Tech titan Michele Romanow is an engineer and a serial entrepreneur who started three companies before her 28th birthday. A “Dragon” on CBC’s hit show Dragons’ Den, Michele is the co-founder of Buytopia.ca, Snap By Groupon, and — most recently — Clearbanc, an online financial service. Ranked in WXN’s “100 Most Powerful in Canada” and listed as the only Canadian on Forbes magazine’s “Millennial on a Mission” list, Michele brings her youthful energy and incredible entrepreneurial savvy to every stage.
A recent Financial Post story detailed how her latest venture, Clearbanc, is freeing up some of the potentially troublesome issues around small business financing with straightforward access to funds. What’s more, is now Facebook’s e-commerce merchants are involved. It sounds like a savvy and helpful idea, and you can read more about it below.
“The number one thing that prevents entrepreneurs from growing big businesses is access to capital,” says tech entrepreneur and CBC Dragon Michele Romanow. She’s looking to change that for e-commerce businesses.
Today, Romanow’s Clearbanc, which provides revenue-based financing to online businesses, announced a new program with Facebook that will give the social media giant’s five million online merchants across Canada and the U.S. access to up to $500,000 in financing without having to give up any equity or fill out any paperwork or even undergo a credit check.
How it works: Facebook advertisers that have been operating for more than six months and are looking for money to grow, and have positive economics on ad spends — meaning when they buy an ad they are making a positive margin on selling that product — can apply online through Clearbanc’s Chrged program, which provides tools to help businesses scale, and connecting their Facebook Ad Account and payment processor.
Clearbanc analyzes that data to determine eligibility and make a custom financing offer. “We can underwrite you in a matter of minutes and provide you the capital in the next 24 hours,” Romanow says. Businesses can use the capital on new ad spends, to buy new inventory, hire more people, launch new products or manage revenue swings.
For more, read the full story here.