Michele Romanow is a Canadian tech entrepreneur, television personality, board director and venture capitalist. She co-founded Clearbanc, a San Francisco-based provider of revenue sharing solutions to fund new online businesses, and other e-businesses, and made the list of 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada in 2015. She was named as one of the Forbes Top 20 Most Disruptive "Millennials on a Mission" in 2013 and Canadian Innovation Awards’ Angel Investor of the Year in 2018. Romanow joined the cast of CBC’s Dragons' Den in Season 10.
Romanow launched her first business, a coffeeshop, in 2006 while studying at Queen's University. Romanow then partnered with two colleagues from her engineering class, Anatoliy Melnichuk and Ryan Marien. Together, they founded Evandale Caviar, Buytopia.ca, and SnapSaves without raising any external capital. Romanow graduated and started Evandale Caviar, a vertically integrated fishery that distributed high end sturgeon caviar to luxury hotels and restaurants. She then became the Director of Strategy for Sears Canada. In 2011, Romanow started Buytopia.ca which, by 2013, had 2.5M subscribers and had provided over $100M in savings through deals for products, services, events, and travel, with merchants including brands like Cirque du Soleil, Porter Airlines, and Staples. Buytopia also grew by acquiring six competitors. By 2018, Buytopia joined Emerge Commerce Inc., an e-commerce consolidator founded by Ghassan Halazon, that also acquired other deal sites like WagJag, Shop.ca, under the parent company. Romanow started SnapSaves, a mobile couponing app that gives shoppers cash back when they buy certain items in the grocery store by partnering with consumer packaged goods companies. Groupon purchased SnapSaves in June 2014, relaunched in the U.S. as Snap by Groupon. She co-founded Clearbanc in 2015, a venture capital firm, alongside Andrew D'Souza, whom is also her romantic partner. In June 2017, Ruma Bose, the former president of Chobani Ventures LLC, founded the with support from Michele Romanow and Entrepreneur in Residence, Richard Branson. According to the Globe and Mail, the not-for-profit is meant to help small-business owners get inexpensive financing, and Romanow promised female entrepreneurs applying through the initiative a 10 percent discount on loans obtained through her financial services platform, clearbanc.com. Romanow is currently a director for Vail Resorts, Freshii, Shad, Queen’s School of Business and League of Innovators. She is a previous director for Whistler Blackcomb. Romanow was also an investor of Goldie nightclub in Toronto, which lost its liquor license after violating social distancing orders during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Following the events that lead to the suspension of the liquor license Romanow publicly denounced the management of Goldie, stating that she had no involvement in the day-to-day operation, and that she would exercise her option to sell her shares.
