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This week we talked with Crowdfunding expert Jason Fishman talking about money and Crowdfunding.
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Latest episode: Jason Fishman on Raising Money and Crowdfunding (Transcript)
Alex MacGregor (00:00.278) talk with episode 52 of the Highways podcast myself, Alex. Yeah, so we're just talking before we were on live. So Jason, he works on investor acquisitions, and he's on the financing side of the venture side. And this is kind of cool for us because we actually don't, I don't think we've had like someone on that side of the kind of business aspect on so far. So
Jake Hissitt (00:05.782) Jake.
Alex MacGregor (00:28.864) And this is very pertinent right now because of all the money that's getting raised across different industries. So yeah, Jason, maybe just give a quick background and kind of like your kind of experience and kind of where you're at right now.
Jason Fishman (00:39.376) Sure, sure. I always start my introduction by saying I'm a marketer. I've been doing this for over 15 years. I've been on the agency side, client, ad network, while being part of a social gaming startup here in Los Angeles and being directly involved in fundraising for our seed round. I saw all the inefficiencies and later in the career, once starting the agency, DNA, as a growth marketing firm, that
discussion of capital raising came back and our clients were constantly bringing us to this conversation, whether it was, hey, can you work on the marketing section of our business plan and talk about how we're going to grow? We're trying to bring capital in from this. Can you put together a pitch deck for us? We want to do this first campaign. Let's send the results to this investor that we have. And then hopefully we can get more funding. They'd even asked me to participate in those investor meetings. So when I was introduced to these laws, first regulation D506C here in the U.S.,
which allows for solicitation of accredited investors, high net worth individuals. I said, wow, light bulb, I can be of direct value here. I run ad campaigns. I can stack data for high net worth, high household income, audiences, filter by investor behaviors, interests. And our first ad campaigns there saw success. I was introduced to more of these issuers, companies issuing shares.
began working on those as well as at that point, we're talking 2015 reward crowdfunding. So Indiegogo Kickstarter campaigns, some of those agencies saw what we were doing on the close point equity crowdfunding side and said, Hey, let's run some of that traffic over here. Worked on a good 40, 50 of those. And then they began introducing us to Reg CF Regulation Crowdfunding, which went into law, went into effect May of 2016.
Day one, we had ads live, kind of fell into it, found our niche, our specialization as marketers at that point. Took me a while to really embrace it because it's a shorter term engagements, lower budget in some cases, groups really scale as it's working. But we started working on Reg CF, Regulation Crowdfunding Campaigns, which allowed us to target both retail and a credit investor, basically any adult. There's another, another filing I'll throw out to you, which is Regulation A+.
Jason Fishman (03:01.976) Right now, you can raise up to $5 million on Reg CF and up to $75 million on Regulation A+. And to date, we've worked on over 500 of these deals, have collectively produced nine figures of capital, have worked on campaigns this year alone that have raised over $100 million collectively. But anywhere we target investors, this could be Web 3, gold, real estate, all different types of funds. Like the list goes on, we've been able to put numbers on the board.
Jake Hissitt (03:27.561) AI.
Jake Hissitt (03:31.498) Any AI?
Jason Fishman (03:33.316) Yes, of course. A lot of the AI companies use Reg CF. I don't know if we've worked on any that are Reg D. I worked on a notable regulation plus influencer AI platform this year, Radintel. $12 million capped out in June. Next year, we filed the raising another $50 million. It just went live last week here in October.
Alex MacGregor (03:56.91) So just a quick kind of backtrack a little bit, Jason, like, you, were you always interested in the finance aspect or like, is that just something you kind of stumbled into? Like, I'm just trying to get it clear, stumbled into, yeah.
Jason Fishman (04:10.303) I started marketing, grew up here in Southern California as an action sports consultant. So working on snow, skate, surf campaigns, we're talking 08, 2009. And going through that journey, the social gaming startup, did the capital raise there. And then in the growth marketing side, lot of the clients needed funding. So I understood the need and
the impact it would have when we brought in capital, especially once we started working on these marketing campaigns for them.
