Tzakhi (00:00)
Hi Jason.
Jason Fishman (00:01)
Hey, hey, excited to be here.
Tzakhi (00:05)
Yes, very happy to have you. Jason Fishman from DNA Digital Niche Agency. We're at the Meet Capital Startup Podcast. Very happy to have you. We've known each other for a few years. I'll tell the audience a bit about what you do and then maybe you'll add to that. So you've been with Digital Niche Agency, DNA for, what is it, 10 years?
Jason Fishman (00:30)
10 years now, time does fly.
Tzakhi (00:31)
Yeah, awesome. And I think you've already crossed the nine figures in money raised for the startups that you've been working with on crowd, you've been managing their crowdfunding campaigns, which is what we're going to talk about. Equity crowdfunding to be precise. And you have a podcast, which is, I was a guest on it a long time back. What is it? Optimize.
Jason Fishman (00:41)
Yes.
Test -optimized scale, that's my philosophy towards marketing. Growth, summarized in three words.
Tzakhi (01:01)
Test, optimize, scale. Yes, OK. OK, good. Do you want to add a bit about yourself?
Jason Fishman (01:11)
Sure, sure. Thanks for talking to me. It's a pleasure to be here. As mentioned, you are a thought leader in this space that'll be able to hop on here and collaborate on different concepts that founders can apply towards their own model, their own fundraise, that their own growth is very much part of my initiative is what I look to do and be an open book. We've worked on over 400 investor marketing campaigns that have collectively produced nine figures of capital.
We've actually worked with fintech apps, with different types of digital asset exchanges, and brought in billions in assets under management on top of that as well. But our primary focus, what we're talking about here today, is Reg CF, Reg D, Reg A +, Reg S, all of these different legal filings that allow for accredited investors, accredited and retail investors, depending on the vehicle, to buy shares in private companies.
It provides early access to capital, democratizes access to capital at that for founders, for investors, gives them deal flow from these types of organizations, many times growth stages. And it's just a revolutionary update that has come live in the past few years, 2016 for Reg CF.
And I still believe we're in our infancy. So I always look to be at the forefront with what we work on, how we're on the front lines of marketing campaigns, typically over 40 different campaigns over at a time. I have a lot to share in terms of what we see work, not work. I look to do that on my podcast. I'm part of the Forbes Agency Council on the board of the Crowdfunding Professional Association. They speak at a volume of events about this itself.
because I believe there's missing pieces of education in the space. People hear about how much can be raised using these filings, but they do not, they don't understand that there are some large failure rates and that marketing is a key component towards getting enough traffic, getting enough investors to an offering to see enough capital come out the other end. So again, I've been looking forward to this discussion. Happy to.
answer questions about the fundraising success we've seen and what your audience would find the most value in here. I'd like to read an open book.
Tzakhi (03:40)
Okay, well, first of all, yeah, thanks for all that. Definitely you guys are super professional. We've been referring startups your way because we know that.
And on this podcast, we've had Johnny Price, whom you know. So our listeners, if they've been listening, have a bit of a background about equity crowdfunding. I still think a lot of listeners, maybe our newer listeners might not know enough about it. So you gave us a little bit of an intro. I think one thing that is a bit confusing.
about the equity crowdfunding space is that on one hand, there are companies that are raising millions, but there are a lot of startups that go into crowdfunding and you see them raising small amounts, which often are not worth the trouble that the founders go through. You look at the big...
equity crowdfunding platforms and there's some big successes and then you see startups that are raising 50, 100, 200K. And I know because I've been in this space also for over two years now, I know that there's a lot of work behind any campaign that goes up there and...
If it doesn't give a real return, it's not worth the effort. So tell us a bit about what makes in your mind the difference between companies that can raise big money, a lot of money via equity crowdfunding, and those that probably should not get into it in the first place.
Jason Fishman (05:17)
Sure, sure. Well, I'm sure Johnny Price from WeFundr broke it all down for you. I'm a big Johnny fan. He's been on my podcast, webinars together. But just to add to what's already been discussed on this channel, on this platform, I look at statistics from King's Crowd.
Tzakhi (05:34)
Yes.
