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Kareem Amin

Co-founder and CEO at Clay

Kareem Amin is a seasoned technology entrepreneur and the co-founder of Clay, a company specializing in low-code automation and AI-powered lead-generation software. He has over 10 years of experience in various roles within the tech industry, beginning his career as a Software Developer for cosmology experiments at McGill University in 2006.

In 2008, Kareem was accepted into a graduate program in Neuroscience and Electrical Engineering at McGill but opted to defer to take a Program Manager role at Microsoft. He co-founded his first startup, Frame, in 2011, which focused on enhancing e-commerce experiences for tablets and was later acquired by Sailthru in 2012. Following this, he served as the VP of Product at The Wall Street Journal from 2013 to 2015 before founding Clay in 2017. Clay has since developed into a significant player in the market, helping companies scale their outbound marketing efforts through its innovative platform that integrates data from multiple sources.123

Kareem holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Physics from McGill University and is fluent in English, French, and Arabic. His diverse background combines technical expertise with entrepreneurial experience, making him a prominent figure in the tech startup landscape.14

Highlights

Jun 27 · linkedin

When Nicolae Rusan and I started out we wanted to make programming more accessible. Today, I’m proud of how we’ve actualized that intention. We're building the creative platform to help GTM teams turn any growth idea into reality.

I’m really thankful to our customers, our community, our team, and my co-founder Varun Anand for what we’ve built to date. We've grown revenue 10x each of the past two years, and Clay has quickly become the default growth engine for the world's most innovative teams, including Anthropic, Intercom, Notion and Vanta. An entire ecosystem has emerged as well, with Clay experts starting bootcamps, newsletters and Claygencies (some with multi-million dollar run rates!) to service the demand.

We've never shared our fundraising before. So I'm excited to announce that Clay has raised $62m in total funding, across our pre-seed (led by Box Group), seed (led by First Round), Series A (led by Sequoia) and most recently — our Series B (led by Meritech) at a $500M valuation.

Our team includes some of the world’s most talented engineers, ex-founders, and operators, but we don’t just write code — we make music, perform DJ sets, write poetry, do clowning workshops, make pottery (of course), and so much more. This is a special company at an inflection moment. Come join us — we're hiring across every function.

Thank you to David Tisch, Gregory R. and Adam Rothenberg from Box Group for their early support. Josh Kopelman, Brett Berson from First Round Capital for always providing introductions, advice and optimism at a moment's notice. Phin Barnes for partnering at the seed. Eliot Durbin and Ed Sim (Boldstart) for their unwavering their enthusiasm and support from day one. Andy Sack for being a friend and investor before we even had an idea. Our board member Mike Vernal for his unwavering and consistent advocacy on our behalf, and Alfred Lin, Pat Grady and Andrew Reed from Sequoia Capital for their help as we scale, and finally Alex Kurland from Meritech Capital for his conviction in us and enthusiasm for the journey ahead.

Many thanks as well to all the investors who've helped us succeed: Notation Capital (Nicholas Chirls), Maple VC (Andre Charoo), HubSpot Ventures (Nate Morgan), 20SALES (Maggie Hott, Stevie Case), 20GROWTH (Sri Batchu), Oliver J. (fmr CRO, Asana), Ashley Kramer (CMO, GitLab), Scott Belsky (CPO, Adobe), Vinay Hiremath (Co-Founder, Loom), Matt MacInnis (COO, Rippling), Emily Kramer (fmr. Head of Marketing, Asana & Carta), Douglas Hanna (COO, Grafana), Marie Gassée (Head of GTM, Column), Armand Farrokh (fmr VP Sales, Pave), Adam Nash (fmr CEO, Wealthfront), Jay Simons (fmr President, Atlassian), Idan Koren (CMO, Verkada), John Lilly (fmr CEO, Mozilla), Ryan Wiggins (VP Growth, Mercury), Ekin Oflazer (Head of Product (Core/AI), Notion),  ChenLi Wang (fmr Head of BizOps, Dropbox), Jeff Sinclair (Head of GTM Data, Stripe), Noah Adelstein (Growth, Rippling), Dakota McKenzie (Sales, Databricks), Shana Fisher (Third Kind).

Apr 9 · linkedin

Excited to have Clay recognized in the Enterprise Tech Top 30 Companies of 2024: https://lnkd.in/eyFEFsGD

This is a list compiled by top VCs and Corp devs teams around the country!

Thanks for the recognition, and for all the hard work by the team to make this happen. So much to build for our customers, stay tuned!

Related Questions

What inspired Kareem Amin to co-found Clay?
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What are some key lessons Kareem learned from his role at The Wall Street Journal?
Kareem Amin
Kareem Amin, photo 1
Kareem Amin, photo 2
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Experience

Co-founder and CEO at Clay since June 2017
Founder at New Co, VP of Product at The Wall Street Journal, Director of Product Engineering at Sailthru, Founder at Frame (acquired by Sailthru), Program Manager at Microsoft

Education

B.Eng in Electrical Engineering, Physics from McGill University

Location

Brooklyn, New York, United States