Clearbanc, the world’s largest eCommerce investor, has announced the public beta of ClearAngel. For the first time, founders at the earliest stage can get automated guidance and equity-free capital through an extensive data platform to accelerate their first years of business, helping answer the questions and avoid the pitfalls many founders face.
More than 50% of businesses fail in their first 5 years, but the 4,000 companies Clearbanc has backed grow 2x faster than those who don’t take Clearbanc capital. ClearAngel opens that growth advantage to a new group of founders with revenues as low as $1,000/month who are too “small” for more traditional routes like small business funding or don’t have the network for a mentor or angel investor.
“We’ve invested $1.6 billion in more than 4,000 companies, but had to turn down ten times more founders than we funded because they didn’t meet our revenue threshold,” said Andrew D’Souza, co-founder and CEO of Clearbanc. “It’s never been easier to start a business but it’s still insanely hard to build a successful one, and so many founders need someone they can lean on for advice. ClearAngel is our first product for early-stage founders from all walks of life who are seeing initial traction but don’t have the experience or network to raise an angel round or get into Y Combinator.
“When you add in that more founders launched online businesses during COVID and eCommerce saw 10 years worth of growth since March 2020, now is the time to help early-stage founders and launch ClearAngel.”
Using AI to Support Small Businesses
ClearAngel uses AI to answer the most common questions that early-stage founders ask: How is my business doing? How am I doing compared to others in my space? How do I fix my supply chain? What’s broken in my checkout process? What’s the one thing I need to do this week to improve my margins and move my business forward?
“ClearAngel is driven by AI 80% of the time and human involvement 20% of the time. The AI continuously analyses your business looking for opportunities to increase revenue, decrease margins and costs, while alerting you to any potential problems and making intros to vendors who can help you grow. Analysing 50K+ data streams, all of these insights are given to founders through a real-time dashboard.,” said Michele Romanow, co-founder and president, Clearbanc.
With ClearAngel, founders get custom data insights and advice on how their business is doing and how to reach new milestones in revenues and customer acquisition, automating the 3 things founders need most:
- Advice: Early-stage founders don’t know what they don’t know. ClearAngel acts as an automated angel investor, analysing a business’s daily data and comparing performance to tens of thousands of other companies to tell founders how they size up to their peers, and give specific “to do’s” to reach new customers and grow revenues.
- Capital: Clearbanc will invest $10,000-50,000 for 2% of a company’s revenue for 4 years. Businesses need to be generating at least $1,000/month and be willing to take the business full time. This is the first investment to come with a 30-day “money-back guarantee” where founders can return the capital with no obligation if they don’t find value in the first month.
- Network: ClearAngel companies have access to Clearbanc’s extensive network of partners, VCs, and vendors to help accelerate their business.
