About Clutch
Clutch is the leading B2B ratings and reviews platform, helping over a million business leaders each month discover and connect with trusted agency partners across hundreds of service categories. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has built the most comprehensive directory of B2B service providers, verified through detailed client interviews and research.
The challenge
Clutch had a classic two-sided marketplace problem. To be valuable to buyers it needed a critical mass of providers with verified reviews; to attract providers it needed a steady flow of active buyers. The existing funnel was largely passive — providers signed up, built a profile, and waited; buyers arrived from Google, browsed, and left. There was no systematic way to activate the verified-provider community as a growth lever, onboarding drop-off was high, and the team had little visibility into where users got stuck.
The approach
I worked with the growth team to build a community-driven funnel around their greatest asset: providers who’d just earned a positive verified review. The insight was simple — those providers had every reason to share that review, but nothing made it easy or rewarding. We built a referral and social-sharing flow triggered at the right moments: after a review was published, after a provider was featured in a Clutch list, after milestones.
On the technical side I set the funnel up on HubSpot for CRM and sequencing, Zapier for orchestration, and Webflow for landing pages we could A/B test fast. New providers entered segmented nurture sequences by vertical, size, and review count, and I rebuilt onboarding as a step-by-step progress flow with email nudges for each incomplete section — instrumented end to end with Mixpanel.
Tool stack
The lesson
The cheapest acquisition channel was already inside the product. The community wanted to share — they just needed a path built for them.
The result
The community-driven engine moved the numbers within the first two quarters.
