Clearco offers a unique funding alternative for UK founders and entrepreneurs. For fast-growing businesses with positive unit economics, we offer funding in exchange for a share of a company’s future revenues until it’s paid back. We’re able to back companies in a matter of days versus months or years through traditional venture capital or bank debt.
By using data to make funding decisions, we’ve backed eight times more women founders than the venture capital industry average. We’re here to help millions of people with great ideas that didn’t go to the “right” schools or have the “right” connections to the VC world or whose business doesn’t fit with traditional lending models. Clearco UK makes advances of 10 thousand to 10 million pounds and our fee is a flat 6%.
The UK has a diversity and bias challenge when it comes to funding businesses – as well as a serious lack of options for equity-free capital for UK entrepreneurs. Clearco is on a mission to offer UK startups a fast and fair alternative to venture capital and bank lending.
What do you currently do at Clearco?
At Clearco, my goal is to bolster and expand Clearco’s presence in the United Kingdom. We want to build a stronger brand presence and more meaningful relationships with UK-based founders.
A core part of my role is to help educate the market so that eCommerce startups understand that there is a faster and fairer way to unlock growth finance. We’ve already invested over £1.4 billion in 6,500+ businesses globally.
In the time that I have been at Clearco, we have grown the business in the UK to fund close to 1,000 businesses and we have invested more than 120 million pounds in the marketplace.
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What was the inspiration behind Clearco?
One of our founders, Michele Romanow, is the youngest Dragon on Canadian Dragons’ Den. She noticed that entrepreneurs give away huge portions (30-50%) of their company to fund repeatable growth spending like paying for ads on Facebook and Instagram. Founders shouldn’t have to give up equity for this, so Michele created something new.
Clearco is more than just financing, we have a suite of products, developed using insights and learnings from the hundreds of thousands of businesses we have supported, which are built to help founders no matter what stage of their journey they are in.
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
The best piece of advice is to make sure you hire well. It is crucial to the success of your business as you need to get the best person for the role you’re hiring for. If you don’t, it can be incredibly hard to fix, you have to search for a better candidate and try to find the right role for the existing employee which can be tough.
Who do you admire?
I used to work with Richard Branson and I really admire that he ensures his team brings different perspectives and experiences to his, and he listens to them. When building a team, Richard made it essential that you hire the right people in the right roles. He inspires me to build a great team that not only compliments each skill set but also challenges us to be better.
