’s most innovative water filters and beautiful glass carafes to provide healthy and delicious drinking water. Previously, Mike led marketing at BranchOut, the largest professional network on Facebook. As an early employee, Mike helped grow BranchOut from 0 to 25 million users in 16 months. He is also the founder and former CEO of Sparkseed, a global nonprofit investing in the most promising young social entrepreneurs. Mike’s leadership earned Sparkseed a Financial Times Social Innovation Award and recognition in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Inc Magazine, and CNN. In 2010, Mike and the Sparkseed team hosted Dangerously Ambitious, the highly praised, invite-only summit for social innovators, investors, designers, and thought leaders.

In this very informative interview, you will discover:

  • 2:50 – How Mike started Soma and what inspired him to start this company.
  • 9:59 – Is urban water supply really safe to drink?
  • 16:59 – The five steps in building a product from an idea to its actual launch.
  • 18:06 – Two options in finding the best people to join your worldchanging team.
  • 20:46 – How a crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo can help with acquiring feedback of your innovative idea/product.
  • And much, much more..

You don’t need to do anything but to be the person you’re meant to be. – @mikedelponte
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Download the Audio Master Class

Check out Mike’s masterclass on Keys to Launching Your Social Venture with Kickstarter where you will learn:

  • 3:55 – Mike’s unique strategy in leveraging crowdfunding to finance the manufacturing of Soma’s water filters.
  • 4:39 – Three keys to success when launching a crowdfunding campaign.
  • 13:41 – How long should one take to prepare for a crowdfunding campaign?
  • 18:19 – Soma’s marketing approach in spreading word about their product.
  • 21:30 – Mike’s best advice to social entrepreneurs who are about to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the first time.

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Mentioned in this interview

Where to Find Mike

Full Episode Transcript

0:55 Lorna: Hello, beautiful change makers! This is Lorna Li, your host for Entrepreneurs for a Change and welcome to episode 65. I’m here today with a guest that rocks both my worlds of social entrepreneurship and social media. I’m here today with Mike Del Ponte, co-founder and CEO of Soma, maker of the world’s most innovative and sustainable water filters which provide healthy and delicious drinking water through beautiful glass carafes.

1:21 Previously, Mike led marketing at BranchOut, the largest professional network on Facebook. As an early employee, Mike helped grow BranchOut from zero to 25 million users in 16 months. That’s a lot of users, Mike!

1:36 Mike is a seasoned social entrepreneur, prolific speaker and adviser to impact ventures. He is the founder and CEO of Sparkseed, a global non-profit that identifies and invests in the most promising young social entrepreneurs. Before founding Sparkseed, Mike served as a Christian peacemaker in the West Bank, an orphanage volunteer in Jamaica, a microfinance consultant in Nepal and was a part of a team that created a child healthcare program for 355,000 kids in Kutch, India. He also serves on the boards of the Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship and Mobilize.org.

2:17 I want to make sure that you guys also have a chance to check out Mike’s masterclass on keys to launching your social venture with Kickstarter which you can access at entrepreneursforachange.com/65.

2:32 Mike, thank you so much for joining us today on the show.

2:35 Mike: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

2:37 Lorna: I am so curious about your entrepreneurial journey and I’d love to ask you more about what is Soma and what inspired you to start this company?

2:50 Mike: Yeah, of course. Soma is a company most well-known for the sustainable water filter that we launched a year and a half ago. If you haven’t seen it, go to drinksoma.com and you can take a look. Our first product is this beautiful glass carafe, the filtration device inside of it is actually 100% plant-based. It’s fully sustainable. It doesn’t include BPA or any petroleum-based plastics. It’s really the sustainable and natural way to filter your water. It’s something that we designed or we have a patent pending on it. It’s a really beautiful product. It’s a healthy and sustainable product and what’s really neat about this for every filter that we sell; we donate drinking water to someone in need through our partner, Charity Water.

3:38 That’s really what we’re super passionate about. It’s about the health and happiness of our customers and people around the world. In addition to our first product, the glass carafe, we have some new products that we’re rolling out in 2015 and all of them are around these core four pillars of health, sustainability, design, and giving back.

