News Bites
Keys To Success: 'Grit and Iterations' - 'Dragons' Den' Star Michele Romanow
(Kitco News) - To succeed as an entrepreneur you need more than just one great idea, said Michele Romanow, “Dragons' Den” star, co-founder of Clearbanc, and one of Canada's Top 100 most powerful women.
The key is not to be afraid and to try and try again, Romanow told Kitco News.
“If there's one characteristic of an entrepreneur, it's never giving up … and always keep iterating and keep trying. And then one thing is going to work,” she said.
Romanow is the youngest judge on the hit TV show “Dragon’s Den” — the Canadian version of “Shark Tank.” She is also a wildly successful entrepreneur, who started three businesses before she was 28.
Some of her most successful ventures include Clearbanc, Buytopia, and SnapSaves.
Her latest business — Clearbanc — provides revenue sharing solutions to fund new online businesses. In 2018 alone, Clearbanc provided entrepreneurs with about $150 million in capital.
The inspiration behind the idea came to Romanow while she was the judge on “Dragons’ Den.”
“I had seen all these companies pitching on ‘Dragons’ Den’ … and it was the same thing … they were giving up valuable equity that they'll never get back to basically turn around and buy Facebook and Google ads to grow their business,” Romanow said.
“I just kept thinking that’s it is so expensive to give up part of your company. And so we decided to invent something new, which is instead of taking equity or taking debt … we would give entrepreneurs capital as a revenue share agreement,” she added.
In order to succeed with Clearbanc, Romanow followed her own advice — try and try again.
“It took us a lot of tries and iterations to figure it out. And a lot of people think that innovation is just you come up with one big idea and then it works,” she said. “But, it's this ability to try and experiment.”
