[Top Agency Series] Attracting Investors at Scale Using Equity Crowdfunding With Jason Fishman

Jason Fishman is the Co-founder and CEO of Digital Niche Agency, a growth marketing and digital advertising firm that helps companies drive customer acquisition, investor outreach, and brand visibility through data-driven campaigns. He launched the agency in 2014 and has since led marketing initiatives for startups and established brands across e-commerce, lead generation, and capital raising. With over 15 years of digital marketing experience, Jason specializes in paid media, content strategy, and scalable growth systems. He also contributes thought leadership and advises emerging companies globally.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:28] Jason Fishman explains how Digital Niche Agency helps founders raise capital through investor marketing
• [6:11] Challenges Jason faced raising capital as a startup founder and what most companies get wrong
• [8:53] Why social proof and storytelling are critical to converting investors in equity crowdfunding
• [14:20] How driving the right traffic and conversion rates determines fundraising success
• [18:00] Jason breaks down the importance of research, audience targeting, and competitor analysis
• [26:39] Creating clear, repeatable messaging that investors can easily understand and share
• [38:25] Using projections, metrics, and optimization to scale investor demand efficiently

In this episode…

Attracting investors at scale isn’t about luck — it’s about systems, strategy, and execution. Many founders launch equity crowdfunding campaigns without a clear plan for generating sustained investor demand. So what actually separates campaigns that raise millions from those that stall early?

Drawing from years of hands-on experience, Jason Fishman, a growth marketing expert specializing in investor acquisition, explains that scaling investor demand requires treating equity crowdfunding as a full-funnel marketing engine rather than a one-time raise. He highlights the need to align audience targeting, messaging, traffic sources, and social proof to guide investors toward confident decisions. When campaigns are built around data-driven projections and continuously optimized channels, momentum compounds instead of fading. Jason also emphasizes that strategic partnerships and consistent content act as force multipliers, significantly expanding reach and credibility throughout a raise.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Jason Fishman, Co-founder and CEO at Digital Niche Agency, to discuss how founders can attract investors at scale using equity crowdfunding. They explore how top campaigns drive traffic and conversions, the role of social proof and storytelling, and how metrics guide optimization. Jason also shares insights on strategic partnerships that accelerate investor demand.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Jason Fishman on LinkedIn
• Digital Niche Agency
• Digital Niche Agency on YouTube
• RISE Robotics on Wefunder
• StartEngine
• Crowdscale
• InvestorPlace
• Robinhood Snacks
• Similarweb
• Milled
• 3-1-3
• Mode Mobile
• Kingscrowd

Special mentions:

• Kevin Fulmer on LinkedIn
• Ryan Foland on LinkedIn

Related episodes:

• “[Venture Capital Series] How to Survive a Startup with Steven Hoffman of Founders Space” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Helping Startups Get the Funding They Need with Howard Marks, Co-Founder of StartEngine” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “It’s a numbers game of driving enough traffic, getting a high enough conversion rate.”
• “I always say if you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.”
• “The more times we hear the same information from the more trusted sources, the more we believe it.”
• “Success leaves clues. Test, optimize, scale.”
• “It’s all about managing campaigns to a point of effectiveness versus writing off a channel too early.”

Action steps:

1. Build an investor-focused marketing strategy before launching: Clear planning around audiences, channels, and messaging prevents wasted spending and stalled campaigns.
2. Use social proof consistently across all investor touchpoints: Credibility signals like testimonials, press, and partnerships increase trust and conversion rates.
3. Study top-performing crowdfunding campaigns in your industry: Analyzing what already works helps you avoid guesswork and shorten the path to traction.
4. Track traffic, conversions, and investment data relentlessly: Measuring each stage of the funnel allows you to optimize performance instead of abandoning channels too early.
5. Treat equity crowdfunding as a full-funnel growth engine: Viewing it as ongoing marketing — not a one-time raise — creates momentum, referrals, and long-term value.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Jason Fishman. You can check them out at DigitalNicheAgency.com. They call them DNA. Love it Jason.

And before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. You know, this is interesting because he has a really cool niche which you’ll see helping top investors, you know, basically connecting in their investor and user acquisition agency. And so that reminds me of Steven Hoffman. I don’t know if you have on your podcast, Jason, but he’s got like a global startup accelerator with over 50,000 entrepreneurs and members. Maybe at this point, more than that in 22 countries. So that episode is a good one.

Also, I’m sure you know Howard Marks. He was on the podcast who’s a co-founder of StartEngine. And Jason helps a lot of people be successful on StartEngine and websites like StartEngine. That was a really good, you know, interview on how they connect investors with the next tomorrow’s progressive companies. And basically Jason pours fuel on that fire. So check those out on more InspiredInsider.com.

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that in a few ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. Jason has a podcast. Many successful people I know have a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability, and the full execution and production behind the scenes.

Number two, we’re an easy button for a company’s gifting, so we make gifting and staying top of mind for clients, partners, prospects and even, you know from a culture perspective staff. Simple, easy and affordable. You just give us a list of addresses and we do everything else. And you know, it’s not like a one off gift, Jason. It’s like, think three gifts a year for five years type of thing.