Alex MacGregor (04:40.525) Yeah.
Your story reminds me actually, there was a company in Silicon Valley, like around the dot com bubble, like when Google and all these guys came on a scene called plug and play. And these guys, they, they owned the, like a carpet store or something. And, they own some office space and all of the startups were asking them for office space. They had no nothing about venture or finance. And then suddenly they just learned the thing as they went. And then they started a, like a venture, they're now basically a venture fund.
capital business. yeah, so like it's interesting evolution. And so your kind of main focus, like, is kind of really diverse. So how do you, how do you kind of look at it like, like across so many different industries? Why not just focus on one thing? Me and Jacob, we talked about recently, actually, like focus versus, you know, spreading across different things.
Jason Fishman (05:37.04) Sure. It's definitely important to have your niche as an agency, as a marketer, to be able to say, hey, we're the best in the world at, and for us, it's regulated investment crowdfunding. About 420 some odd live reg CF campaigns today. I think it's 423 as of Monday. Another 40 or so live regulation A plus campaigns. So relatively small market. Now,
Within that, we work with groups in a full spectrum of different verticals, which makes it exciting. Every week, bringing on a new client and or new clients and they have different industries where they're growing their market share. They're looking to bring more investors. We see overlap from the investors, similar target audiences across each of these at that.
I do look at it as investor acquisition. That is our niche. There's only so many groups doing it. There's more companies, more issuers filing a Reg D, which is the credit investor only. So higher entry point or Reg CF, Reg A, may be a hundred to a thousand dollars as a minimum investment. Average investment may be somewhere between fifteen hundred and a few thousand dollars. Reg D, may be twenty five, fifty K as the minimum.
Alex MacGregor (06:38.252) Yeah.
Jason Fishman (06:59.862) We've worked on real estate, REGDs this year was over 500K as the minimum per investor. So there's a bit more happening there. And we've broadened just from REGCF because the audiences we've built, I've developed a database of over 1.8 million investors who participate in these types of deals. So I see performance when I bring it to a gold or real estate or Web3Camp.
Alex MacGregor (07:14.584) Yeah.
Alex MacGregor (07:24.13) Yeah. Is it just me or is it like, feel like the crowdfunding space was really hot like 10 years ago, like we had Shark Tank and we had Dragon's Den in the UK. And then you have all of these platforms and companies. So now it's a very mature thing really, the crowdfunding space. And you talked about the deal flow there. So how is the deal flow right now for crowdfunding? Like, is it fairly stable or is it, because you can't really crowdfund an AI.
Jason Fishman (07:33.722) Sure.
Alex MacGregor (07:51.512) company, right? Like they require a different type of financing.
Jake Hissitt (07:54.271) I have to interject there. I got approached today, the first time ever, by the way, by an AI fund that is crowdfunded through cryptocurrency.
Alex MacGregor (08:08.141) Okay.
Alex MacGregor (08:12.194) Interesting.
Jason Fishman (08:12.463) Yeah.
Jake Hissitt (08:13.0) First time I'd heard of it.
Jason Fishman (08:14.96) I wonder if it's a Dow and there's voting rights all the way through.
Jake Hissitt (08:19.348) I wonder, I wonder, you know, I haven't looked into it any more than that, but they hit me up. They're called Pond, Pond AI. I'm not entirely sure. You can search it, just check it out. But, I thought it was quite interesting.
Jason Fishman (08:34.734) Yeah, it all comes down to how it's structured. So as Jake's mentioning, you know, if it's a fund, some type of Web3 setup, Alex, there's plenty of groups that are running a RegCF early round up to five million dollars and they're selling stock and the company's private. wouldn't, you know, the word crowdfunding somewhat broad. I wouldn't necessarily say, this is Indiegogo or Kickstarter and you're getting some perks, you're getting early access, you're getting free months of usage.
you're actually getting shares, or let's say it's a convertible note, some different type of structure capital formation. But it'd be the same as if you were buying OpenAI or any of these other companies, let's say early rounds, private in many cases. Public companies could actually run regulation A plus campaigns, but it's selling ownership into the company.