3:59 Lorna: Wow, I love it. One of the things that I was really challenged by being also a person that comes from the sustainability space, is the fact that when I had the Brita water system, it would just kill me every time–basically, like in a couple of months or so, I don’t know–maybe I was changing them a little less frequently than ideal but I would feel really bad about having to toss that filter into the garbage cans.

4:28 There were two challenges that I ran into. Number one was remembering when to change out the filter because I’m busy doing other things like most of us are and so all of a sudden, a month, two months, three months would go by and I’d realize I was still using the same filter. Secondly, it was just so much landfill stuff going into the garbage can just to get clean water.

4:52 I want to ask you, how well do your filters biodegrade? What exactly makes it sustainable?

5:00 Mike: Yeah, it’s a great question. There’re really two things that hit on this perfect. The first is that we actually have a filter delivery service so that you’d know if you forget to change your filter on time and our customers love that. It’s pretty amazing because just like you, I also had a Brita water filter. The whole story behind Soma came from me, hosting a dinner party about three years ago now and a friend asked me for a glass of water. I went into my kitchen, I opened my fridge, I reached in and I grabbed my Brita and I look at it and I’m like, “There’s no way I’m putting this thing on the dinner table.”

5:35 It’s made of plastic; there were black flakes on the water. I actually grabbed the glass wine decanter and I pulled it off the shelf and I went to put the water out of the Brita into the decanter and as I did, the lid of the Brita fell off, water splashed all over my floor, it almost knocked the decanter onto the ground and a friend walked in and I said, “Why don’t they just design something as beautiful and actually works? He said, “Why don’t we do it?”

5:59 I quit my job and we really have that vision for something that was so beautiful that you would put on your dinner table. It was made of sustainable materials. It was a convenient way to get your filters in the mail and that it gave back out and we’ve really held those values to be true to this day.

6:17 In addition to the filter delivery system which makes it really convenient, we focus on sustainable materials. First and foremost is the filter cartridge itself. It’s made out of only two materials. On the inside, we have coconut shell carbon where they actually just take coconut husks which otherwise would just go into landfill and they char them and they make a coconut shell carbon which is highly absorbent. When the water is passing through, it’s absorbing different contaminants like chlorine.

6:49 The second thing is they’re surrounded by a plant-based casing. Instead of using a petroleum-based plastic like some of the other water filters on the market, our cartridge for the filter itself is made out of plant-based materials.

7:03 Lorna: Okay. Does the plant-based material actually biodegrade over time?

7:09 Mike: Yes. The material that we use, we actually source from Germany and it is certified biodegradable material.

7:18 Lorna: That is fantastic. Great. I’m so glad that you guys have resolved a really huge problem and I can only imagine how many plastic cartridges that your product is actually keeping out of the landfills so to speak.

7:35 Mike: Yeah. If you think about it, there’s a lot of hype around plastic water bottles because we all know that a plastic water bottle can live up to a thousand years. Most of them don’t get recycled and they’re living in a landfill, living in the ocean or someplace else and causing a lot of harm.

7:52 When we think about it, how many water filters are out there especially since you supposedly change your filter every two months, millions and millions of people have these filters over the years. I mean, we’re talking about tens of millions; maybe even a hundreds of millions of these filter cartridges which are primarily made of petroleum-based plastics.

8:12 When you think about those and aware of those, probably some of the same places as these plastic water bottles and so, for that reason, we really wanted something that was plant-based. Meaning, that it’s not only better on the frontend because you’re making it out of a plant-based and renewable resources but there’s benefit on the backend as well.

8:33 Lorna: Wonderful. I am curious because I still know folks in San Francisco that drink water straight out of the tap and I remember a long time ago I was in my class around. I can’t even remember what class it was but I was doing my MBA program and there was a speaker from the San Francisco Water Department and basically, the premise was San Francisco water is good water, and there’s no reason why we should be buying bottled water except for convenience.

Now, this was really interesting to me because it seems like the water utilities put chemicals into the water system and on top of that, there’s all kinds of other chemicals that actually go into our water that are not necessarily being tested for. So, even though we have great water coming from–I don’t know where the water comes from the Sierras or snow melt or whatever, that eventually comes to San Francisco, all the other stuff that appears to get put into the municipal water system does not sound very healthy to me and I don’t know if San Francisco is exempt from this or not but, Mike, since you are in this particular space, what do you know about urban water supply and how contaminated or safe it is to drink? Why should we consider using filters all the time?

