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.
Entrepreneurial career
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.
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 experts, which currently number 6000, set their own rate (or donate it to charity) and are given 85% of the revenue. 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. 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.

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