Chris Winslow is back in Central Ohio tech after a decade – even though he never moved away.
Winslow started this spring as CEO of fast-growing fintech Clarus R&D with plans to lead the profitable business to an even larger scale. Revenue, projected at "tens of millions" this year, has doubled every year since it was founded in 2015.
"The future for this company is outstanding," Winslow said. "It's the size of the market coupled with our great team and great technology that makes this such a great opportunity."
In May, Clarus debuted a top-to-bottom rebuild of its TurboTax-like software that simplifies a paperwork-heavy process for small businesses to claim a tax credit for research and development. The company has added features to claim an employee retention credit created in the federal Cares Act for pandemic relief.
About 20 of the 50 employees have joined in the past six months. This past fall, Clarus moved to an office in Grandview Heights.
Co-founder and past CEO Jeff Haskett planned the succession over the past year and stays on the board.
"I really love the startup phase of growth, but Clarus R&D is not a startup any more," he said.
"We’re really proud that we've grown this company in Columbus; most of our employees are here," Haskett said. "We’re excited we could attract somebody with (Winslow's) background and experience. And he's a Columbus guy."
Winslow's Columbus roots reach back to the creation of the consumer internet when he was a product manager at the former CompuServe Corp., according to his LinkedIn profile, then executive vice president at CD maker Metatec International and president and COO of Pinnacle Data Systems Inc., among other roles.
He spent two years as vice president of venture acceleration at then-TechColumbus before he was recruited away to a Silicon Valley company right before the organization was reorganized as Rev1 Ventures. "I've made the rounds of the early-stage innovators in Columbus," Winslow said.
Winslow led a Flextronics cloud infrastructure division to $2 billion in sales, then was CEO of an Austin logistics tech company that was acquired this past fall. The whole time he kept his family in Central Ohio, flying home on weekends.
"I'm excited about having an eight-minute commute instead of a six-hour commute," he said.
Meanwhile, he's watched the "fantastic" growth of the industry over the past decade.
"Tom Walker's done a tremendous job building up Rev1 to be a center for early stage entrepreneurs," Winslow said. "With the rise of Drive Capital, they've been able to attract other significant VC's into the region.
"Honestly, when I was at TechColumbus coaching all those companies, one of the challenges was we could get you early stage seed funding, but when we got to looking for the B round, C round, that was a lot more difficult," he said. "Now companies have moved here for the funding. I’m really excited about being back in that ecosystem."
In Clarus, he sees an addressable market of $8 billion – the amount of accounting fees charged just for dealing with this credit. Most of that is by the Big Four firms working with huge public companies.
But there's no dominant player among regional and small accounting firms and payroll processors that Clarus partners with as distributors.
"That's going to be a significant growth catalyst for us," Winslow said. "There are a lot of firms that would like to do this for their customers. It's just a lot of work if you do it manually."
The R&D credit was created in a 2015 tax law. Capped at $250,000 and applied against payroll taxes instead of corporate income, it's a significant source of capital that doesn't require giving up equity.
But that requires proving eligibility through documenting product development, subject to a four-part test; computing expenses; and filling out a two-page schedule. That could cost $30,000 in hourly accounting fees for an average credit of $35,000.
Clarus, which spun out of an accounting firm that was later acquired, automates the process with some online questions and has in-house tax experts to back up the work.
Large Columbus tech companies were Clarus' first customers when they were still startups – Olive AI (then CrossChx), Beam Dental, FMX.
Clarus had early investor backing, but has grown through cash flow. It was the fifth fastest-growing private company in Columbus Business First's 2021 Fast 50 awards. The company could consider strategic funding options as it builds to a larger scale, Winslow said.
"We can be one of the largest players in this $8 billion industry," Winslow said. "There's great opportunity for us to grow our customer base in strategic locations like Silicon Valley and Austin because of the density of applicable customers."
