Clearco enters Dutch market with growth capital platform

By Sunniva Kolostyak

Canadian Clearco, the capital solution financing online start-ups, has announced it is launching in the Netherlands, planning to invest €100 million over the next year.

The Pay-As-You-Grow pioneer, formerly known as Clearbanc, describes itself as the most ‘founder-friendly’ solution for those launching e-commerce, mobile apps, and SaaS, combining AI and data science to support business growth.

Through non-dilutive revenue-share agreements, an alternative to traditional venture capital, Dutch start-ups will receive support for marketing and promotion, as well as future growth. Customers connect their revenue and marketing accounts with Clearco’s APIs which shows founders their investment offers – ranging from €10,000 to €10 million.

Commenting, Michele Romanow, Co-Founder and President of Clearco, who is known from the Canadian ‘Dragon’s Den, said the tool democratises access to capital: “We view the Netherlands as being a critical market to our expansion plans into Europe. The Netherlands has long been at the crossroads of Europe and we know it is a global technology hub with exciting opportunities for growth in e-commerce.”

The growth capital platform – co-founded by Romanow and Andrew D’Souza – has invested more than $2 billion into over 5000 start-ups across 3 continents. The Netherlands will be its first entry into continental Europe.

“We feel strongly that the Dutch marketplace is currently underserved in the revenue-based finance space, and this is the right time for us to enter,” D’Souza said. “We’re also proud that the technology we’ve developed is identifying promising businesses regardless of who the founder is or where they live, and we look forward to working with Dutch founders to furnish them with access to capital and help them grow their businesses.”

Clearco uses proprietary algorithms that are gender-, race-, and region-agnostic as part of a commitment to fuel entrepreneurship outside traditional networks – and the company funded eight times as many companies headed by female founders as traditional VC firms in 2020, according to numbers from Crunchbase. In that same timeframe, 13 per cent of Clearco’s funding went to companies headed by founders of colour, compared to 2.6 per cent for traditional VC firms; in total, a third of Clearco funding went to founders of colour.

Moreover, at Clearco UK, 70 per cent of businesses that have been funded are located outside of London. In the US market, Clearco has funded businesses in all states, but well over half of the company’s funding goes to businesses outside of the 4 major states that are traditional funding hotspots.