San Francisco and Moncton, NB-based Clarity revealed today that it’s service has connected individuals for over 10,000 calls since its launch in May 2012. That’s a sizeable milestone for the service, which connects people for calls via phone in a quick, painless way that also keeps the contact information of the parties private. Initially, Clarity.fm is targeting entrepreneurs and those seeking advice from people who’ve had entrepreneurial success, and the nature of those calls reflects a strong appetite among that community for this kind of communication.
“It’s logical in hindsight, but I didn’t expect it at first: the conversations are usually around areas that are going to allow the entrepreneur to make more money,” founder Dan Martell said in an interview, explaining the main uses of Clarity according to information provided before and after calls that take place on the service. “So primarily fundraising, raising capital; second to that would be business development and sales; third would be marketing; and the fourth would be around company formation, legal type conversations that are saving them money if they can get it free or near-free on Clarity vs. spending $500 or $600 calling their lawyer.”
In addition to its user milestone, Clarity is also debuting three new features today, including expanded profiles with new information about calls fielded, advisor search for finding the expert you need, and enhanced messaging for additional back and forth text-based communication before and after calls. The new features have evolved out of the team observing how users have employed Clarity, and what kind of pain points they were identifying, but Martell is keen to note that it’s very much driven by the startup’s product team identifying what makes the most sense, and not simply through user requests.
Since its public launch, the service has also been adding on new users at a good rate, with user growth up 30 percent month over month according to Martell (though he wouldn’t divulge any specific numbers). Those users aren’t necessarily all entrepreneurs, either; Clarity allows users to either connect for free, or to charge a rate of their choosing (from which it takes a cut), or to donate 100 percent of the proceeds they make via calls directly to charity, and that flexibility appeals to anyone whose job involves being on the phone frequently.
“Growth is actually mostly word of mouth,” Martell said when about the source of Clarity’s success so far. “The response we’re getting is ‘I’ve been wanting this for years, thank you for building it,’ we’re mapping to human behavior, so much like other companies like Airbnb, Getaround or even Uber, we’re taking existing behavior, bringing it online and adding the ability for people that didn’t know each other to get connected.”
Down the road, the startup has even more product additions planned, and has already nearly doubled its team to take that on. Martell said that they’re looking to hire more engineering and design talent to help them double in size again before the end of the year in order to keep pace with growth.