9:59 Mike: The scenario that you provided is actually a perfect one. I live here in San Francisco. I grew up in the San Francisco bay area, the water taste fantastic and the water source is primarily from Hetch Hetchy which is Yosemite, it doesn’t get purer than that.

10:18 There are really two things that you should think about and even here in San Francisco, we have to consider them. The first is what you mentioned: how’s the water being treated. A lot of water in the United States is treated with either chlorine or chloramine. The intention of treating water is a good one. If there are bacteria, if there’s something that could make you sick, these chemicals will kill the bacteria, the downside of course is now you have a certain amount of chemicals in your water.

10:45 The second thing you have to consider is the pipes. How do you get that water from, where would that source is, [inaudible 0:10:19] glass that you’re drinking out of. It could be the pipes in your house and here in San Francisco, we have these very old Victorians, it could be the pipes where the water is transmitted.

11:01 Every municipality, every city, every county is different but if you go online, you could just Google statistics regarding water contamination. I personally believe everyone should drink filtered water. There’s no downside of having a filter but the upside is that you’re taking up some of these things that are quite ubiquitous in our water systems.

11:23 Lorna: What about fluoride in our water supply? Do you know anything about that? Why it’s still getting put into our water system allegedly to help prevent cavities, which I’m a little uncertain about?

11:37 Mike: Fluoride is something that we’re looking at Soma right now. Our filter does not currently take up fluoride. We try to use all natural ingredients and we haven’t found an ingredient to put in our filter that would remove fluoride that is plant-based, renewable, sustainable or natural.

11:59 Now, there’re people on both sides, it’s actually interesting. It’s similar to the debate around vaccines. If you think about it, fluoride is added to the water to have some health benefit, one of which could be dentally-related but then there are other people that say it actually has neurological implications.

12:15 So, there’re people actually on one side that say, “It’s absolutely important. We must have it in the water”, and then others are saying, “This is actually really bad. We have to take it out of our water.” We’re actually exploring an opportunity for people to have a choice, a filter that would reduce fluoride in your water so that if you wanted to take it out, you can.

12:38 Depending on where you live, there are places where legislation has been passed where you no longer find fluoride and then there are other places where fluoride is still on the water. For all these things, you can find just with a click Google search, information on your water source.

12:55 You can definitely look online to see what kind of contaminants might be in your water, if you’d like to test your water, you can, but one small anecdote I’ll give you which is really amazing, I told you I grew up here in the bay area, I live here in San Francisco and I’ve always thought that the water tasted so good.

13:11 After using my Soma water, I can never drink tap water even here in San Francisco because I can taste the chemicals in the water. It’s pretty amazing how immune we get to the things that are in our water and once you start drinking filtered water from somewhere elsewhere, you can really taste the difference.

13:30 Lorna: I can’t wait to test it out. I actually saw your product in a friend’s house and I was like, “Oh my God, I’m going to interview Mike really soon.” So awesome.

13:40 Does your product work only with treated urban water supplies? Because I would love to imagine – I’m a digital nomad, I’m location-dependent, I’ve been living overseas for the past two years and there’s a lot of places, a lot of countries where the tap water is just not treated and it is not drinkable and I would love to imagine being able to take a product like yours around the world with me and know that I could filter out tap water anywhere.

14:10 Mike: Our product is sold primarily in the United States and it’s really focused on water that comes from municipal sources, so we recommend that you don’t use it for say for camping and we haven’t done tests internationally. For example, if you’re in another country and they have different treatment processes that didn’t filter or treat water as well as we do in the United States, we haven’t tested that.

14:35 As of now, we’re really focused on serving our customers in the United States where water is typically “safe to drink” but probably still housed different contaminants like chlorine that have actually been shown in certain studies to be detrimental to your health and that’s why we believe our water filters are so important.

14:56 Lorna: When and if they make a travel version, please let me know.

14:59 Mike: You got it.

15:02 Lorna: Mike, one of the things that I find most intriguing in social entrepreneurship is how to leverage product design and innovation to address serious global problems.

