Dragon’s Den star Michele Romanow steps down as CEO of e-commerce business Clearco | 24CA News
Michele Romanow is stepping down from her chief govt function at Clearco because the e-commerce investing business she co-founded lays off workers.
Clearco spokesperson Nick Rosen-Wachs confirmed the Dragons’ Den star’s profession change in an e-mail to The Canadian Press on Monday, saying she will probably be changed by Andrew Curtis.
Curtis joined Clearco as an adviser in July 2022, however has labored in finance roles at main funding banks in New York together with Merrill Lynch & Co. and Lazard Freres.
Romanow is not going to depart from the corporate fully. She will now share the manager chairman function with Andrew D’Souza, Romanow’s co-founder who stepped down as chief govt virtually a 12 months in the past following a romantic break up between the 2.
“Michele will lead external relations, including the significant role of leading our fundraising efforts,” Rosen-Wachs mentioned in an e-mail.
“Michele will remain an integral part of the company, and this leadership transition brings in an experienced finance leader while keeping our founding team close to the business.”
The swap up comes as tech firms are experiencing a downturn as their valuations fall from COVID-19 highs, investor exuberance fades and shoppers return to pre-pandemic habits.
Many, together with Shopify, Netflix, Wealthsimple and Meta, have all carried out layoffs in current months with a number of chief executives taking duty for the cuts and chalking them as much as misjudgments of development within the sector.
Clearco, which was based in 2015 by Romanow, D’Souza, Charlie Feng and Ivan Gritsiniak, started a layoff Monday, with 25 per cent of workers reduce, mentioned Rosen-Wachs.
The firm beforehand laid off 125 staff from its 500-person workforce in July after which 60 in August, when it handed off its worldwide business to U.Ok. and Australian e-commerce investor Outfund.
Despite nabbing unicorn standing with its valuation over $1 billion in 2021 and $400 million in fairness financing from distinguished traders like SoftBank, Clearco is especially susceptible to the present tech downturn as a result of it supplies startups with funding and loans which have extra pleasant phrases than different lenders.
At Elevate, a Toronto tech convention held in September, Romanow mentioned she did not assume Canada’s economic system and tech sector had come even near hitting its backside.
“Tech has seen the first kind of bump in this road and it could get a whole lot worse,” she mentioned.
Job cuts aggregator Layoffs.fyi discovered 1,024 world tech firms laid off 154,336 staff in 2022 and two weeks into January, has already calculated one other 91 firms making 24,151 cuts.
“Being an entrepreneur is an extremely hard job,” Romanow mentioned at Elevate.
“It is largely masochistic, even when the sun is shining and so when it starts raining, and we go into cloudier economic conditions, this is a very difficult thing.”