Alex MacGregor (09:15.906) Yeah.
Alex MacGregor (09:28.632) Have you, have you heard of a company in the, there's a company in the UK called, crowd cube. Are you aware of this company? The crowd. Yeah. Is there like an equivalent in the U S they're, they're trying to do this, or is it not quite there yet in terms of like, like a technology platform? Like it's still much, very much like a service offering.
Jason Fishman (09:35.47) Yeah.
Jason Fishman (09:49.136) Yeah. So the UK, Europe as a whole, from my understanding, and I serve on the Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance, have different counterparts in Europe, you guys are a few years ahead in terms of the legislature, in terms of mass adoption and understanding. I'm still explaining to people what equity crowdfunding, regulated investment crowdfunding is every day. Even speaking about it with you guys.
Alex MacGregor (10:04.024) Really?
Jason Fishman (10:17.484) learning, asking different questions. I still have to break it down for groups every day and explain it as another way to reach investors and bring funding in. I think it'll be the primary approach towards capital formation in years to come. I also serve on the Crowdfund Professional Association Board, going to be in Washington, D.C. later this month. We're pushing for higher limits. We're pushing for tax credits. We're pushing for all different types of benefits for both investors and issuers and to bring more of a spotlight on the space.
So there are tech platforms here where you could add an invest now button to your website. You have to file with the regulators, SEC. You have to do everything by the book. They want to prevent fraud, of course, but there's tech solutions. There's platforms where you can list these deals. There are service providers, agencies, different types of consultants, quarterbacks, crowd cube type companies here in the U.S.
But many of the filings now allow for international investors. There's regulation S. There's different ways you can work with the lawyer to make sure you're compliant for bringing investors from all over the world.
Alex MacGregor (11:24.078) And how would you pitch this like to a young founder? V's the traditional financing, like venture capital or, you know, like the polymarket guy this week, he took money from the ice, right? For his, like a investment from ice for his startup. So how would you pitch this V's those other like P and VC traditional.
Jason Fishman (11:45.24) Yeah. Well, you know, I'm not in the business of telling every company they should run a regulated investment crowdfund campaign. am highly recommending for every company that is running these types of initiatives or even just looking to reach investors online to run a digital marketing campaign initiative rollout. And I speak about that at length every day, talking about a podcast or conference.
a workshop tonight with an accelerator and different founders here in Los Angeles. I want to see a higher success rate industry wide, but I would start the discussion there of, you know, it's under 5 % of deals that are getting funded at the VC level. It's a tougher market right now. I think you were asking a question earlier kind of about, you know, relevancy, market conditions. I have clients in the med tech space and they tell me it's dried up. VC
funding, angel investors, different fluctuations with new laws and pullback of funding here in the US. There's question marks. And as a result, investors are weary about putting funds into med tech, health tech, biotech, all of these different, similar verticals, but verticals. So there's been a lot more of those companies entering the Reg CF, Regulation D, Regulation A plus markets.
And we tell a story, we could target doctors, we could target high net worth individuals that may be interested in getting on board, even in a lower level and watching things grow from there. some other stories I would point to Alex, there are groups we've worked with where they were, know, $20 million, one running a REG CF in terms of evaluation. And we've run campaigns with them this year where they're over $3 billion in their valuation.
This is a marketing play. You probably need 50,000 visits to your offering page per million, two and a half million dollars raised. Maybe you're getting a 2 % conversion, thousand investments off that. Maybe it's somewhere between a thousand, $2,500 as the average investment. So think about the millions of impressions you're getting to drive those 50,000 people there. That marketing campaign becomes added value to the capital that you're bringing in.
Jason Fishman (14:08.367) and you get a set the valuation after a successful round, you could keep going back to the crowd and saying, Hey, we're to do our next filing and at a higher valuation. We've got all the press we got from the last one. I've had clients where they complete the round. There are Forbes 30 under 30. They're getting different types of awards, accolades, publishers want to cover them. So they're growing throughout this capital raising process. It, it's a great way to get out there.