15:09 Now, one of the companies that I absolutely love who has done a great job with this is a company called Embrace Innovations, where they actually created a baby warmer. It’s like a baby wrap using this wax, that is a phase change material that gives off heat at a constant temperature that you could then wrap premature babies and premature babies are highly susceptible to the cold and they can’t regulate their body heat and because of that, many premature babies die.

15:42 You can check out more about my interview with Jane Chen, one of the co-founders of embrace innovations at entrepreneursforachange.com/37. Now Mike, I’d love to understand from the initial idea that you had at that dinner party where you were pouring, your Brita water into this crap, how did you go from there this idea to actual launch, to identifying these materials that you now have used in your product to prototyping it and then to releasing it to the market?

16:14 Mike: It’s mysterious to be honest when you haven’t opted out the product, taking through all the steps from design to engineering to manufacturing, to packaging, to shipping, it’s actually one of those things that’s not intuitive. I know there’s a lot of information. If you want it to say, start a software company, you can find plenty of material on that and it’s quite accessible to network with people.

16:45 The supply chain industry is a little bit more mysterious. It’s definitely one of those things that there’s not a thing like physical product that years as produced.

16:59 I’ll break down the steps and then, I’d love to answer questions on each of those steps or the parts that you think might be helpful to your audience but essentially, once you get an idea, there are five steps that you want to go through. The first is design and it could be simply sketching out the product, it could be using renders, we can visualize with the product what it would look like when it’s finally produced.

17:23 The second step is engineering and prototyping. So this is where you actually take those designs and put into computer language called CAD where you can actually visualize this 3D and this is what you’re going to give to the manufacturers. From there, you’re going to actually make prototypes with this 3D print made out of clay whatever you like, so you can start using it.

17:47 The third step is pulling things. So this is where you’re making the moulds for the product that you’re going to create. The first step is manufacturing of what you’re doing in production while you’re putting this clay together and then fifth step is packaging and shipping.

18:06 When you think about it, the real challenges of an entrepreneur with an idea wants to get it off the ground is not doing those three or those five things himself or herself is actually finding the best people in the world to do those for you and there are two directions you can go. One is work for a specialist on each of those five areas and that’s the route that we take. The second is to go try turning key where you would basically outsource that process on someone else who would handle all of those elements and you would pay a certain fee on top of that.

18:38 We choose to do the first route because we feel like we can find the experts. Our designers to Joe Tan and Michael Siebel are literally two of the best designers in the world and we want to work directly with them and make sure they designed beautiful and that works perfectly and so we have them handle just the design and we have partners for the other four respective steps as well.

19:01 Lorna: Wow, that’s really interesting these two approaches. Do you find that going to turning key approach would involve compromising the quality of your product?

19:13 Mike: It really depends on the partner. For us, we like to be intimately involved with every step of the process, we make the Soma water carafe right here in the bay area, so even our manufacturing is done here, we can go visit our factory anytime, we have personal relationships with everyone throughout the entire process. It is different than, for example, sourcing a completely turnkey product at maybe made overseas and maybe you don’t have a relationship where you actually don’t’ get to watch what happens. We love being able to go and they’re doing production runs when we’re doing pack outs, when we’re packaging everything else up into the boxes, that we ourselves have designed.

19:53 We like having back and troll but there are certainly partners out there who can do it and make your life simpler. If you’re a small company and you want to focus on the brand and marketing and distribution and you want just to outsource the whole product development side to someone else. That’s a great solution. As long you find the right partner.

20:13 Lorna: So how did you go about finding the right people in the beginning stages? So I imagine from the concept then afterwards, you needed to go into some phases of market research to understand whether or not, there is a demand for your product especially if your product is priced higher than the generic competitors out there. And then secondly, how did you identify that they were indeed in more sustainable materials that you could use and then go about in creating that design?

20:46 Mike: Yeah. Absolutely. One of the things that I think is just one of the best gifts in terms of learning how to get feedback from the market would be a crowd funding platform like Indiegogo or Kickstarter. We did a Kickstarter very early on. We already had the designs, we have prototypes, we did not go the manufacturing and we put the project up on Kickstarter and fortunately, we have thousands of people purchase it in a very short amount of time.

21:15 That is enough confidence and know that this is the product that people really desired and there’s no replacement for having someone pull off of credit card and purchasing your product and the benefit of using a platform like Kickstarter is that you can actually get all of these orders and feedback before you have to cut the big check to go to manufacturing.

