GameStop Mania Cannot Continue Warns Michele Romanow, Here's Why

🎥 Jan 27, 2021 📺 Stansberry Research ⏱ 10m 👁 42330 views

The retail investor overtaking Wall Street hedge funds is not a trend that can continue, says Michele Romanow— Clearbanc founder, e-commerce investor, and star of CBC's Dragon Den (Canada's version of Shark Tank). "This is a continuation of trends we have seen during COVID and FinTech platforms have become so good," Romanow tells our Daniela Cambone, revealing the reasoning behind the GameStop madness. Romanow also talks about the rise of e-commerce— growing ten years in 2020, 13% to over 30% in the U.S. alone. "This is a big secular change, these changes are here to stay." Get the same kin...

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About Michele Romanow

Michele Romanow appeared on the podcast *Between Two Brunettes* on May 24, 2026, after a full day of filming *Dragons' Den*. She discussed Clearco's mission to make entrepreneurship accessible by automating access to capital using data from digital platforms, noting that the company has grown to face global competitors. Romanow also commented on the venture capital market, stating that fewer exits have occurred because companies stay private longer, and predicted that many software companies will fail. During the interview, Romanow offered several opinions on entrepreneurship. She argued that the common advice "do not quit" is "terrible advice" and that founders need to know when to move on to their next iteration. She described Canada as having "100% tall poppy syndrome," where successful people are torn down rather than celebrated. Romanow also emphasized that a business's repeat customer rate is the most reliable metric, and cautioned that raising more capital can reduce a founder's control over their company's destiny.

Source: AI-verified profile updated from Michele Romanow's recent appearances. Browse all interviews →

Transcript (20 segments)

✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution

Narrator0:01

[Applause] [Music] The power of the internet is bringing together individual investors to crush Wall Street hedge funds that are short GameStop, Bed Bath and Beyond, and AMC Entertainment. So is this the start of a new trend, a paradigm shift perhaps?

Daniella Condon0:21

Joining me today is Michele Romanow. She is the youngest dragon on Canada's Dragon's Den, she is a Fortune.com 40 Under 40, and she is the founder of Clearco. Michele, welcome to my new show here at Stansberry. Always happy to see you.

Michele Romanow0:39

Great, great to be here too. Thanks for having me.

Daniella Condon0:42

Yeah, so let's... we have a lot of ground to cover today. We're going to talk about e-commerce in a bit, but first I want to get your take on this paradigm shift that seems to be overtaking Wall Street here. The power of the internet bringing together a community of individual investors to really crush Wall Street hedge funds.

Michele Romanow1:01

Yeah, I mean, what a surprising story. I think it's actually a continuation of a lot of the trends we saw accelerated during COVID. This really started with the cancellation of sports and a lot of sports betting, which drove people... the economy has done remarkably well, so there has been all of this additional capital that people are looking to play with. In many ways, there are fewer trips this year, fewer places to spend this money, so we actually saw this incredible surge earlier this year into Robinhood, all of these new investors, not professional investors, that are really looking to play the markets. I think this has just become an extension. I cannot see this lasting long; I think the markets will be able to correct for this, but it is a very interesting thing. The fintech platforms have gotten so good, these are just all available in everyone's pockets all the time, and the time has been filled in what used to be filled in sports and gaming and is now being filled in the stock market.

Daniella Condon2:08

Well, that's definitely an interesting take, Michele. So you don't think that there's some mix of professional investors leading the way? I'm sure there's some very clever people looking if they can make the market move on this.

Michele Romanow2:23

Yeah, absolutely crazy. And how do you stomach the volatility as an investor during these times?

Yeah, I mean, I think that when you look at a chart of where we are in terms of margin debt, levels look very, very high right now. For us, Clearco is the largest e-commerce investor, so we've invested in more than 3,300 different companies, over a billion dollars, and in the last year we have just seen this segment absolutely explode.

Daniella Condon2:53

So I want to talk about that with you now. We were talking offline, an increase of... is that correct? 13 to over 30% in e-commerce in the US alone. So that stat is, since COVID, retail sales in America, e-commerce sales were 13% of retail sales, that have skyrocketed to over 30% of sales, and now we've basically seen this whole pretty steady since COVID. So I think this is a big secular change because what actually happened with consumers is we truly taught the consumers that were late to the e-commerce party how to buy online. The folks like my mother who were like, 'I don't want to buy my groceries online, the blueberries are going to come crushed,' well, she had to buy her groceries online during COVID, the blueberries showed up, they were just fine, and now she's saying to me, 'Why haven't I done this my whole life?' And millions of those transactions is what happened, and they happened in actually very big categories. Food, as I mentioned, was a huge one. This isn't just about blueberries, this is about how we all get the food into our homes. That was a big category that exploded in e-commerce. Big items for home, I mean, it was unheard of two years ago to be buying a hundred thousand dollars of furniture online sight unseen. Now people are remodeling entire homes based on the pictures that they see on the internet, so it's a very big category of spend. And then the last thing is even categories in fashion and beauty, think color cosmetics. I mean, the thought that we would go into a store and use a lipstick tester after COVID is totally bizarre, and so categories like that have also exploded. And so all of that led to more e-commerce penetration. We haven't seen a softening of consumer demand or consumer spending, and so I think it's going to continue to be a very good year in e-commerce across the categories. People are just going to have to get... I mean, you're seeing all the time people are spending on their phone, whether they're trading and trying to move the market or whether they're just buying. Our screen time has gone up significantly.