And so I love, you know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. And I’m always looking at ways on how to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way than over the past decade to profile the people I admire and share with the world what they’re working on in the podcast, and send them sweet treats in the mail. So check out Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].

I’m super excited to introduce Jason Fishman, the CEO of Digital Niche Agency (DNA), where he’s spent more than 15 years helping founders really turn complex growth challenges into clear, actionable marketing strategies. And DNA is, as I mentioned, investor and user acquisition marketing agency. They worked with over 450 brands, including 200 plus fundraising campaigns that have produced nine figures of capital. And so you could check them out at digitalnicheagency.com/. Jason, thanks for joining me.

Jason Fishman: 03:11

Pleasure to be here. Thanks for the intro. Excited to be on. I can’t say enough nice things about gifting as well too. As a marketer shows your audience, you’re thinking of them.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:21

100%. So just start off, I’m going to share my screen here for a second, and just talk about Digital Niche Agency and what you do.

Jason Fishman: 03:28

Absolutely. So I started DNA as a growth marketing firm. My background in advertising was part of different startups here in that ecosystem in Los Angeles. We were talking about the social gaming company that I was a member of the founding team. So the capital raise process, everything around user acquisition and brand sponsorships.

So I started this marketing agency and found capital raising was always part of the discussion with our clientele. Hey, can you work on the marketing section of our business plan? A pitch deck. A first campaign that once successful, we’re going to present the results to an investor and get them to scale our investments so they’ll be able to put money into the marketing budget.

So around 2015, I learned about Reg D 506(c), which allows for solicitation of accredited investors. With my advertising background, I was able to run ad campaigns to high net worth, high household income audiences, saw success, was introduced to more issuers. That first campaign we raised over 2.3 million. It was a company called Rayton Solar.

And then Reg CF Title three of the Jobs act, Regulation Crowdfunding went into law in May of 2016. Hard to believe it’s almost ten years now, but that allows us to target anyone, including a brand’s existing customer base, to come in and invest. Retail investors accredited alike. We’ve now worked on over 500 of these deals. As you mentioned, raised nine figures of capital, actually have raised collectively over nine figures of capital just on campaigns in 2025 and are going to be doing a year end breakdown of that.

Can talk about how this works. You can see on our site here I like to begin everything with strategy. There’s a model I’ve built called the 8-Point Plan. I lead workshops on that. And then those strategies activate across three areas of content advertising and outreach. And I’ll tell you, it’s a game of driving enough traffic at a high enough conversion rate, looking at the average investment values to hit the full goal.

If we’re talking about a Reg CF campaign where you raise up to $5 million, actually completed a campaign this week that hit the full $5 million level, only a few of those hit those benchmarks a year industry wide. I can show you the traffic, the milestones that need to be reached, but it all starts here in the strategy process. And believe it or not, it’s a step that many groups miss.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:47

You know, I do want to, Jason, break this down a little bit with this 8-Point Plan and go deeper in there. But I want to start with, you experienced this firsthand with the gaming company. What are some of the challenges that you experienced firsthand raising capital at that time? Because I think it was around $6 million that you all raised at that point. What were some of the challenges?

Jason Fishman: 06:11

So it was around 2010, kind of coming off the 2008 crash and let’s just say capital is not plentiful even in Los Angeles. I created over 75 versions of the pitch deck for the social gaming company. We were successful with securing 3 million, but there was just so many inefficiencies along the way, and it was really limited to the existing network of the founder of the founding team. We met some different, you know, broker dealers and partners that were able to make investor introductions. But you could really see some companies are only getting funded because of who they know.

And I was witnessing just going to events in this area, a lot of amazing products, companies, teams that had no eyeballs on them, investors knew nothing. So that’s part of what I love about Reg CF. That’s part of what I love about these investment vehicles. Is it democratizes access to investors, to funding to capital for CEOs, for founders. And then on the other side of the table, those same individuals who are investing, they have growth stage companies presented to them, private companies. You hear the stories of, oh, if you would have invested in Facebook in 2005 and what that would have looked like when they went public, those opportunities are not available to everyone to invest into, at least not historically.

Now a lot more of that deal flow is presented to the public. It’s a marketing exercise. So connecting the dots and when we’re talking about strategy, that’s what you’re doing is you’re looking at competitor marketing audits, audiences, channels, creatives, partners, projections so that you know what goals you’re playing for. You’re not shooting in the dark. I always say if you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail. You’re kind of assuming, hey, this may not work. Or if you build out a full, I call it algorithmic roadmap. The chances of success are that much higher. You’re asking yourself the questions that you would be asking mid-campaign if it’s not working before it even goes live.

So it could go into those details, talk about how it launches, could talk about the channels that are the most impactful, but it really all begins in that planning and that whiteboard discussion.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:29

Oh yeah, we’ll get into that. And I’m interested. From a pitch deck perspective, it changed 75 times. I’m wondering what, you know, because obviously that translates to all the stuff you help the companies with to optimize when some an investor actually hits the page that it’s speaking to them, it’s working. What were some of the changes that were impactful in those 75 iterations of the pitch deck that you found worked?