21:35 The worst case scenario of course would be to design, engineer and produce something no one wants and putting some idea up on Kickstarter is a great idea. If you want to learn about our Kickstarter campaign, you could Google Soma Kickstarter, you could also go to Tim Ferriss’s blog and look up hacking Kickstarter to understand how we are able to raise over $100,000 in nine days.

21:59 Lorna: Yeah. I’m really said about that story too so I can’t wait to converse with you during your masterclass which folks, you can access at entrepreneursforachange.com/65.

22:10 So prior to your Kickstarter campaign, how did you find the designers that you were able to create the prototype from whose designers are able to create prototype from. Did you go to LinkedIn, was it referral-based? How were you able to find the best designers for your product?

22:30 Mike: There were two things that we did immediately when we got the idea for Soma. The first was, we called Scott Harrison and at Charity Water and told them about what we’re doing because we knew we wanted to partner with Charity Water to give people a clean drinking water around the world and fortunately, he was excited and passionate about the idea. We formed a great partnership and they’ve been fantastic as a partner for us.

22:56 The second thing was that we knew we had to find a world-class designer and fortunately, through our network, a friend of a friend of a friend became our designer and that’s how most of our relationships have been. If you have a clear idea in your mind and very high standards for whom you want to work, then it’s just a matter of going out there and having in those conversations. It helps a lot if you live in a major city or in a hub where these types of things happen.

23:24 Here in San Francisco, there are a lot of great designers and so, we’re able to work our network to get to the right people but if you have a vision for what you want, then it’s just a matter of persistence to go out and get it and what it looks like for entrepreneurs is telling your story over and over again whether that’s through or phone calls or coffees or formal meetings and we were able to create an incredible team by just going out there and telling everyone we knew what we’re trying to accomplish with our vision and who we needed in order to fulfill that vision.

23:56 Lorna: I love it. I really love the fact that you are for profit company and you got a great partnership with a non-profit organization with such esteem as Charity Water. So I’m curious to know, how does this works so that for every–is it every filter that you buy? You provide clean water to somebody else?

24:16 Mike: It depends on the different campaigns of Charity Waters’ doing. We do make a donation for every single product that we sell whether it’s the Soma carafe itself or a replacement filter. But we’ve done a lot of limited edition products. We were able to do very big donations. For example a year ago, we launched a limited edition Charity Water carafe and that was a Charity Water yellow and for every product that we sold, we made a donation of $12.50 which essentially is enough typically to give one person in Cambodia access to clean drinking water.

24:54 We did something very similar where this year, we had a product called Soma black and Soma black was a limited edition black Soma water carafe and that one, we donated $15 and we also targeted Cambodia. So for that one, it was a pier “1 for 1” or we could say for every Soma black that you purchase, there would be one person in Cambodia who gets access to clean drinking water. We focus on a variety of different projects and a variety of locales.

25:25 We worked in Ethopia, we worked in Cambodia, we’ve worked in different parts of Africa and what’s really amazing about Charity Water is that for every dollar that we donate, a 100% of that dollar goes to the field.

25:36 So it’s not that we donated dollar and fifteen cents goes to the non-profit marketing and ten percent goes to the rent. This goes directly to the field and Charity Water has this amazing partners that just all the implementation for the variety of projects that we fund and we’ve been lucky, and we’re a pretty young company. We’ve only been fully launched for a year and a half and we’ve already now given thousands of people clean drinking water and the goal is to build the company to give millions of people clean drinking water.

26:05 Lorna: Wow, that is so awesome. I love your vision. So Soma is clearly one of the string of impact venture that you’ve been involved in which shows me that you’re undoubtedly purpose-driven entrepreneur. How did you discover your purpose and your calling?

26:22 Mike: From me, there’s nothing more important than one’s calling and if there’s one thing that you can do in your life is to find out the way to put earth to do and I was very fortunate to have different mentors throughout my life who have helped me discern this. I remember I went to college at Boston College which is a Jesuit Catholic school and in that tradition, it’s incredibly important to just discern your calling and turn typically uses vocation. And I remember the very first that I got there, I was at student orientation and they said, “You know what? We’re not here to help you to get a job. We’re here to help you to find your calling.”

