It took seven years of hard work for Kareem Amin, co -founder and chief executive of sales automation, to see the company’s product finally take off in 2022. Since then, the start has experienced explosive growth, has reached an assessment of over 150.
Despite the team’s average term in the company, Amin made a rare decision: Clay allows employees who have at least one year of term of office to sell some of their shares at a relatively high stock price of one of the sequoia investors. It’s a victory for everyone. Employee offers is worth the company at $ 1.5 billion, out of the $ 1.25 billion that secured it Funding of b In January. Sequoia, an investor in Clay from the 2019 series, has agreed to buy up to $ 20 million in workers’ stocks.
Starter employees often trade lower fees for a bet for the future of the company, Amin told TechCrunch. “Most of the newly established businesses do not work, but Clay works outside and so we wanted to make sure they have the choice of liquidity.”
According to Amin, both today’s employees and former employees are eligible to sell a certain part of their share, typically equivalent to the salary of about a year.
Alfred Lin, a partner of the Sequoia and the member of the Board of Directors of Clay, sees the Amin and co -founder’s decision to provide the whole company in the financial success of the start as another sign of Clay’s uniqueness.
“Clay is a very creative place,” Lin said. Starting technology helps sellers and traders find the right data and automate their market strategy with AI. Clay tools are used by thousands of customers, ranging from large companies such as Openai, Hubspot and Canva, in over 100 small consulting agencies that help other businesses use clay for their market efforts.
The company has not received the faithful community of its customers. In February, Clay gave his immediate users to participate in his development allowing community members around the world Invest in boot with the same assessment offered to investors in series B. Clay increased about $ 1 million in a round of the community so that its customers could share its growth immediately, Amin said.
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Amin sees the bid and the round of the community as a demonstration for Clay employees and directs customers that building the company is a collective effort: a way, as he put it, to ensure that “profits do not only accumulate in some people”.
While the offer will help today’s and former employees to redeem some of their shares, allowing them to a degree of financial freedom, Amin and Anand do not plan to sell any of their shares in the offer.
For Sequoia, the offer is an opportunity to increase its share of the clay, reflecting the business’s confidence in the company’s potential.
However, Lin believes that many Clay employees will not be very willing to sell many of their stocks now because they expect their shares to be much more worth it in the future. “It will probably be less than $ 20 million in demand, which is sad for Sequoia because we would like to buy more.”
And if employees do not sell some of their shares now, there will probably be another opportunity in the future. Amin said Clay is growing so fast that he would like to start bids annually.
Amin hopes that the company’s offer will set a tendency, inspiring other newly formed businesses to offer the liquidity of employees.
