Clinkle

Last updated
Clinkle
Type Privately held company
Industry Mobile payments
Founded Palo Alto, California,
United States (2012 (2012))
FounderLucas Duplan [1] [2] [3] [4]
FatePivot
Headquarters
San Francisco
,
United States
Key people
 Jim Breyer
Richard Branson
Barry McCarthy
ProductsClinkle App
Clinkle Card
Treats SDK

Clinkle was a mobile payments company founded in 2012. In 2013 they raised $25 million [5] and the product launched to college students on September 24, 2014. [6]

Contents

History

Clinkle was founded in 2011 by Lucas Duplan, then a computer science student at Stanford University. [7] [8] Duplan had decided to work on mobile payments during a study abroad program in London after his freshman year. [8] Upon returning to Stanford, Duplan received guidance from Mehran Sahami, a professor who taught the university's introductory programming methodology class. [9] Clinkle rented a house in Palo Alto, California using money from Duplan's parents and a summer program through Highland Capital Partners. [10] [11] With approximately a dozen students building the app, it ran a beta test at Stanford in which testers could send payments to each other. [8]

Through VMware co-founder Diane Greene, Duplan met Accel partner Jim Breyer, who became interested in the company after discussing it with Stanford professors and graduate students. [7] Breyer became an investor following his first meeting and product demonstration with Duplan and participated in a round of funding for the company. [12] By June 2013, Clinkle had raised $25 million from a broad range of investors, including Greene, Andreessen Horowitz, Intel Capital, Intuit, Peter Thiel, Owen Van Natta, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] The funding amounted to the largest seed round in Silicon Valley. [19] Shortly after, Duplan moved the 50-person company from Mountain View to San Francisco. [20] In 2016 a photo was leaked of CEO Duplan and Richard Branson burning wads of fake $100 bills. [21]

In October 2013, former Netflix chief financial officer Barry McCarthy became Clinkle's chief operating officer, [22] and two more former Netflix executives later joined as vice presidents. [23] McCarthy left Clinkle after less than 5 months at the company. [24] Near the end of the year, the company laid off a quarter of its employees. [25] In 2015, seven core employees quit and the remaining team was believed to be mostly consultants providing support and no more than 12, down from 70 several years ago. [26] Forbes reported in January 2016 that investors were losing patience with the lack of any market product and were requesting a return of funds. [21]

In November 2014 Lucas Duplan was listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 , [27] a pick the publication regretted nine years later, placing Duplan on its Hall of Shame, featuring ten picks it wished it could take back. [28] [29]

Product

Clinkle released an app for download on Google Play and the iTunes Store. Clinkle first launched on college campuses and targeted merchants near college campuses. [7] [30] [31] Clinkle announced on September 26, 2013, that after two months of opening their college waitlists, over 100,000 students had signed up despite no clear product description. [32] [33] Until September 2014, the app had very limited functionality and only allowed users to join a waitlist with a launch date of September 2014. [34]

Before launching, the company had released limited information about its product, despite significant press coverage.[ citation needed ] The product was intended to include a mobile app that served as an online wallet. [34] Wallets would be linked to existing credit cards and bank accounts. [7] A June 2013 report by TechCrunch stated that the app was going to use high-frequency sound to send payments between devices; however, the section was shortly retracted. [9] Clinkle confirmed that the product would not require near field communication, a wireless technology used by Google Wallet and Apple Pay. [7] Clinkle stated that the product would also provide merchants with information about their customers for the purpose of targeted sales promotions. [11]

Despite its initial launch as an alternative payments processing system, it lost its technological edge to new products like Venmo, a peer-to-peer payments app, and later Apple Pay, which achieved what the company had originally set out to do. [21] The company decided to pivot, and launched to the public on September 24, 2014, a new flagship downloadable application aimed at college students. [6]

The launch debuted a Clinkle Card that allowed users to earn rewards for paying at stores and online. After every seventh payment, Clinkle card users were awarded a "Treat" to send to a friend, which had a chance of earning the recipient a free purchase. [35]

