The most successful companies are built on a foundation of curiosity and hard work – and ability to bounce back after failure. Michele Romanow became one of Canada’s best–known entrepreneurs through this approach. She built a number of businesses, was an investor on Dragons Den and launched Clearco, a fintech company that has changed the way many growing companies raise investment. Her career is proof that with determination and common sense you can open new doors after setbacks.
Early Life and Education
Michele Romanow was raised in Saskatchewan, where strong work habits were part of everyday life. Many people around her worked in farming, and she often explained that this environment taught her discipline from an early age. She learned that daily effort was necessary because responsibilities could not be postponed.
Her parents encouraged her to build a successful career and believed engineering would provide good opportunities. Following this advice, Romanow moved to Kingston, Ontario, to study civil engineering at Queen’s University. During her first years at university she completed engineering courses, but she slowly realized that creating businesses interested her much more than designing structures.
An important opportunity appeared while the engineering faculty was opening a new building. Romanow noticed that the campus needed a sustainable coffee shop. Instead of simply discussing the idea, she prepared a detailed business proposal and presented it to the university administration. The proposal was accepted, and The Tea Room opened in 2006. The business continued operating long after her graduation and became her first successful entrepreneurial project.
First Business Partner and Early Startups
During her final year at Queen’s University, Romanow met Anatoliy Melnichuk, who later became her business partner. Their first conversation quickly turned toward entrepreneurship. Romanow was preparing for a business plan competition that offered a $25,000 prize for the winning idea. Melnichuk immediately became interested, bringing several business concepts to their next meeting.
Together they entered multiple business competitions with an ambitious proposal to create a caviar fishery. At that time, global caviar production had fallen by about 90 percent because of overfishing in the Caspian Sea. Their idea impressed competition judges, and together they won approximately $100,000 in prize funding.
The partners drove to New Brunswick, where they worked to establish a commercial supply chain. They learned about fishing licences, organized sturgeon suppliers, produced caviar, contacted restaurants across Canada, and shipped products overnight through FedEx. The business generated promising early sales and gave both entrepreneurs valuable practical experience.
However, the timing became extremely difficult. Only a few months later, in September 2008, the global financial crisis created a severe recession. Romanow was only 22 years old, attempting to sell one of the world’s least essential luxury products during an economic downturn. The company could not survive those conditions, becoming one of her earliest business failures.
Instead of stopping, Romanow and Melnichuk continued searching for new opportunities. They experimented with several ideas, including delivering fresh fruit to offices but the recession remained too severe for these businesses to grow successfully.
The difficult period taught Romanow several lessons that later influenced every company she built.
- Failure often provides more useful experience than easy success.
- Market conditions can change even strong business plans.
- Entrepreneurs must continue searching for new opportunities.
- Practical experience is as valuable as formal education.
- Long term success requires resilience and flexibility.
Retail Experience and Buytopia
After several unsuccessful startups, Romanow accepted a position as director of strategy at Sears. The role allowed her to understand retail operations from inside a major company. She learned about purchasing, pricing strategies, customer behaviour, inventory management, and electronic commerce. The experience also gave her financial stability before launching another startup.
In 2010, Romanow founded Buytopia from her apartment in Toronto. The business entered the growing daily deals market, offering customers discounted gift cards and promotional offers from retailers. Like many new entrepreneurs, she had almost no marketing budget during the company’s first months.
Her first customer acquisition campaign became one of her most remembered stories. Instead of expensive advertising, Romanow bought a box of sidewalk chalk and wrote Buytopia’s website address together with the daily deal outside major office buildings across Toronto. The unusual idea attracted attention, although many property managers also called asking her to stop writing outside their buildings.
Despite limited resources, Buytopia continued growing and attracted an expanding customer base. Romanow constantly searched for ways to increase the company’s value instead of depending on only one product. This strategy later led to another important business opportunity.
Dragons’ Den and the Creation of Clearco
Romanow continued building new ideas after the success of Buytopia. In 2012, she launched SnapSaves, a mobile application that allowed shoppers to use digital grocery coupons instead of paper versions. The service attracted users very quickly, and in less than two years the company was acquired by Groupon. After the acquisition, Romanow moved with her team to Chicago, where she became Head of Marketing at Groupon and gained valuable experience inside a global technology business.
Soon after, she received an unexpected phone call from a producer at CBC, inviting her to become one of the investors on Dragons’ Den. During each filming season, the Dragons reviewed about 250 business pitches in only 17 days. Romanow noticed that many founders requested investment mainly to buy inventory or attract customers through online advertising. She believed many of them were giving away too much ownership for short–term funding.
In 2015, she introduced a different investment idea during one pitch. Instead of taking 10 percent of a company, she offered the requested capital in exchange for 10 percent of future revenue until the founder repaid the investment together with 6 percent interest. This agreement became the first deal that later inspired Clearco.
Romanow officially founded Clearco in 2016. The company uses artificial intelligence to evaluate businesses by analyzing financial data instead of personal background or presentations. This system helped increase access to funding for many entrepreneurs. Clearco has invested more than $2.5 billion in over 6,000 businesses, expanded into seven countries and built a portfolio that includes eight times more women founders and nine times more BIPOC founders than a typical venture capital portfolio.