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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.

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).

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

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