Sean Murray: That company is called Clearco. Clearco is now
on our top list of small business funders in the country.
They actually are based out of Canada, but they expanded to the
US. And they have they have some operations in Europe as well.
But Clearco now joins the likes of PayPal, cabbage or the old
Kabbage, Square Capital, OnDeck which is now Enova, and Amazon
and Funding Circle. So Clearco is now on that list and you're
saying wait, who's clearcoat? Yeah, they're based in Canada.
They're based in Canada. But one thing of note is that their co
founder and president is a woman named Michele Romanow. She's one
of the richest people in all of Canada. And she's a judge on
their version of Shark Tank in Canada called Dragon's Den.
Johny Fernandez: Dragon's Den I like that.
Sean Murray: So Dragon's Den in Canada, one of the judges is is
Michele Romanow. She is the co founder and president of
Clearco. So she gets free publicity all the time. Not to
mention she's already famous for being a very successful startup
multimillionaire. I follow her personally on Instagram. She
also does, she has a very glamorous like, like lifestyle
and presence about her right. This is great marketing for
Clearco and Clearco in 2020 funded $1 billion. This is not a
small company. They're already on our list of the largest small
business funders ever.
Johny Fernandez: 1 billion with a B.
Sean Murray: 1 billion with a B in 2021 so far, they've already
done about half a billion. So it seems like they're on track to
match or slightly beat what they did last year.
Johny Fernandez: If we read we read it, right. They pretty much
in half of 2021. They've made equivalent to what they made in
total of 2019.
Sean Murray: Yeah, so you will you know what those COVID
happened in between. So yeah, I think what if you're looking
Johny, these figures, you can look at them on the site, I'll
put a link to this particular chart at the bottom of the video
after we post it on online but Clearco they were doing only
$170 million in funding in 2018. Basically, when they started,
and now they're on track to do at least at least a billion for
2021. It puts them on the list of the small, largest small
business funders in the country. And the reason we're bringing it
up, because it's not just the volume. It's not just Michele
Romanow. They've also got a lot of other things behind them. In
April this year, they raised $100 million. But it didn't stop
there. Because in July of this year, they raised another $250
million from SoftBank. So this company Clearco is on a
trajectory to be one of the largest small business funders
in the country beyond even our own rankings. They're going to
be up there with you know, PayPal, and Amazon we've been
talking about Square Capital and Shopify. And what's interesting
is that we just posted a link to a story we didn't write the
story, but it was a story about how AI small business lenders
are, you know, are making all the rules now and humans aren't
involved and I'm like, I've been reading this exact, you know,
formula, the story of like the last seven years. Yeah. AI is
now doing all the underwriting. You know what I mean, it's an
old story. But when you used to read that type of story like AI
is doing the underwriting it used to be about OnDeck and
Kabbage, and every every time you'd hear about tech and AI and
machine learning and algorithms and all that stuff and small
business and disruption it's always OnDeck and Kabbage. Yeah.
Now on deck out acquired by Enova and Kabbage got acquired
by Amex. Kabbage isn't even lending to small businesses
anymore. So when I read this story, now, it comes out again,
I think it was on Quartz QZ.com, right. And who am I reading
about I'm reading about Shopify, Square and Clearco. So all of a
sudden Clearco we're getting that recognition as one of the
top small business lenders tech small business lenders in the
country. They also recently expanded to the Netherlands too
Clearco is a company we're going to be talking probably a lot
more about in the future. Their model was going after businesses
that were looking to advertise on Facebook and saying we'll
provide you the advert with the advertising money. If we know
that you can get a return on your investment. Right? So like
hey, you need 10 grand or 20 grand to advertise on Facebook.
We're gonna make 40 grand, we'll give you that money. We know
you're gonna make money. Yeah. Let's do this deal all day.
Right? And they would actually do with it pretty affordable
terms too this isn't like a straight up expense. Some some
of these products can be expensive. They're not as
expensive as as the competition is. So I wanted to bring these
small business finance origination figures list to
everyone's attention because Clearco is up there. They
disclosed their figures. Supposedly they were already up
on their site, but Quartz made a nice little chart, took the
numbers from the chart, plugged them into our chart and boom.
Who's up at the top Clearco, co founder and president is Michele
Romanow. A judge on Dragon's Den. I think they're a company
to watch out for.
Johny Fernandez: Yeah.