Fundable, the equity crowdfunding platform aimed at helping people invest in small businesses and early-stage startups, has just its acquisition of the Dan Martell-founded entrepreneur advice website Clarity. With this acquisition, Clarity joins growth hacking and launch support platform Launchrock, business plan platform Bizplan, and startup review website KillerStartups, to form a new comprehensive startup resource site called Startups.co.
“Startups.co will serve as a central community to bring together our 13 million registered users to help connect Clarity, Fundable, Bizplan, Killer Startups and Launchrock with a more unified voice,” writes Fundable and Startups.co founder and CEO Wil Schroter, in a blog post announcing the launch of Startups.co.
Martell is a well-regarded entrepreneur whose previous company, a social marketing startup called Flowtown, was acquired in 2011 by marketing SaaS company Demandforce. Prior to that he sold Spheric Technologies, Inc. (his first startup) in 2008. Needless to say: he knows a lot about starting businesses, and – as a 500 Startups mentor – willingly shares his knowledge and experience to those who need and want it. This open sharing of knowledge could not be conveyed any clearer than through Clarity, which connects startup founders with more than 50,000 experts over the phone (on a per-minute-fee basis), including the likes of Mark Cuban, Eric Ries, and Brad Feld.
In the most recent episode of the Rocketship Podcast, Martell talks about his thoughts on selling Clarity – from both the company’s origins and Martell’s own origin, to today’s acquisition news. It’s a really fascinating listen, and Martell shares some of his experiences while growing up that seems wholly unexpected for a highly-successful entrepreneur. For instance, he shares his experience of being sent to rehab at the age of seventeen, and how that experience ties to his having founded Clarity years later. Regarding his role with Clarity henceforth, Martell emphasizes that he won’t be abandoning the product anytime soon:
“I’m going to stay on as an advisor. I mean, I have a huge vested interest to make sure this is a huge success, which, I was going to be involved anyway. I’ve got an amazing community of experts and members that have invested a lot of time and energy into [Clarity] that I would not want them to feel like there was no continuation on my end to make sure their voice is heard on the product side…Other than who’s responsible for managing the development aspect, I’m still involved in building the product roadmap and strategically how to integrate the other products.”
Check out Dan Martell on the Rocketship Podcast and learn more about Clarity’s acquisition, as well as hear various advice from Martell.