Michele Romanow (Clearco) - The Three Critical Marketing Metrics for DTC Brands, When VC Money Makes Sense and When It doesn't and The Insight That Led to Founding Clearco

Thank you Radha Kapoor for the introduction to Michele Romanow, co-founder and CEO of Clearco. Clearco offers fast affordable funding for ecommerce companies to fund your inventory or marketing needs. Michele is a serial entrepreneur and also one of the dragon’s on Canada’s Dragon’s Den. We discuss what’s misunderstood about scaling ecommerce companies, when venture capital makes sense vs. revenue based financing, her aha moment on Dragon’s Den that led to founding ClearCo and much more. Without further ado, here’s Michele. You’ve been an entrepreneur your whole career. What was the origin story behind Clearco? How did you and Andrew start Clearco? What was your first test if this new finance model could work? How did you think about scale for and what was the early diligence process like when trying to work out if you’re going to finance these companies?What are the requirements? How have those requirements evolved? What were some of your learnings as you were growing Clearco that was most surprising? How did you approach raising capital from VCs? What was their initial response?Did you have any VCs that thought what you were doing was a conflict to venture capital? How do you work together with venture capital? There are no more Facebook arbitrage opportunities, some consumer VCs have shifted to investing in eCommerce infrastructure where the customer are brands, What’s your assessment of the current landscape within DNVBs when it comes to growth and financing options?We say on the podcast a lot - it’s easy than ever to build a company, harder than ever to build a brand. What’s key for brands to be able to get past the noise and become large sustainable companies? What makes a brand compelling to you to invest in (either with Clearco or as an angel/investor on Dragon’s Den)? ClearCo probably sees a lot of DTC metrics from 1000s of companies.Which are the best measures of success? Which metrics are most misunderstood? If she could only pick 3 metrics to understand health/growth of a brand — which 3 would she pick? How do you also think about the competitive landscape now for the alternative capital financing that you pioneered? What are some of the other products you offer founders? I know the focus is eCommerce businesses, but do you also think about helping DNVBs as they head into retail?How do you think about launching new products at Clearco? Tell you where you can improve in your business? If you build a killer product people will come Recently, Andrew stepped back and became Executive Chairman, you became the CEO from President. What was the reason for the change? How do you think about launching new products at Clearco? What’s one thing you would change about venture capital? What’s one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally? What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received? What’s one piece of advice that you have for founders?

Om Podcasten

The Consumer VC takes a look into early-stage consumer investing and venture capital. If you are interested in learning about consumer trends, have a b2c business and interested in learning about the fundraising process at the early stage, you have come to the right place. Mike interviews some of the top venture capitalists in the world that focus on B2C and consumer type companies or have a deep track record investing in these categories such as marketplaces, SaaS, social, CPG and non-tech subscription. Mike also interviews founders that are building some of the most disruptive consumer facing companies in the world. The conversation usually includes the insight the founder discovered, fundraising strategy, and the pitch. This podcast also includes bonus episodes. Each bonus episode dives into a particular subject that might not have to due with the fundraise or venture capital, but still would be helpful to founders. For example, a bonus episode on brand strategy or how to construct a board of directors. All bonus episodes will be clearly labeled. For all episodes, please visit www.theconsumervc.com. For updates, you can follow @mikegelb on Twitter.