Jason Fishman (05:47)
King's Crowd shows the analytics from all of the Reg CF campaigns to date, Regulation Crowdfunding campaigns to date. Reg CF, of course, allows for up to $5 million to be raised. There's an additional audit, additional filing that has to occur around $1 .2 million, $1 .235 million. And you can see from May of 2016 till today, the history of campaigns. You can look at the campaigns that...
have raised the most in the past week, the past month. It is a plethora of information. And as a data guy, it is a place that I spend a lot of time. So every Monday morning, I do an analysis of what's occurred over the past week, look at the monthly numbers. I look at the annual numbers. So in 2023, there was 1 ,434 Reg CF campaigns that went live.
And 7 .46 % hit the million dollar level or more. Just over 100, around 110. And that that doesn't always get discussed when looking at the activation of a Reg CF campaign. When I look at all of the Reg CF to date, I did a full breakdown in July of 23.
I looked again in 2024 and 50 % of campaigns don't raise over 74K. The top 10%, it's at about 643K or more. Now that can be productive for many founders. Yeah.
Tzakhi (07:21)
Wow.
Jason, are these 1400 campaigns a year or startups, meaning is it sometimes one company that does several campaigns or goes from platform to platform, so effectively can be three or four campaigns from the same company or are those 1400 companies?
Jason Fishman (07:53)
Those were 1434 reg CF campaigns. So there are some companies that would be in there multiple times. Not many. It would be a small percent, but for instance, we worked on an atom beam and they did a $3 million round that closed in July and another one of that level that closed in December. So it's that there are some groups that'll have multiple.
Tzakhi (08:05)
Okay.
Jason Fishman (08:23)
Reg CF there, you could move from one portal to another doesn't always require that. But it's the amount of Reg CF campaigns. So the top 10 % are moving. They typically raise 130k or more a month from what I find. It can be higher. The month of March 2024. The 10 % barrier was about $200 ,000.
Tzakhi (08:33)
Okay.
Jason Fishman (08:52)
So about 58 of 581 reg CFs raised $200 ,000 or more. The bottom 50 % were at about $9 ,600 for the month or less. Those about 20 % didn't raise anything. And those are higher stats than on a normal month. When I did that in a 2022 October for equity crowdfunding week,
It was still about that 130 K mark for the month, about 75 for the top 10%, about 7 ,500 to the bottom 50%. That is per month. But it shows if you want to be live for two or three months, if you want to be live for six months longer, you have more of a trajectory. If you're not raising anything after a certain point in time, you're going to want to do some heavy pivots or reevaluate whether you want to be using the vehicle at all. And I don't say these numbers to scare people with.
I don't say these numbers to allow issuers who are live to accept underperformance. I, I, I state it because it shows the importance of marketing, which is why I focus on this area of Rake CF. I envision 50 ,000 visitors per million dollars raised. And those are unique visitors. Those aren't straight visits for your earlier question, to produce a
per million dollars raised. That reflects a 2 % conversion rate. Google says an average conversion rate is 2 .35%. So 2 % on an investor campaign, even from retail investors is strong. That's a thousand investors off 50 ,000 visitors and a thousand dollar average each. If you're hitting a thousand dollar average on a Reg CF campaign, which is more than many portals see, you're in a good place. Last year, the average was around $1 ,100. So,
Maybe we're just using round figures by saying a thousand, but maybe raises 1 .1 million off 50 ,000 visitors. If you're seeing a higher conversion rate, if you're seeing a higher average investment level, you're going to see better numbers than that. But I would project conservatively and be pleasantly surprised if the average investment size or conversion rate is higher.
Tzakhi (11:11)
Jason, I think a lot of people listening to this might be early stage founders and they're raising money and they're maybe considering, you know, what to do to raise more money and to succeed with their startup. And maybe they're raising from angels, maybe they're already raising from VCs, maybe they're considering other sources of capital. When should they think of Reg CF?
And of course, nobody wants to get into a big project like raising equity crowdfunding just to raise $200 ,000. I don't think anyone wants to do that. There's a lot of effort involved. It's not just the cost of the capital. It's also the time and effort that's involved and weighs on the team and usually also on the CEO that has a lot of other things to deal with, of course. So.
who should go for this? And then once they decide on it, what are the keys to success? And how can someone then take it and go big within the range that startups can succeed in with Rec CF?