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References

  1. ↑ Shontell, Alyson. "A bunch of Clinkle employees just left and the startup apparently tried to sell itself to Apple". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  2. ↑ "Clinkle Implodes As Employees Quit In Protest Of CEO". TechCrunch. 16 May 2015. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  3. ↑ Shontell, Alyson. "A SILICON VALLEY DISASTER: A 21-Year-Old Stanford Kid Got $30 Million, Then Everything Blew Up". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  4. ↑ Mac, Ryan. "Clinkle Up In Smoke As Investors Want Their Money Back". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  5. ↑ "Mobile payments startup Clinkle nabs $25M in early investments". CNET. 2013-06-27. Retrieved 2018-07-03.
  6. 1 2 "$30 Million And Three Years Later, Mysterious Payments App Clinkle Finally Launches". Business Insider . Retrieved 16 October 2016.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Wingfield, Nick (June 27, 2013). "Silicon Valley Luminaries Bet on Clinkle, a Payments Start-Up". The New York Times . Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  8. 1 2 3 Gallagher, Billy (June 27, 2013). "Clinkle Raises Celebrity-Filled $25M Round As It Gears Up To Eliminate The Physical Wallet". TechCrunch . Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  9. 1 2 Roose, Kevin (June 28, 2013). "How a 22-Year-Old Stanford Grad Won Silicon Valley's Money Chase". New York . Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  10. ↑ "Highland Capital Partners Announces Summer@Highland 2011 Teams". Highland Capital Partners. July 20, 2011. Archived from the original on April 11, 2014. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
  11. 1 2 Efrati, Amir (April 3, 2013). "Startup's Deep Roots: Stanford". The Wall Street Journal . Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  12. ↑ Dembosky, April (June 27, 2013). "Facebook backers make big early bet on college start-up". Financial Times . Retrieved January 26, 2014.
  13. ↑ Tam, Donna (June 27, 2013). "Mobile payments startup Clinkle nabs $25M in early investments". CNET . Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  14. ↑ Nusca, Andrew (June 27, 2013). "With $25m in the bank, Clinkle takes on mobile payments". ZDNet . Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  15. ↑ Wasserman, Todd (June 27, 2013). "Startup Clinkle Gets $25 Million to Create Mobile Payment Standard". Mashable . Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  16. ↑ "Startup Clinkle Has A High Frequency Plan To Push Mobile Payments". ReadWrite. June 27, 2013. Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  17. ↑ Geron, Tomio (June 27, 2013). "Payments Startup Clinkle Raises $25 Million Seed Round". Forbes . Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  18. ↑ Mac, Ryan. "Clinkle Up In Smoke As Investors Want Their Money Back". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-03-04.
  19. ↑ Drake, Sarah (December 4, 2013). "Payments startup Clinkle nabs more talent from Netflix as it rounds out its exec team". Silicon Valley Business Journal. American City Business Journals . Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  20. ↑ Grant, Rebecca (June 27, 2013). "Clinkle raises massive $25M seed round to transform how we pay for things". VentureBeat . Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  21. 1 2 3 Mac, Ryan (September 23, 2013). "Clinkle Up In Smoke As Investors Want Their Money Back". Forbes . Retrieved 16 October 2016.
  22. ↑ Primack, Dan (October 22, 2013). "Ex-Netflix CFO joins stealth payments startup Clinkle". CNNMoney.com. Archived from the original on February 3, 2014. Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  23. ↑ Lawler, Ryan (December 4, 2013). "Stealthy Payments Startup Clinkle Brings On Two Former Netflixers To Fill Out Its Exec Ranks". TechCrunch . Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  24. ↑ Rey, Jason Del (13 March 2014). "Clinkle's Still a Hot Mess as Its Big Shot COO Departs (Updated)" . Retrieved 16 October 2016.
  25. ↑ Primack, Dan (December 9, 2013). "Layoffs at stealth payment startup Clinkle". CNNMoney.com. Archived from the original on January 28, 2014. Retrieved January 26, 2014.
  26. ↑ Constine, Josh (16 May 2015). "Clinkle Implodes As Employees Quit In Protest Of CEO" . Retrieved 16 October 2016.
  27. ↑ https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2014/01/06/30-under-30-finance-the-top-young-traders-bankers-and-dealmakers-2/?sh=19b714312536
  28. ↑ https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesunder30team/2023/11/28/hall-of-shame-the-10-most-dubious-people-ever-to-make-our-30-under-30-list/
  29. ↑ https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/29/23980764/forbes-publishes-30-under-30-hall-of-shame
  30. ↑ Del Rey, Jason (June 27, 2013). "Pressure Is on Stealth Payments Startup Clinkle as It Raises $25 Million From Big-Name Investors". All Things Digital . Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  31. ↑ Primack, Dan (June 27, 2013). "Clinkle raises $25 million to kill Square". CNNMoney.com. Archived from the original on January 13, 2014. Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  32. ↑ Huspeni, Andrea (2013). "Richard Branson Invests in a Startup That No One Understands Yet". Entrepreneur . Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  33. ↑ Fitchard, Kevin (September 26, 2013). "Clinkle becomes a tech celebrity magnet, landing Richard Branson as an investor". GigaOM . Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  34. 1 2 Fitchard, Kevin (June 27, 2013). "Stanford's $25M secret: Payments startup Clinkle wants to make your college cashless". GigaOM . Retrieved January 23, 2014.
  35. ↑ Constine, Josh (23 September 2014). "Mobile Wallet Laughingstock Clinkle Finally Launches To Let You Pay Friends And Earn "Treats"" . Retrieved 16 October 2016.

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