Michele Romanow: The Fintech Founder and Dragon on What’s Next

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Michele Romanow smokes. But never inside the quiet stillness of Clear Finance Technology Corp.’s offices where glass walls, wood-paneled floors and flooded natural light combine to induce a Zen-like state. The bustling commerce of downtown Toronto fades away when the elevator opens on the 12th floor of the modern office tower where Clearco’s offices are located. The Hockey Hall of Fame across the street belongs to another world. The faint gurgling of a fountain in the building’s foyer, far below, is the only sound.

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I step lightly across a catwalk to an unmarked door—there’s no sign—and, as directed, call Augusta, Clearco’s chief of staff and head of strategic initiatives, who unlocks the door and leads me to an office where two chairs sit on a narrow side . desk. A flourish of green palm leaves on one wall is the room’s only feature.

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The only other people I see in these huge offices are two men, both in jeans, with laptops. They walk past without making eye contact. Romanow enters the small meeting room, flashes his megawatt smile and gives me an enthusiastic hug. Two decades ago, I worked with her father, Marvin Romanow, at Nexen Inc., a Calgary energy company that was sold to Chinese buyers in 2012 for $15 billion. He had looked at every possible financial restructuring to hold on to the assets, but was pushed out as CEO of Nexen before the sale.

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This is the first time I’ve met his daughter, the 37-year-old business mogul on Dragons’ Den who figured out ways to raise large amounts of cash on Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic and pitched Clearco, the financial technology company she co-founded, into realm of unicorn status. It’s putting to bed the notion that you have to be in the same room with potential investors to raise capital.

Nevertheless, conventional bankers and venture capital financiers are whispering about Clearco’s demise, even at the turn of the year. Romanow is swimming against tidal waves of unpredictability, and she knows it. A year ago, the tech sector was in a growth-at-any-cost mode, and now everyone, including her own company, must focus on profitability. She has tossed out five-year, two-year and even six-month business plans. Clearco has made a 180-degree turn on international investments, laid off personnel and adjusted profitability formulas to reflect changes in input costs, interest and risk.

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The numbers are sobering and Romanow’s instinct in a volatile environment is to take less risk. No entrepreneur dreams of taking the blocks that were so difficult to put together and knocking them down. It’s super scary and feels terrible, she says.

What parts of business as usual can she rely on right now? She finances the founders. They want to build business in good times and in bad times. “Reasoners. That’s who I was put on earth to defend, Romanow says without a hint of hubris as he plunges a fork into the spinach and lentil salad. There is a fierceness in her spirit.

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Clearco built an algorithm, a unique formula built on artificial intelligence, to provide capital to entrepreneurs who have difficulty accessing traditional banking and venture capital funds, and to do so in the most egalitarian way possible. It doesn’t meet founders, doesn’t care where (or if) they went to school, and doesn’t review pitch decks.

In a waking world caught in the spin of environmental, social and corporate governance, it is surprising how Romanow has built a meritocracy for founders. No targets or quotas for female or BIPOC investors were set, but two years later, Clearco realized that from their portfolio of 10,000 companies, 50 percent of the founders were women, a third BIPOC and a quarter did not have a post-secondary education.

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In the jean jacket, tight sweater, belt buckle and trendy finger jewelry, it’s easy to see how Romanow would fit in anywhere in Silicon Valley, a place where magic mushrooms and other crazy new ideas aren’t crazy. Instead, she has chosen to root her business in downtown Toronto. She talks about hypnosis and visualization when asked how she stimulates creativity.

It’s been 20 years since Romanow lived on the prairies, but she hasn’t given up on Alberta’s enduring entrepreneurial spirit, although she’s unlikely to move Clearco’s headquarters. Why not Alberta? It’s a bold idea, Romanow says with a chuckle, but you have to keep shooting pucks at the net. FPM