Jason Fishman (12:30)
Sure, sure. So we see companies.
at all different stages, whether it's early stage, growth stage, enter the equity crowdfunding arena, the investment crowdfunding world. I have seen solopreneurs do well. I have seen groups with under a thousand followers on social media and their email list do well. I've seen groups with celebrities attached, sharks who have millions of followers.
Substantial revenue, high volume of locations, one that comes to mind even over 100 locations underperform. So I would not say it's a slam dunk, it's a guarantee for an issuer of any size. What I would look for is really the qualities of the founder. I find the most proactive founders have the most successful raises. We've worked on a high, we've worked on a long list.
Tzakhi (13:20)
Okay.
Jason Fishman (13:34)
of some of the top campaigns in the industry. And I give all the credit to those founders. We are their marketing team working on their behalf. It's their company. Yeah. So what is Proactive? They're the ones that...
Tzakhi (13:42)
What is proactive? What is proactive at the context of equity crowdfunding?
Jason Fishman (13:52)
Email, social message, not just social post, call, text, visit everyone that they know in the early stages of the campaign. There are platforms like WeFunder that allow for a soft launch. There are platforms that allow for a test the waters campaign. Maybe some of this is occurring in the pre -launch.
Compliantly, you know, there's a time when you could talk about the raise and a time before that where you cannot have the same availability for all investors. It's part of the democratization of these funding activities. It could be day one, week one, month one, and with repetition. So not just sending an email out to everyone they know and then giving up when it's not happening. If they're able,
to rally and bring in the first 100K, the first 250K, the first 500K, first million towards 5 million, they're going to be in a much stronger place. They're going to be creating that line around the block versus the empty restaurant. You do not want the empty restaurant sensation from a cold audience member. I've heard the analogies where it's a pool party and investors don't want to.
Hop in the pool first. No one wants to be the first to hop in the pool. Pool's half full. Hey, that looks fun. It looks inviting. I'm going in there. And I could talk about a variety of background reasons around that, but I think you get it. It's social dynamics. It's a crowd effect that needs to occur. And if the founder is proactively exhausting their resources, their networks, friends, family, customers, clients, partners,
Past employers, past employees, past partners, everyone, you know, with the request, hey, I'm doing this investment crowdfunding campaign. It's built off social dynamics. I want to bring, I need to bring as many people to it as I can. You can back it at any level. My minimum is $100, my minimum is $500, usually somewhere in between. And beyond that, I'm very appreciative if you could share this with everyone you know.
you want to post it out on social, message to people, tell people at the office, whatever it may be. I need to get hundreds, I need to get thousands of people backing this. But here's how to pull my business. Traditional fundraising, the friends and family round is very important. This opens it up for the entire community because you could bring everybody in. And believe me, they're going to be questioning why you didn't ask them if you...
Tzakhi (16:30)
Yeah.
Jason Fishman (16:46)
or a unicorn or have substantial growth from where your valuation is at today and you did not give them that opportunity. So this is the platform that you can bring everybody in. Those founders I often see speaking with their local angel groups, chamber of commerce groups, industry trade groups, digitally, LinkedIn, app in person, conferences, every week, every month they're being featured by.
a new writer, a new podcast host, that there's always something new to talk about for those founders. I would encourage everyone listening to this call to be that type of founder or third marketer to play that type of role within the organization because it does something psychologically. The optics, it demonstrates that this is a moving ship. It's going to its milestones. It's going to hit these benchmarks.
you can hop on, you can be part of it. It's not contingent upon your investment, but they will feel like a missed opportunity if you do not take advantage of this time to purchase shares. That's what I mean by it. These founders also want to do everything they can in terms of marketing. How much traffic can we drive? How many follow ups can we do? What type of content can we distribute to get people excited?
about all the traction that we're getting and see a higher conversion rate from ever moving into the offering page and funnel as a result. When they see something working, they double down on it. Hey, the ads are producing, let's ramp up the traffic. And that's been an instrumental part of our campaigns is finding scalable traffic sources and moving things up as the results are there.
Tzakhi (18:22)
Yeah, I think.