Alex MacGregor (14:19.17) Yeah.
Alex MacGregor (14:32.374) Yeah, there's a company in UK that really well, BrewDog, the beer company. they did this many, many times, right? It was actually founded, I'm from Scotland, it was founded in Scotland. So these two guys literally, you know, didn't have much money and they just went for it with crowdfunding and yeah, nailed it.
Jason Fishman (14:37.049) Yeah.
I've been to one of their locations.
Jason Fishman (14:52.944) Oh yeah, they were one of the early regulation a plus campaigns. I didn't work on it, but I studied it. I've worked on campaigns with the lawyer who put together the deal and on some of his other clientele. And I've been to one of the locations, one of the pubs in the UK. And I believe it was $25 in person and you could get a pint and a share.
Alex MacGregor (15:09.133) Nice.
Alex MacGregor (15:17.326) Yeah, pretty cool.
Jason Fishman (15:18.48) Mm-hmm.
Jake Hissitt (15:20.502) I have a question, how, I mean, maybe this is the secret sauce, so you don't have to...
expose yourself and give away everything but are you driving most of this traffic via email campaign?
Jason Fishman (15:37.584) Well, I break it down into three categories when I'm speaking to a founder or marketing team in terms of the channels, the tactics they should be using, content marketing, advertising, and outreach. Content marketing to build the funnel, manage the brand-owned channels. It's going to be seven touch points or more before that investor converts. We want to be intentional about what they see. There is email drip systems going out to first degree networks and to new signups.
people signing up for webinar and other types of live events and content. We want to have headline worthy announcements coming out on a weekly basis. So emails occurring over there. We drive traffic into it with advertising. I would tell you advertising is the most consistently tied to performance of the channels. I can upload those databases as custom audiences, run ads directly to highly active investors in this space. Some of have over
100 companies in their portfolio at this point from these exemptions from Reg CF, from regulation A plus. So you imagine reaching those individuals and with an advertisement and retargeting them on a daily basis, more aggressively than we would with a cold email outreach campaign, and then getting all of the analytics around it, know, click through rate, conversion rate, cost per acquisition, cost per purchase, cost per conversion, return on ad spend metrics, and then scaling up as we're seeing performance.
Maybe it's a 10x return on ad spend, have campaigns performing higher than that today, start to ramp it up once we hit about 3x, 5x. So advertising has been a big driver, Jake. know roughly every dollar, $2 we spend as an investor getting to that offering page. For outreach, I find outreach to be a bit more hit or miss. And in many cases, there's actually an offline element where an investor is getting a direct message, email.
and wants to speak with the founder of investor relations team. So I'm a big fan of LinkedIn outreach. I find profile picture, mutual connections, background, it leads to not only a higher response rate, but a warmer dynamic once those prospects are on the line. So I'll see our clients get on the phone daily with prospective investors if we're running a LinkedIn outreach campaign.
Jason Fishman (17:57.828) but they are limited. about 25 invitations per day, 39 invitations per day. Once an account's warmed up on LinkedIn, are the numbers we find. You can run it from multiple accounts, so you can get to higher volumes. We'll then add email on top of it, create an email server, start with batches of 5,000, 10,000 prospects to go after. I find it to be a bit spamier and it shows up in some of the responses, even have some investors a bit more standoffish. I really want to use outreach.
as an approach to get larger investments, higher transactional value, building a rapport relationship, instilling confidence in who the client is speaking to offline. And I've seen some groups with a well-oiled machine of an investor relations process, particularly some of the funds and Reg D real estate issuers that are always bringing on more investors and at six figure levels, they have a tight system.
They're closing at great levels. The average investment is very attractive for them. If I bring a RIG CF investor with the founder who was having trouble securing capital offline onto calls daily from email, it may not produce the same way.
Jake Hissitt (19:17.846) Okay. I was, you know, again, I don't to, get into the secret sauce. I'm a bit of a, a bit of a tech stack guy. That's a, that was really why I was asking. So I was just curious, like, do you use like clay or Apollo for this, or do you use any like custom made tools? I'm not trying to sell you. Don't worry.