Yeah, I think it's fascinating on so many fronts. I think you alluded to that. I think looking back in like five, six years, we'll look back at the biggest impacts of the pandemic, and I truly believe that it forcing us to move more into e-commerce is a lasting impact of the pandemic.

Michele Romanow5:21

Oh, certainly. I think that these changes are here to stay because we've created the platform, and now the e-commerce platforms have made it so easy. They have your credit card, it's one click to buy. It's as soon as you produce that, and just the time that we save in terms of finding and looking for hard items. I think the other category that's probably going to see the same level of endured impact is in the telemedicine space. I mean, now that we understand really what a virus can do, the entire concept of putting all the sick people together so we can make them slightly sicker with what we all have, it's totally changed. There was this notion that you had to truly go see a doctor, just like you had to truly show up to the office if you were doing real work. I think the pandemic has erased both of those. All of us have realized we and our employees can do real work from our bedrooms if we need to, and that I think will be another big segment that we'll see a ton of change in.

Daniella Condon6:20

And I think the blueberry example will resonate with a lot of people. I for one was one of those people where I felt like I have to choose my fruits and veggies, and they're just things that you just learn to let go. Just like learning to trust the system and give my Visa number, and then you realize, yes, it will arrive, and no one frauded me or stole my identity. Of course these are risks, but day-to-day, the e-commerce platform definitely works. Now one trend we have also seen, Michele, as companies like Victoria's Secret abandoning their brick and mortar stores and going totally e-commerce, is this... are we going to see more and more companies do this, like leaving their flagship stores?

Michele Romanow6:58

It's a really good question. I know we've backed a bunch of these. Temperley London is a brand worn by Kate Middleton that we backed in the UK, and they use their capital to just build out e-commerce today. So I think everyone... Pier One, Dressbarn, those were other ones that had huge brick and mortar positions before that have now basically rebuilt entirely as an e-commerce first company. And I think this will happen across the spectrum because what will happen is even simple brick and mortar stores, think about the tiny shoe store in a little town. That shoe store owner has now realized that if they actually had a website, people from their community would buy from them. So I think we're seeing that shift. I think you're probably right. Our footprint, if you looked at square footage per person in America, was the highest of any country in the world, and it was so saturated. So I think we are seeing certainly a reckoning. We're not only seeing a reckoning across retail space but certainly office space as well. So it's probably going to be a pretty tumultuous couple of years for the real estate market as people figure out how to really occupy these buildings again. But I think you probably will see a lot of businesses like Victoria's Secret that will probably maybe use a couple of flagship stores but maybe 80% or more of a reduction in retail footprint.

Daniella Condon8:28

Yeah, the other angle just on this before we wrap is that we're seeing countries that were slow to adopt e-commerce before really jump into the game, countries like Brazil, Russia, Mexico. What are you seeing?

Michele Romanow8:41

We are seeing all of that tremendous growth. What prevented a lot of these companies from growing is traditional smaller local economies, but e-commerce has now shifted. One of the big problems in Mexico is that so many of your transactions are cash on delivery. It's a very similar market to the Indian e-commerce market where when you get your package, you pay for it from the delivery driver. But now there is so much payments infrastructure being built, there are now a lot of ways to accommodate that part of the cash economy, and we're seeing those markets absolutely skyrocket. So I think it is going to be a very good year for the e-commerce companies themselves, e-commerce platforms that are working on these, and effectively you get to own and talk to your customer in a very different way. As a brick and mortar store, you were hoping that that customer came back to you, maybe you could send them an email, but you were really hoping to get that foot traffic back. You can be much more engaged digitally now, so I just think we're going to see an incredible year for this.

Daniella Condon9:44

Fascinating indeed. Michele, finally, before I let you go, you said invested in over 3,300 companies, a billion dollars worth of investments. You're a top 40 Under 40, like I said, the youngest dragon on Canada's Dragon's Den. What's next for you?

Michele Romanow9:57

So for me, it's really about building Clearco to size and scale. Last year we announced that we were funding companies in the UK. Before launch, we had already deployed 30 million dollars or 30 million pounds in that market. So there are a lot of new products we're launching this year and a lot of international expansion that I'm very excited about. And then, just like everyone else, trying to survive COVID.

Daniella Condon10:21

Amen to that. Michele, always happy to speak with you. Come back any time and tell us about everything you're going to do.

Michele Romanow10:28

It's great to be here.

Daniella Condon10:30

And thank you for watching. We'll have much more for you on Stansberry Research, so be sure to stay tuned and share us where you watch us. Thanks for watching. I'm Daniella Condon.