26:59 There were three questions that our professors shared on how to find your calling and the first is, what is my best at? The second is what brings me joy and the third is, what does the world need and those three things: What is my best at, what brings me joy and what does the world need. If you answer those questions at the intersection of the three answers, you will find your calling.

27:23 Lorna: That is just so powerful and so succinct. Thank you so much for sharing that.

27:31 Wow. I didn’t quite get that approach in my education at my Jesuit University which was Georgetown but I got a lot of other great things from that too you but what a blessing to have a teacher to inspire to think about these big and profound questions that can totally transform the course of your life at an early age.

27:58 Wow. I do want to ask you also, I’m sure along your path, there were some other thought leaders that have had a really powerful influence on you. Would you mind sharing some of those inspirational leaders with our audience?

28:16 Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Of course, the mentors that we have in our real lives that we need regularly, in order the mentors that we may not have ever met in person but have had a huge impact in our lives.

28:33 For me, recently, I just read Peter Thiel’s book, Zero to One and I think Peter’s philosophies on earth and change in the future are fascinating and he forces us to dream big, to think critically about what are really impacted us in the world and I’d highly recommend Peter Thiel’s book and his lectures and anything that you can find on him, I think he’s absolutely brilliant.

28:57 He’s one of those people that’s more of a distance mentor and then there are other people in my life that really have a profound impact on me and they’re committed to make a difference.

29:08 I have a teacher here named Bryan Franklin who is absolutely incredible. He’s helped coached seven companies to grow a billion dollars in revenue and he’s really committed to his life to impact and making ensure people are living with purpose and I’ve been really fortunate throughout my life to have a lot of different mentors like I said, I went to Boston College and there have been many Jesuit priests who have really inspired me to live for purpose and closer to home.

29:39 I think that was really fortunate to grow up in a household with my mom who just always believed in me and supported me in whatever I did and led by a good example of loving people and caring for them and giving back. So it really varies that a few others are maybe more accessible if you just want to find some materials I think Tim Ferriss is absolutely incredible. Now, he’s a great author, he’s a great marketer, he’s a great investor and what he has done for non-profits like Charity Water has been phenomenal.

30:12 Donors Choose is another one. He has driven a lot of money to their philanthropies. He’s someone you can study and follow and emulate so that you can have a big impact as well and then for entrepreneurs, guys like Ido Leffler from Yes To, Neil Blumenthal from Warby Parker, Eric Ryan from Method, these people has built fantastic businesses and every single time you support them and purchase from them, you know you’re good.

30:42 Lorna: Wow. Excellent. Thank you so much for all those awesome people that we can go check out and learn more about how they are also changing the world. Now, I’d love to leave you with my favorite question as we end this segment.

30:59 Mike, what do you think is the most effective way to change the world?

31:03 Mike: You just find your calling and have to do it. You don’t need to do anything but to be the person you’re meant to be. To be a social entrepreneur is a really hard impressive thing but that’s actually not what everyone’s called to do. Everyone just called to be themselves and regardless of what that is. That’s incredibly important whether that’s running a company or being a teammate in a business or in an organization, being a teacher or stay at home parent. Whatever it is, you have a purpose and by finding that and doing it to the best of your ability, that’s the number one. That’s the best you can do to have an impact.

31:41 Lorna: Thank you so much for your words of wisdom here. So, folks, for those of you who are listening, if you want to hear Mike’s secrets on how to launch your social venture with Kickstarter, please do check out the masterclass.

31:56 Now, in closing Mike, how can we best stay in touch with you?

32:01 Mike: If you haven’t been in the drinksoma.com, go there. It’s really the place where you can learn the most about Soma and order some water filter. If you’re on social, our handle is @somawater. In particular our Instagram is fantastic, I would highly recommend it but if you were to follow at Soma online or if you want to find me @Mikedelponte, you’re very welcome to and the company again can be found at drinksoma.com.

32:29 Lorna: Awesome. Thank you so much and you have a beautiful afternoon.

32:33 Mike: You too.

[END OF RECORDING]

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The post [E4C65] From Idea to Launched Product in 18 Months, Mike Del Ponte of Soma appeared first on Ignite a Movement | Entrepreneurs for a Change with Lorna Li.

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