Yeah, I think, you know, the more the founders have conviction and their success and their future and the opportunity that they have and also in having a valuable offer, meaning.
well -priced offer that really does well for the investor, meaning when they say to a potential investor, please invest, they really believe that it's a good opportunity and that they're offering something good. It makes it easier psychologically and in every possible way to push forward and offer it to more people because instead of feeling like you're pushing something out, you're feeling like you're giving and that's the way it should be. Like you said, you don't want people to tell you, why didn't you
Jason Fishman (19:16)
Absolutely.
Tzakhi (19:18)
me in. I would have loved to be in if you become a big success one day and people ask you, why don't you let me participate? I would have. So I think that kind of mindset is really a driver.
Jason Fishman (19:37)
Absolutely, absolutely. And that ability to manage it to point of effectiveness, that grit of, hey, it's not working, it's working, it's plateaued, but I'm focused on that next goal and gonna do whatever it takes to get there.
Tzakhi (19:55)
Okay. And then, of course, there's like an initial marketing budget to make that happen. I mean, you need momentum. It's also something that you've said. You didn't use that word, but that's really the thing. You need momentum. So people see that you're raising capital and that there are other people in, and then it makes it easier for them to join and invest too.
Jason Fishman (20:22)
I have seen groups do it with little to no marketing budget. It's far less common. You would generally need a very, very large and responsive audience to be able to message with your communication channels to fill the whole round. It absolutely happens. It's few and far between, and most groups are not set up for that. You can...
really utilize all of the content channels that are available to you. And even some of the ones I mentioned with social media, email, your phone, in -person events. There's a never -ending list of publishing platforms online, different content aggregator tools and forums and groups within the social platforms. So by no means do you have
have to spend on marketing. You are in theory buying from yourself if your company is paying you. So there would be an expense towards that, an expense towards your internal marketing staff, an expense towards a contractor that you have doing this, an agency that you have doing it, different marketing platforms and vendors that are working on it. There would be costs towards that. Then you start looking at
paid traffic. So whether you're.
buying a pitch presentation at a conference and you're on stage and there's a sponsorship required for that. Whether you get presented with costs from a financial publisher, be it an email newsletter or a website, you have costs around that in many scenarios. There are ones that pick organically, they're far more aggressive in their selection process. There could be a delay in terms of getting on their calendar.
or editorial schedule. But that does happen at times as well. But you'll probably be presented with more paid opportunities, influencers, same concept, and then advertising. Advertising, there's platforms like Meta, X, TikTok that are low cost to test out. You can run any advertising budget.
You can A -B test different audience variants with different messaging and different funnels that you're taking them down, different destinations from the ad themselves. We find that they carry a high click -through rate and high conversion rate, something about reaching someone when they're scrolling that is associated with more engagement and even conversion. We also advertise on financial media websites, apps, mainstream media websites.
boring websites, weather .com. You see performance from a variety of places. So you want to cast a wide enough net. We always have assumptions going into a campaign, but you need the analytics to show you what's working and direct data -driven decisions from there.
Tzakhi (23:40)
Do you do code outreach? Do you reach out directly to investors?
Jason Fishman (23:45)
Yeah, it's a world you're very familiar with, with LinkedIn outreach. I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. We talked about scrolling on social platforms. There's also something to a profile picture, mutual connections, backgrounds that I find just leads to a higher response rate. You can send 25 or more invitations per day, per profile that you're sending from to prospective investors. It could be industry specific investors. They can be...
Tzakhi (23:48)
Yes.
Jason Fishman (24:15)
in a very close proximity to you. We'll do zip code targeting around founders. So even if a prospective investor does not opt to meet in person, they know that, hey, they are nearby. I could meet them. There's more trust associated with that. We look for 20 % or higher acceptance rate from invitations, a 20 % or higher response rate from messages. You could have a scheduling link, generally by message three in there, and have calls added to the calendar around it.
You want to make sure you're speaking that's legal about this. That way everything is compliant. But absolutely. There are ways to do it, uh, compliantly with email as well and at higher volumes. But the LinkedIn, I find that the conversations are quicker and warmer in terms of acceleration.
Tzakhi (25:01)
Yeah, that's why we focus on LinkedIn. Jason, this was great. I think there's a lot of information for startups. You've worked with so many startups. You've helped raise so much money. Can you give us five tips for startup founders raising capital?
