Michele Romanow’s Clearbanc hits unicorn status, raising US$100-million at nearly US$2-billion valuation Bookmark Please log in to listen to this story. Also available in French and Mandarin. Log In Create Free Account
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Christopher Katsarov
Michele Romanow has launched a caviar fishery, an online coupon service and become one of Canada’s most recognizable entrepreneurs and investors as a star of TV’s
Dragon’s Den. Now, for the first time, she has built a unicorn.
On Tuesday, Ms. Romanow and her life and business partner Andrew D’Souza announced their e-commerce merchant financing company Clear Finance Technology Corp. has raised US$100-million in equity, valuing their company at close to US$2-billion. (Tech startups that achieve valuations of US$1-billion are typically called “unicorns”). Other new investors include executives fro
Kirsty O Connor/The Associated Press
After joining Amazon.com as an engagement manager in 2019, Aadil Kazmi was inundated with calls from independent merchants he knew. They all wanted to know how they could get faster, affordable shipping for their online orders, just like the e-commerce goliath offered – and had conditioned online shoppers to expect.
So he quit his $200,000-a-year job, abandoned his stock options and co-founded a company to provide the same level of speedy shipping to merchants in Amazon’s shadow. That was one year ago.
On Wednesday, Mr. Kazmi’s Swyft Technologies Inc. announced it had raised US$17.5-million, led by Inovia Capital and San Francisco’s Forerunner Ventures, after quickly establishing itself as a provider of previously unattainable Amazon-level delivery service at affordable prices to merchants in Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa.