- Category Surfers | Acquired by SaaS Weekly
- Posts
- Clearbit
Clearbit
how it grew and why HubSpot is buying them
Welcome to the Category Surfers where we break down go-to-market strategies so you can build the best SaaS growth engine.
How Clearbit grew with PLG
Clearbit is set to be acquired by HubSpot. With only $17M raised years ago — it’s even more impressive. Here is why they almost beat ZoomInfo.
Let’s dig in.
Product
The product is kinda amazing — especially if you want to enrich US-based leads. It just finds information about people you want to contact or leads that visit your website. Be prepared to spend $25k but they have some free options.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/86be9de8-4391-4d17-99a0-c2336c23cc8a/Screenshot_2023-11-02_at_09.42.17.png)
Clearbit main product “Prospect”
Distribution
Clearbit was growing using a standard sales-led playbook. But they released a Gmail extension showing insights about a person emailing you. They launched it, spent some money on FB ads, and then it “just took off”. It was a free plugin that generated a ton of leads for their sales team to close — over 300k. Here is a good interview with the co-founder and CEO (back then).
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/e8b0a948-641f-4581-84b4-746d0cefb6fe/web-find-people-zoom.png)
Clearbit Connect Extension
Market
Clearbit is primarily in the sales intelligence market worth “only” $500M. The big market opportunity comes from adding a software layer on top of data. ZoomInfo is a great example with a current market cap of $5B. This is why I think it’s a smart move by HubSpot to acquire Clearbit.
Resources
Interview with ex-CEO by SaaSMarketer.io
Interview with current CEO by Intercom
You’re a legend — thank you for reading!
🙌Forward or share this post if you’ve enjoyed it
📈Sponsor this newsletter. Get seen by 2000+ SaaS founders, VCs, and marketers (50% open rate, 7% CTR).
🤌Feedback? Ideas? Reply or drop it here.