Jason Fishman (19:26.766) Okay.
Jason Fishman (19:39.469) Yeah.
WUF
done extensive data mining. So some of these equity crowdfunding portals, as defined by the SEC, the sites that list the deals online, and there's an offering page picture, like a vertical pitch deck and a pitch video on there, following landing page best practices, a lot of social proof all the way through, and then an invest button and the entire transaction can occur on that portal. Some of them have investor reviews on them, meaning
As part of the checkout process, they ask investors, why did you invest in this? And then a little box they can check anonymous, or can we list you on the offering page? It very much helps the issuer to list them on the offering page. In fact, the anchor investor, the lead investor syndicate lead is often put onto that page with a testimonial and amount on why they invested. You can go on to these offering pages.
and collect data of, here are all the investors for Reg CF. There's been about 10,000 deals across Reg CF and Regulation 8+. So you're talking about different tech stack. If you were data mining there and putting together a list, and then let's say cross-referencing that with Apollo or with a data provider and getting contact info accordingly.
Jason Fishman (21:12.28) And then you could upload those lists for advertising targeting. And it's just advertising targeting at that point. You'd have to go through an extra level of compliance to make sure you're doing everything right on the outreach side. If you're reaching out to him directly, but plenty of ways to do that, of course. So yes, Apollo, you would come across when searching around a variety of different investor, Apollo's.
where Apollo's more B2B, there's platforms that are just for investors. There's some email list providers that, it's kind of junk. And some of the good investor platforms, more of dossiers, you're searching, you're going one by one, you're learning about their family office and everything all the way through, but there's plenty of data out there.
Jake Hissitt (22:05.632) Yeah, really great. know, it's there's so much data in a way, I guess the system that runs behind it. Yeah, it's one one of design, I'm sure.
Jason Fishman (22:21.112) Yeah, something I say a lot, the name of my podcast, test optimized scale. So we've designed it by testing and optimizing and changing it up and new tests and an hour we find in the pockets of performance and then scaling what's working because they're very direct response. They're very performance oriented campaigns. It's not a, hey, six month SEO. Hopefully we'll see some traffic at that point. It's
campaign went live a week ago, campaign went live a month ago, what's my return on ad spend, what's my cost of capital. So in that environment, you got to put numbers on the board quick. If it's not working, pivot, you may only get a month, you may only get two months out of a client because their campaign's closing or they have limited budget to begin with. Maybe they didn't plan accordingly. Maybe they have other vendors that are working and they're bringing you in. So they can be quick runs.
three months, I'd say is a common equity crowdfunding campaign. If it's working, they'll get extensions. They could run throughout the course of the year, but if it's not, they don't want to leave it up for too long. So it puts you in this state of, hey, we have to test out new audiences, new creatives, new funnels every week, do more of what's working. Hey, how do we find shortcuts by data mining and pulling different audiences in or by tapping in?
to the voice of different publishers and their follower base. But the results that come out the other side, it's very exciting. It's rewarding to be a part of, and you watch the clients you're working with grow. Their offices, their team, their tech, everything.
Alex MacGregor (24:00.365) We did briefly mention AI and I see a lot of now these like guys, traditional VC, PE people starting to set up these AI funds, right? Where basically they're allocating capital with some kind of AI. How do you think about AI in terms of what you do?
Jason Fishman (24:24.1) Well, yes, there's AI funds, there's AI companies, there's AI tools that we use, there's AI across the board, right? And I feel like sometimes the term's misused. If I were to turn on the light here in the room, it's like, it's my AI candle. Anything electric, they're calling AI these days. Anything automated, where some of these tools have been using for years, it's just, you
machine learning and automated tech, especially on the media buying side. But we're exploring new AI social networks that are really exciting to me. You're treating Sora 2 as a social network, treating other platforms as a social network. You know, my creative director, creative team is finding all different types of ways to improve quality with video and graphic design platforms.
