Dan Martell

Dan Martell is a Canadian entrepreneur and angel investor. He founded Spheric Technologies and Flowtown, which were acquired by Function1 and Demandforce respectively, and is currently the Founder and CEO of Clarity.

Spheric Technologies
In 2004, Martell launched Spheric Technologies, a computer consulting company, with his life savings of $70,000 and nearly went bankrupt in the first six weeks. The company developed social media applications and enterprise portal solutions for Fortune 500 companies including Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble. Spheric Technologies had 27 programmers, grew by 152% per year, and was acquired in 2008 by Function1.

Flowtown
In February 2009, Martell launched Flowtown, a social media marketing application, with co-founder Ethan Bloch. In August 2010, they raised a seed round of funding totaling $750,000 from Mitch Kapor, Mark Goines, Steve Anderson, Saar Gur, Travis Kalanick, Auren Hoffman, Brian Norgard, 500 Startups, and Dan Gould. Initially, Flowtown helped small business connect email addresses to social media marketing campaigns.

When Facebook changed their terms of services, they pivoted their focus and built three products. Their main product was Gift Marketing which allowed businesses to give gifts to their customers, who in turn could share those gifts with friends. Reflecting on the impact Facebook’s alteration had on their business, Martell stated: "It was like building houses and you can no longer buy wood. It changed everything." The company found success, however and in mid-2010, Flowtown was acquired by Demandforce for a figure in the millions 13 months after its initial round of seed funding.

Clarity
The inspiration for Clarity came from experiences at Martell’s first company, Spheric Technologies. Two years into starting Spheric Technologies at the age of 26, Martell had 12 employees and was doing over $1 million in revenue, but felt like he was "going to drive a racecar off a cliff." Martell made a cold call to Frank McKenna, the former Canadian Ambassador to the United States and was introduced to three entrepreneurs who helped put him back on track.

When starting another company after Flowtown’s acquisition, Martell noted that when he looked back on the best advice he’s been given throughout the years, "99 per cent of it was over the phone." With this in mind, Martell built Clarity.fm, which connects advice seekers with a pool of experienced individuals in areas such as marketing, sales, and business development. The experts, which currently number 6000, set their own rate (or donate it to charity) and are given 85% of the revenue. Clarity had a provincial launch in New Brunswick in January 2012 and was opened to the public in May 2012.

Advising
Martell is an angel investor in 18 companies, including Foodspotting, Udemy, Unbounce, oneforty (acquired by Hubspot) and Getaround. He is also an advisor to Startup Weekend and Kiva, a member of the C100 (an organization that supports Canadian technology entrepreneurship and investing), and a member of Finance4Founders. He is a mentor at several startup incubators, including Launch36, GrowLab, Extreme Startups, and 500 Startups.

Reception
Martell won BDC’s Young Entrepreneur Award for New Brunswick. Spheric Technologies won a Kira award for best export service and was also named to Canadian Business’s 2008 emerging companies list. Martell was referenced as an "online marketing expert" in the Financial Post and has received mentions for himself and his companies in publications such as Wired, Inc., The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Financial Post, Huffington Post, PCWorld, Fast Company, The Globe and Mail, GigaOM, CBC News, and TechCrunch.