Toronto-based founder support platform Clearco has launched ClearMatch, a new recommendation product that helps companies identify growth opportunities through partnerships.
ClearMatch is the first in a line of new products that Clearco promised to release after rebranding and raising financing this year. The new partner recommendation tool, which analyzes its users’ businesses and connects them with potential strategic partners to help fuel their growth, is part of the FinTech startup’s overall strategy to expand past revenue share financing.
“There is no other solution in the market right now that provides these recommendations based on [companies’] sales and marketing performance.”
-Margot Paterson, Clearco
According to Clearco, the launch of ClearMatch “underscores the company’s long-term vision of providing data-driven solutions and founder-friendly products beyond capital.”
Clearco president Michelle Romanow told BetaKit that it is difficult for founders to know who to work with, and making that easier is ClearMatch’s goal.. “There are lots of choices and it’s hard to know what’s good at your stage and to match your goals as a founder,” said Romanow.
Co-founded in 2015 by Romanow and CEO Andrew D’Souza, Clearco offers “founder-friendly” capital solutions and services for e-commerce, mobile apps, and SaaS founders. Clearco claims it has financed over 5,500 companies to date.
The startup’s new ClearMatch tool is powered by Clearco’s benchmarking and insights technology, which derives its data from the over 25,000 companies that have connected with Clearco to date.
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ClearMatch offers insights-driven partner recommendations, allowing customers to view and compare their performance across 20 metrics with competitors in their own industry and verticals. Benchmarking insights include cost-per-click, return on advertising spend, search optimization, conversion rates, and other sales metrics.
The new product then pairs companies with most compatible partners in their ecosystem to meet their growth targets, including advertising agencies, marketing automation platforms, and shipping and logistics companies. ClearMatch is free, and available to all existing SaaS and e-commerce company Clearco users.
“I think the one thing that really differentiates this tool from other partner marketplaces in the space, Shopify has their partner app store, lots of companies have marketplaces, but it all comes back to the data that we built in the back-end,” said Margot Paterson, Clearco senior partnership manager, and one of the people behind the launch of ClearMatch.
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“There is no other solution in the market right now that provides these recommendations based on [companies’] sales and marketing performance,” Paterson told BetaKit.
Earlier this month, Clearco raised $268 million CAD in a Softbank-led round, accelerating the company’s international expansion plans and overall roadmap. This funding came less than three months after the company raised $125 million CAD in equity financing at a valuation of close to $2 billion USD, and rebranded to Clearco, in a move that reflected its push to expand past capital and become a full-stack founder support platform.
According to D’Souza, Clearco’s ClearMatch pilot program saw participating startups grow their company’s revenue by an average of 117 percent after taking a partner recommendation from the service.
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The pilot saw participation from Toronto-based apparel brand Peace Collective, which was connected to Gorgias, a San Francisco-based e-commerce customer support platform.
Yanal Dhailieh, Peace Collective’s founder, said the service helped the company recognize an opportunity to increase its conversion and lifetime value (LTV) by leveraging Gorgias’ customer support tech. Since then, Dhailieh said the startup has seen a 192 percent year-over-year increase in revenue.
Feature image courtesy of Clearco