How £2 Raffle Tickets Sold a £500k Mansion

After months on the market with no success, a British homeowner realized his £500,000 country manor wouldn't sell the traditional way.

So he abandoned the estate agents and launched an unconventional plan: a £2 online raffle.

The genius behind the £2 raffle spread: small entry fee, giant prize, easy to share

• Low friction: £2 feels like pocket change, so it attracted a wide pool of participants almost instantly.

• A Life-Changing Prize: For the cost of a coffee, participants had the chance to win a mansion.

• Easy to share: The “£2 → country manor” story spread fast.

Smart Safeguards: How the Draw Was Protected

To mitigate the risk of underselling—for instance, raising only £50,000—the terms included key safeguards:

• Minimum-tickets rule: The draw proceeds only after a defined target (e.g., 250,000 tickets) is reached.

• Refund or cash-pot fallback: If the target isn’t met, the organizer cancels the draw and refunds entrants—or awards a fixed cash prize funded by entries.

• Clear deadline + independent draw: A firm end date and third-party administration/verification build and maintain trust.

The genius of the raffle was in selling hope itself. The true product wasn't the £2 ticket, but the dream of a new life. The low price drew broad participation, the headline prize sustained excitement, and clear rules ensured fairness and transparency.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Paid growth AND organic growth is the way. Jeff Bezos was notorious for saying "if you have the best product, you don't need to pay for paid ads." But now Amazon spends a lot of money on paid ads.

TikTok went global because of spending insane amount of cash on paid ads. They were burning a lot of money before AI companies with little to no profitability.

2/

AI is only going to get expensive in the short-term so use it as much as you can now as VCs pay for it.

3/

Acquire is good to find startups to build. Most startups that are selling are either because they have a good business or they can't scale it to the next level or they want to cash out faster.

You want to avoid #3 while if someone asks for a huge multiple, you can know that they have decent MOAT that you can double-verify. I bet most people on Acquire are just spies who want to be fast-copier of good businesses.

Never reinvent. Make another lemonade stand even though 100s exist. Reinvent a novel thing when you have enough money so you have cushion.

Rabbit Holes

1. This $1.4 billion lesson will make you richer than 99% on the internet by Lana Sova

2. The Short Life of Online Sales Leads by James B. Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran and David Elkington

3. Boomer app growth guide by Brock Anderson

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