Jason Fishman (25:21)
I would say enroll experts and enroll them early. There are a variety of different consultants, coaches, quarterbacks that can help you with the entire setup process and let you know, hey, this is a route you should go down or you may be too early. Speak to the portal, speak to multiple portals and get their feedback. And when it comes down to selecting one of them,
Tzakhi (25:42)
Okay, great.
Jason Fishman (25:51)
You should know based on the gut feelings, based on the contracts, take a look at what they send over and be able to predict who's going to be of the most support once you're live. Look at their success rates on King's crowd. Look at how many campaigns they have live. Look at how many campaigns they have that have raised over 100K, let alone 500, a million, 5 million. Don't just listen to the best campaigns they've worked on.
Throw every question you have at them towards success. Speak to agencies, speak to influencers, speak to people in your network about whether you should do this or not. From there, number two,
Don't start a campaign unless you believe you can raise over a hundred K from your audiences. This is my personal recommendation. It is consistent with what other groups put out there. But you want to have that social proof there. These are excellent pieces of technology to amplify the response for getting offline. So you bring in a hundred K investor.
You have an audience, maybe you can get 50 other people in your network to put in an average of a thousand dollars. You come out of the gate with 150 K. You're in a much better place than a group that's coming out and promoting their campaign at 15 K. So, you know, there are ways. Yes, exactly. So, you know, follow all the rules doing this, but at the same time, if you don't think that's possible, this can be more than an uphill battle. That is number two. Number three.
Tzakhi (27:16)
Yeah. So you prepare the momentum.
Jason Fishman (27:35)
Begin seeding social proof third party validation PR, any type of groups that you could point to. This could be customers, clients. This could be an anchor investor, lead investor. These could be strategic partners, whomever. Whomever has a large engaged audience that could be directed to the campaign. I say whomever, there's obviously a priority list when it comes to quality.
I envision campaigns where over the first three months, you have 90 different groups talking about you each on a different day. So it gives off the sensational, wow, I've heard so many people are talking about it. Everyone's talking about this company. And hopefully you see spikes in the, from their investor, from their user base as investors as well too. So that would be number three. Number four, build a strategy. You would want to get into this further once you have a platform set up, but you wouldn't believe how many groups.
Tzakhi (28:22)
Right.
Jason Fishman (28:33)
Just launch a campaign and know how they're getting from one milestone to the next. I think just by being live on a portal or being covered by a financial publisher for maybe a self -published deal that they put out is going to get them where they need to go and statistically it doesn't happen. So it's better to over plan here, put together a content calendar of headline worthy announcements that are going to come out each week. I have a model called 8. Plan for Strategy that you could take a look at online and they'll show you a roadmap of
an algorithmic path towards your goals. But however you do it, plan it out and you want to be conservative in projections, plan to do too much. And, you know, from there, continually optimize. Just nonstop optimizations. Be looking at the data, make sure they're large enough.
pieces of data so you have some conclusive information around it. But continue to optimize it weekly, make bigger pivots monthly, do not give up. No matter what, figure out how you're going to get to that goal. The time clock will end, but with that attitude, you're going to have a much better output on the other end. And, you know, I said enroll experts at the beginning, feel free to contact me. Definitely talk to Taki, talk to different people you hear on here as guests. We look at it as a duty.
to share what's working and not working in the space.
Tzakhi (30:02)
Awesome, Jason, really great. Who should reach out to you and how?
Jason Fishman (30:10)
Well, I welcome a warm marketing conversation anytime. If you are a founder, a marketer, if you work in the industry or in a VC, have a portfolio company looking to use Reg CF or similar vehicle, use digital as a whole to bring in more investors. Reach out. I'm happy to have a conversation with you. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn and, uh,
It can be responsive. You can reach out to me on our website, digitalnicheagency .com, and I'll look to get on the line with you directly. My sales pitch as much as a warm marketing check.
Tzakhi (30:54)
Awesome. Okay, good. Well, we'll share the links. Whoever's listening, if you haven't done so already, come to meet .capital and subscribe to our newsletter. We send every week a summary with the five tips from our conversations. And of course, subscribe wherever you're listening to this to hear our future episodes. Jason, thanks so much. It was great.
Jason Fishman (31:19)
My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you, everyone. Take care.
Tzakhi (31:22)
Take care, buddy.