Jason Fishman: 08:53

So the offering pages today are essentially a vertical pitch deck. Whether we’re talking about that deck or any of these pages. First and foremost, social proof, third party validation, being able to say, hey, these companies, these partners, these investors, these users think we’re.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:13

I’m going to pull this up. RISE Robotics, just as you’re talking, because I’m sure a lot of stuff you’re talking about is incorporated into this, which you which I know your company has helped with. We’re right now, if you’re listening, we’re on Wefunder.com and we’re at RISE Robotics. So anyways keep going. Yeah. The social proof. Love it. Keep going.

Jason Fishman: 09:33

Yes. And just to explain this briefly and then we’ll look at the social proof on the page. You can see over 15 million raised. Now if you go over the little information bubble that’s broken down in a Reg D and a Reg CF, just want to explain the significance of what that means. On a Reg CF you can raise up to $5 million. This campaign is now oversubscribed at 5.05. And then there’s another 10.8 million that was raised on a Reg D.

If you recall in the history, the Reg D that’s accredited investors only. So you could do a side by side and raise more than the $5 million amount. And this is a robotics company specifically around hydraulics. We’re looking at an image of a truck being lifted with the hydraulic system here.

And throughout the video, throughout the page, we’ll see different examples of social proof. People don’t believe what they see online. The more times we hear the same information from the more trusted sources, the more we believe it, and the more confident we are, the more we take it as fact. So you’re able to craft the narrative. This is all the investors are seeing.

This is the centralized location for all of the information. So you get to craft the way they look at the company, the team, the industry, the product, the growth of the space of the vertical. You can see in some of the highlights below. Total revenue. How this technology is faster, more efficient. Guinness World Record for world’s strongest robotic arm prototype. Social proof right there with the Guinness World Record obviously earned.

But you could also see 22 million raise from different VCs and includes Techstars, MIT’s The Engine and Florida Star Capital. Also world class team. Again, speaking about the individuals behind it getting more confidence established. They’re talking about the market as well as collaborations. We see the US Air Force in their Gates and Corporation, Danfoss and Gates Corporation, 20 plus global patents. So immediately get your attention.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:38

Like this is legit. You know what I mean. Like yeah everything points to social proof. Totally. What else did you iterate in those pitch decks that now kind of makes its way to something like RISE robotics.

Jason Fishman: 11:52

I think those highlights are a big deal. That’s what you want, you know, continually present throughout the pitch deck. But it’s storytelling. Here’s the problem, here’s the solution, here’s the product we’ve built, here’s the team behind it, here’s the reception from the audience, here’s how the industry’s growing.

You have different limitations on a Reg CF around forward looking statements, but the pitch decks often include different types of projections. Have to be a little careful around compliance here. And you get everything approved by a Finra regulated portal, such as Wefunder or a broker dealer lawyer to ensure that you’re following all the rules. Those are investor testimonials that we scrolled by. Here’s the team that’s behind it and the CEO.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:37

That’s the Testimonials I see. Yeah.

Jason Fishman: 12:40

So King’s Crown Capital Invested 10-K on the Reg D the engine put in $3 million. And they’re explaining why there’s a direct quote around. It speaks very loudly.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:51

And we have team and then we have some other elements down here too.

Jason Fishman: 12:58

And so we drove advertising to this offering page. We’ve built our own databases. At this point I was mentioning third party data. I now have a list of over 1.8 million historical equity crowdfunding investors. I’m able to target them with ads, drive them directly here.

The ad creative mirrors what’s on the offering page, but with strong, you know, highlights what could be said in a few words versus a few sentences as a whole discussion around that. And then it’s a numbers game of driving enough traffic, getting a high enough conversion rate at an average investment amount on Reg CF, the average investment last year was $1,500. So you’re looking at over 3000 investments to hit $5 million in most cases. RISE, you could see 2792 plus investors underneath the total investment amount.

Some of those investors participated multiple times. So I could tell you the amount of investor investments is higher than that, but it paints a picture that you’re going to need, you know, potentially 150,000 plus visits where if you’re getting a 2% conversion rate and seeing 3000 investments come through, you’re seeing good numbers, good analytics, but a lot of groups fall short on the messaging and then the traffic strategies to get enough people to that deal.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:20

Yeah. It’s interesting. It says the minimum investment is $250 on this platform.

Jason Fishman: 14:25

Yeah. The issuer gets to set it commonly between $100 and $500 on a Reg CF, sometimes as high as $1,000 on a Reg CF US is still common, but a relatively small investment amount. I could tell you that the founders get a lot more value than just the capital itself. The marketing campaign to get enough traffic there, being a big part of it. Also, as you can imagine, with over 2700 investors not speaking specifically to this campaign, but you’ll get different opportunities for press strategic partnerships.

I’ve seen merger and acquisition conversations. I’ve seen franchise inquiries, all different types of opportunities emerge from new shareholders.

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