He landed in Singapore with just a phone number; two years later, this entrepreneur announced a merger

Started by SEO-guru Dan Clarke in 2015, Disruptient has merged with the Dubai-based CreITive in effort to kickstart an Asia move

Two years ago, Dan Clarke arrived at a Singaporean hostel with nothing more than a phone number.

He “knew nobody” and says he “met [the owner of that phone number] at Lau Pa Sat for a beer on day one.”

Today, he announced he has merged his performance marketing company, Disruptient, with a Dubai-based firm that helps clients build, maintain and launch web and mobile products.

The partner is named CreITive and it called the deal a, “strategic merger in a move to offer 360-degree digital web and mobile solutions.”

The deal was a mostly equity deal and it values Disruptient in the six-figure range. Disruptient will receive a two-year earn-out.

Clarke told e27 the key goal of the deal is to kickstart CreITive’s move into Asia. The first step of that plan is to open two development centres, one in Indonesia and one in Vietnam, by the end of 2017.

Disruptient will operate as a standalone subsidiary as the joint-company works to expand its presence and Clarke will join CreITive as its Asia-Pacific Managing Director.

The two sides also hope to build an end-to-end solution by mixing the marketing and analytics of Disruptient with CreITive’s strength in branding, building and and launching tech solutions.

“I’m thrilled to be combining efforts with CreITive to be bridge the gap between my two favourite cities, Dubai and Singapore and combining our portfolios of companies across the private and public sector,” said Clarke in a statement.

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The new company will consist of about 45 staff across the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

Veljko Vasic, the APAC CEO of CreITive, said the deal grew out of a meeting about a year ago, when Clarke and Vasic saw synergies between their companies and working styles. He said,

“Combining our companies, we’ll be able to offer clients the best possible digital services in Asia Pacific and continue our push to make CreITive the undisputed leader in digital innovation in APAC,”

Clarke said, if all goes well, he hopes the next couple of years will see the Asia operations grow to about 20 people and be generating US$1 to 2 million in revenue by the end of 2018.

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In a two-year time frame (with zero investment), Clarke founded, managed and eventually exited a Singapore-born company.

The Singapore tech ecosystem should feel a sense of pride that a foreigner could come to the city, with practically zero knowledge, and two-years later wind up feeling pretty good about how things turned out.

As for moving from a Founder to a General Manager gig, Clarke said he is looking forward to a business development and operations role. After years of working in SEO, he seemed excited to pull away from the industry. Although he did admit that ‘SEO guru’ has become part of his reputation so it will be difficult to completely leave SEO behind.

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