#20: Grew on-demand marketplace out of a search marketing agency – Joe Griffin

Joe Griffin recently left his job of 8 years as co-CEO of ClearVoice, a company that he and co-founder Jay Swanson started in 2014 out of their digital marketing agency business in Phoenix, Arizona. ClearVoice was acquired by Fiverr in 2019 and has been operating as an independent subsidiary since then. Fiverr is now a large public company with a global reach.  

ClearVoice was created in the fast-changing web search marketing industry in 2014 out of the need from larger companies for high-quality content to drive their organic website traffic. Joe and Jay previously ran their search marketing agency iAcquire and used profits to self-fund the first ClearVoice platform. They eventually raised a small amount of practical outside funding, including a seed funding round of $1.5M and venture debt of $2M.

ClearVoice is now a leading platform for brands to hire industry-savvy experts to write useful content that is branded for their communities and customers. Thousands of brands and over 10,000 industry specialist creators use ClearVoice to drive organic marketing efforts with high-quality content.

In this episode, Joe explains:

• How he had created and sold previous internet marketing agencies and technologies before creating ClearVoice
• The difficult transition of creating and funding the ClearVoice marketplace out of an existing services business
• The acquisition by Fiverr before they went public in 2019 and how they operated as an independent subsidiary after that
• Their practical funding with self-funding from their services business, a little angel funding, a small $1.5M seed investment round, and then venture debt before being acquired
• How he led ClearVoice with a co-CEO and how they worked on all big decisions together

Find all the episodes and resources at practicalfounders.com.