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How Epi One got 200+ investors onboard with its powerful story
$1.2M+
Raised
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“Take the time to really listen whether the people that are going to tell your story actually understand your story. It was very clear to me that Rally On took the time to understand what we were actually doing, and then had the heart to be able to tell our story.”
Michael Marquardt
CEO
The Challenge
Epi One is on a mission to share its revolutionary early cancer detection technology with the world. It’s a promising mission that, if successful, could save millions of lives.
And for Michael Marquardt, CEO and former Chair of the American Cancer Society, it’s personal, having lost his first wife to cancer.
Many promising new technologies came across Michael’s desk at the American Cancer Society - but Dr. Sophia Fang’s blood test technology showed so much promise that Michael decided to join her in making this a reality.
After raising $3M through angel investments, Epi One decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine.
“We really wanted to start building a community of people that are interested in having our early cancer detection tests become a reality. We now have over 200 shareholders, and a waiting list of 1,000+ people to use our tests, which is amazing,” says Michael. “If we had gone the traditional VC route, we’d be doing everything behind the scenes, kind of in secret. We wanted to be building on the outside.”
Raising a few million dollars would help prove that Dr. Fang’s technology works beyond a reasonable doubt, and vault Epi One to much higher valuations.
They came to Rally On Media to help tell the story to retail investors.
“At the time, we’d been building in stealth mode. When we first met Rally On, we had nothing more than a single page website with barely anything on it,” says Michael.
“What really sold us on doing a good video, is that the problem our company is trying to solve is very emotional - like somebody finding their cancer diagnosis too late, or learning that their biopsy was incorrect. We felt that this is something that doesn’t just leap off a PowerPoint slide.”
“What really sold us on working with Rally On, is it was clear in the first conversation that I had with Alex and team that he completely understood the importance of our mission, and how to communicate what we were doing in the most effective way.”
What We Did
The campaign, as usual, began with our StoryFinding + scripting processes.
After diving into Michael and Dr. Fong’s stories, we drafted a script designed to lead with emotion but create a rational, compelling case for Epi One’s technology and potential.
“I wanted something that was going to be a little more authentic, a little more real, while also communicating how big a deal this is,” says Michael. “I was shocked when the first script came back, and there was almost nothing I wanted to change.“
“That’s a special skill. There are probably 27 ways to tell that story, but the Rally On team knocked it out of the park on the very first draft.”
Before shoot day, Rally On set Michael and Dr. Fang up with a performance coach. “I hadn’t thought of doing that before. She helped me communicate in ways to have the most impact I could have on shoot day. It was really helpful.”
We put together a shoot day in NYC, both at an office space for the scripted lines, and then at Epi One’s lab in Brooklyn to see Dr. Fong at work. It was an ambitious but smooth shoot.
Then, it was off to the edit. “After the experience of the shoot, I was not surprised that the draft was so good. It all just really came off great.”
RESULTS
So far, Epi One has raised $1.2M+ on its first StartEngine round. They plan to close the round and shortly relaunch another, to raise a total of $2.5M.
Michael believes the highest yield has been through individual outreach to potential investors, backed up by great assets.
“Having all the pieces in place - a great video, a new website, an organic presence, all of that - has allowed us to make the best use of the network that we already had. It’s given me confidence to reach out to potential investors, both in my network and the StartEngine audience.”
“We use clips from the videos repeatedly, by cutting them up into paid ads, or running and re-running them as organic posts. Just because you put out the video once doesn’t mean everyone’s seen it. You’ve gotta create your own echo chamber - don’t expect StartEngine to do it for you. You’ve gotta combine paid ads and organic posts and email campaigns - whatever you can do to take a holistic approach.”
Having great videos has also helped advocates spread the word about Epi One on Michael’s behalf. “I can’t speak to every single person. But it’s great to see people in my network share the video and say, look, if you want to know what Michael’s working on, click here.”
“Ultimately, crowdfunding forced us to become more comfortable with sharing our story in a way that’s accessible to people that are not scientists and that know little about this world of cancer biomarkers and early detection and diagnosis and don't wake up every morning thinking about that. And so, just going through that process has made our meetings with potential partners and others, much more impactful.”
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