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Last month, Clearbanc announced a rebranding (to Clearco) and a $100M (approx €83M) in new Series C equity funding to fuel the company’s ambitious growth plans. This round valued the firm at nearly $2B. 

Enters the Netherlands

Recently, Clearco (formerly Clearbanc) has announced its entry into the Netherlands to help Dutch startups grow their business. 

The Toronto-based company is planning to invest €100M into online Dutch startups over the next year to help them fund their marketing and promotion while driving future growth.

“Clearco is excited to invest in the Dutch market, and showcase our ability to democratise access to capital”, comments Co-Founder and President Michele Romanow. “We view the Netherlands as being a critical market to our expansion plans into Europe. The Netherlands has long been at the crossroads of Europe and we know it is a global technology hub with exciting opportunities for growth in e-commerce.”

How Clearco helps Dutch startups?

With the help of AI and data science, Clearco Netherlands offers Dutch startups an alternative to traditional venture capital in the form of non-dilutive revenue-share agreements. 

When the customers connect their revenue and marketing accounts with Clearco’s APIs, it shows founders their investment offers, which range from €10K to €10M. 

“We feel strongly that the Dutch marketplace is currently underserved in the revenue-based finance space, and this is the right time for us to enter”, says Andrew D’Souza, Co-Founder and CEO of Clearco. “We’re also proud that the technology we’ve developed is identifying promising businesses regardless of who the founder is or where they live, and we look forward to working with Dutch founders to furnish them with access to capital and help them grow their businesses. 

Gender, race, and region-agnostic platform

Clearco was founded by Michele Romanow from Canada’s Dragons’ Den, Andrew D’Souza, Ivan Gritsiniak, Charlie Feng, and Tanay Delima in 2015. 

The gender, race, and region-agnostic platform offers a suite of performance financing products & services tailor-made to help founders in e-commerce, mobile apps, and SaaS. This data-driven approach takes the bias out of decision-making, says the company. 

The company has funded 8x more female founders than traditional VCs across six countries. In that same timeframe, 13 per cent of Clearco’s funding went to companies headed by founders of colour, compared to 2.6 per cent for traditional VC firms.

To date, the company has invested more than $2B (approx €1.65B) into 5000+ startups across three continents. Clearco’s portfolio spans small businesses across the United States, Canada, UK, Australia, and the Netherlands to some of the biggest brands today, like unTUCKit, Vanity Planet, Andie Swim, Haus, and Farmgirl Flowers. 

The company has raised $520M (approx €430M) to date and investors include Oak HC/FT, Highland Capital, Emergence, Founder’s Fund, and Inovia.