I really emphasize that I don't want to use AI unless it's better than human. I don't want to have shortcuts for my team. I want to have better quality coming out because that's what the clients care about. They don't care about if it takes us less time or, you know, if we put together extra pages and a marketing plan, but it doesn't put out stronger creative, doesn't put out stronger follow ups, doesn't make the results come in at a higher level.
in their reporting dashboard, but a lot on the creative side right now. I'm a numbers guy, do a lot of data analysis as well too. And what we're able to do with AI. mean, what would take me hours? I can do in seconds, less than a minute these days. I have to have the right data source. I have to be asking the right questions. I have to double check everything. I find a lot of platforms are regularly wrong, but we're using it.
for new things every week at the agency. And then yes, what comes across our desk in terms of new clients generally reflects what you're reading about in the media. if it's, you know, I mentioned influencer AI, that that's something we're working on. If it's a hot month for alt coins, we're getting, you know, leads coming in and, you Hey, alt season, we want to run more traffic, we need to work on.
Jason Fishman (26:48.752) know, content, creative collaborations, need, to figure out more to do here, to reach trusted audiences. we, we need to, basically figure out what works from our current stack work on a strategy, bring in more options towards it. but what is popular at the time tends to need more eyeballs and comes through an agency like us.
Jake Hissitt (27:17.79) Alex, it's time for the question.
Jason Fishman (27:21.144) We've worked with different buying algorithms on the web three and even public market side for years. So some of those and what they're doing with AI and the results they're hitting right now are off the charts. It's pretty insane. So it's a matter of telling that story in a few words in the messaging and bringing new audiences, new users, new investors into them. Yeah.
Alex MacGregor (27:21.196) Yeah, go ahead.
Jake Hissitt (27:34.636) That was the end.
Alex MacGregor (27:40.974) also think going back to the polymarket example, like the blockchain crowd prediction thing has a lot of legs.
Jason Fishman (27:44.922) Yeah.
Alex MacGregor (27:52.394) It seems to be very popular.
Jason Fishman (27:52.425) yeah.
Jason Fishman (27:55.628) Once comedy shows like South Park start talking about you, I think it means it's hit the mainstream. yes, mean, we spend so much, we live online at this point, right? We spend so much time on our devices. Sometimes I'll joke around, I'll be at a dinner and ask someone about their screen time. Apps break it down and show, and everyone's always embarrassed to share.
Alex MacGregor (28:01.075) Tom Brady.
Jason Fishman (28:22.224) So being able to make predictions, make investments, I'll call it investments, see returns on that is definitely a big deal. It could be looked at as betting, could be looked at as investing, could be looked at as a social network even. But where we're putting our time, where we're investing our mind share can put out different results. If you're on a social platform, just pressing like on memes all day, or if you're putting it into an investment platform.
even a place where you're more or less placing wagers, you could have a radically different result with the right strategy in a small period of time.
Jake Hissitt (29:03.964) Okay, the question has got to be asked, Jason, really sorry about this one. It gets it gets everybody. Don't worry, you won't be the first person but we have to ask you about the future. I mean, it could be within your field. It could be within your life. It could be the future of the world. But where do you see the future heading?
Jason Fishman (29:27.536) feel like you want me to have a Terminator 2 type answer with AI and the machines taking over. And I don't always get asked this. And I have, though, and I've had answers like that. I don't It's hard to say. In some aspects, technology has moved much slower than what we were promised as kids. Where's my hoverboard? I can't, you know.
Jake Hissitt (29:55.436) That's a good thing now though, right?
Jason Fishman (29:56.186) take my flying car out. mean, everything moves slower. AI seems to be an exception to that. But still, if you would have asked me two years ago, I would have expected more people to be using AI on a daily basis, more builds, more custom GPTs, but more occurring on a daily basis. So.
It's hard to say what you know, there's always a fear report of, know, by next year, there'll be no more jobs. And, you know, someone else will say 2027 2030 2035 2050. I feel like, you know, Jurassic Park Life Finds A Way will be able to adapt to all of this, you know, along with every
Conspiracy theory about AI is one that there's time travel and people from a hundred years from now coming back and visiting us and things are different, but we're still doing our thing. So I try to focus on near term. Yeah.
Jake Hissitt (31:00.14) I mean...
Alex MacGregor (31:01.486) Actually, Jason, just to point out a little point there, you did say earlier in the pod that you think that your model of financing will be the future investing. That could be a really interesting one. That's quite a bold claim.
Jason Fishman (31:13.082) Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good near term one for me to focus on directly applicable to what I do and.
Alex MacGregor (31:25.506) Where's the other forms of investing gonna go? Like maybe add some color on that. Why is it gonna take over?
Jason Fishman (31:25.87) When I first got involved
Jason Fishman (31:32.432) Yeah, well, when I first got involved in the startup community in Los Angeles, it 2009, 2010. Market had just crashed. And I would see these amazing ideas that weren't getting funded. the founders were speaking to different investors on a daily basis. They kind of exhausted their own network. They were speaking to broker dealers. were speaking to marketing agencies. They were speaking to
All different types of people who played around in the capital communities, claimed they had a big network and were getting introductions right and left. Meanwhile, people weren't investing and you were basically limited by your network. You were basically limited by their networks, first degree, second degree. And if you didn't have the right connections, if you weren't able to present in the right way, you weren't getting funded. Meanwhile, everyone reads about companies that, you know, have
proof of concept, but they're, you know, they're pre-products, pre-revenue, pre-users, and they get $80 million, hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars in funding. It's like, what's happening? And he mentioned Silicon Valley. There's a lot of different inroads for the right people. What I like about these digital channels to bring in capital and call it crowd sales, which, you know, this was really like, these were bad words in 2016, 2018.
That meant you couldn't get funded offline and you were trying something new. Now, a lot of companies are opting for this route because they get to set the terms and every investor has to work off those terms. It's no longer, you know, getting strong armed by a VC or anything like that. know plenty of great VCs, but you know, it's the common story, right? And they end up taking control over time and, you know, so on and so forth. But this democratizes access to capital for founders. This
makes it available to every retail investor to participate in these early stage opportunities. You could get in on a company that has a $10 million valuation and turns into a unicorn. Billion dollar, multi-billion dollar higher valuation over time and get those type of returns that you hear about. You hear those stories of, you would have gotten a Facebook during the first year of business, what it would have been worth when they went public or what it would be worth now.
Jason Fishman (33:59.736) And it makes it so you don't have to have the right contacts to know about these early stage opportunities and the right funds, the right levels to actually participate in them. You don't have to have the right investor audience on the other side of the table. You can just do the right thing in terms of marketing, have the right formula, have enough traffic getting there and have a good shot towards success using one of these vehicles. As an investor, different
Ideologies you want to follow with, you know, high risk, high return section of your portfolio, maybe 10, 20 % having enough deals there, enough diversification. But over time, maybe you are able to have that high return and, you know, noteworthy liquidity event. So I believe as there's more investor success stories, there is going to be more people entering the space. are going to be more, you know, publishers talking about it.
And again, we live online. Why wouldn't we market these deals? Why wouldn't we invest? Why wouldn't we try to have that convergence of investors and issuers happening online and the crowd around it?
Alex MacGregor (35:09.454) Jason, Jason, very interesting. think we should revisit this in a year and off the back of all this and the Polymarket stuff, I think it's going to be very interesting to see, especially as VC returns are struggling. And I think in a year's time, maybe you're kind of dominating this space. So let's check in in a year.
Jason Fishman (35:32.812) Absolutely. There'll be more investors. There'll be more issuers. Again, it's relatively unknown. So I picture instead of a few hundred companies running a reg CF at a time, a few hundred thousand down the line, a few million, 24 some odd million small businesses in the US. It just needs more awareness and more investors participating. And yeah, happy to do it again.
Alex MacGregor (35:55.49) Cool, thank you. Cheers. Let's go.
Jason Fishman (35:58.213) Thanks.
Alex MacGregor (35:59.695) Thanks, thanks guys. Cheers.
Jake Hissitt (36:00.813) Thanks Jason.
Jason Fishman (36:02.87) Awesome. Hope that.
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