Canada’s Top Companies to Watch in 2025 🇨🇦

We are beyond thrilled to announce this year’s list of Canada’s Top Companies, a celebration of the incredible founders, innovators, and leaders shaping the future of our country. This recognition goes out to those who are not only building successful businesses but also driving innovation, creating jobs, and making an impact in their industries and communities.

A huge thank you to all the founders and their teams who shared their stories with our community. Your journeys of resilience, creativity, and determination continue to inspire and remind us why Canada remains one of the best places to build. To the companies who made this year’s list, congratulations on this well-deserved recognition. We know you are bound to do amazing things, and we can’t wait to see how you continue to scale, innovate, and lead.

62. OWNI
61. ProveraCare
60. Brazily Fitness
59. Immitracker
58. Fello
57. wrksourcing
56. Consuy
55. CasaYa
54. Ntangible
53. Engyne
52. Brikli
51. The Good Growth Company
50. Polar Labs
49. Quantigo
48. Katalyze
47. SimpliCity
46. ConSoul
45. Toast
44. Navio
43. Stingrai
42. Cansulta
41. Linkus
40. Ollon
39. Athena Chat
38. Punchcard
37. PulseFX
36. Biiibo
35. BrightIron
34. Motiv
33. eeva
32. TravelAI
31. Leni
30. Hera Fertility
29. Binoloop
28. Fortay
27. Friendlier
26. Maple
25. Maman Biomedical
24. Kompass
23. Mycroft
22. Boast
21. Equivesto
20. Hux Labs
19. SingleKey
18. FutureVault
17. Wingbuddy
16. CRUXOCM
15. 409.ai
14. Burai
13. Blanka
12. Humi
11. Part3
10. Vetster
9. Chocolate Soup
8. Crafty Ramen
7. Purity Gas
6. Wisedocs
5. Able Innovations
4. Airfairness
3. Gambit Technologies
2. Wagepoint
1. Stay22

62. OWNI

Founders: Link Sok
Website: https://owni.ai

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
OWNI helps qualified people co-buy property together – to share costs, boost buying power, and enter the real estate market sooner.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
Shifted the focus to proof of concept, digging into our ICP, and generating revenue during development vs chasing VC and angel investor money. Our goal is to partner with a financial institution or other related country-wide company where OWNI will bring added value to their existing clientele.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
I would have vibe coded a prototype and focused on users first.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
Less incubators and accelerators that provide the same content over and over. Founders usually don’t have business background and they need the business development support beyond raising capital.

What’s next with your company?
We’re just about to onboard a CTO (fingers crossed) and we’re still seeking institutional partnerships.

61. ProveraCare

Founders: Angie Kramer
Website: https://www.proveracare.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
ProveraCare is an all-in-one platform that helps mobile care teams streamline visits, communication, and client management with ease.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?  Provide tax incentives for Canadian companies to work with startups, lowering the barrier of entry for emerging ideas to achieve feedback, revenue and product market fit.

What’s next with your company?
We’re expanding our platform with to stay connected at every step because better communication leads to better care.

60. Brazily Fitness

Founders: Mariana Santos
Website: https://www.brazilyfitness.com

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Brazily Fitness boosts confidence & joy through Brazilian dance and fitness programs, empowering people to move boldly & live bravely.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
If I had to start over, I’d trust my intuition more instead of blindly following gurus. Some advice felt off—and I wish I’d listened to that.

What’s next with your company?
We’re scaling Brazily Fitness by growing our university club network across Canada, certifying more instructors, and expanding our app to reach a global audience. Our mission is to make confidence-building through Brazilian dance accessible to anyone, anywhere.

59. Immitracker

Founders: Nino Melikidze, Blayne Kumar
Website: https://myimmitracker.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Immitracker is the largest platform to track visa & immigration applications for Canada & Australia, with tools, services & community support.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
I would start with supporting businesses working with immigrants (legal, travel management and relocation, companies) and offering them tracking capabilities first and then build the consumer portion. This would help us provide even more value to both customer segments by ensuring more efficient ways of securing large amounts of case data consistently.
If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?

What’s next with your company? 
We’re starting to work with higher education institutions to support their international students and travel / immi tech and relocation companies who work with employees on various visas. The main focus of the company is becoming B2B first.

58. Fello

Founders: Zach Ronski, Nurlan Sadvakasov, and Evan Shoub
Website: https://www.fello.agency/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Fello is the go-to marketing agency for tech companies, helping them land big deals through sharp strategy, branding, and content.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
When we decided to dominate tech, everything changed. We landed clients across fintech, hardware, quantum—you name it. We know the players, the partners, and how to take a B2B tech company from A to B faster than anyone else.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
We would’ve taken equity in the right companies. We helped some serious winners grow—looking back, we should’ve bet on ourselves and gone beyond just being a service partner.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
Canadians are some of the most talented and resourceful people in the world—we invented the pacemaker, IMAX, and even the Canadarm used in NASA missions. But our startup ecosystem is still terrified of risk. That needs to change. We also need to become obsessed with commercialization. If we don’t take our innovations to market, we’ll keep building potential instead of global winners

What’s next with your company?
Fello is staying creative, closing big wins for our clients, and forming bold new partnerships. We’re scaling intentionally—and loving every minute of it.

57. wrksourcing

Founders: Tyler Cameron
Website: https://wrksourcing.com

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
wrksourcing helps entrepreneurial-led companies scale smarter by building systems, streamlining workflows, and providing execution support.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
We stopped calling ourselves a “VA company” and repositioned as a workflow-first outsourcing partner — instantly shifting into higher-value, long-term relationships.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
I’d start with the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) from day one. Running on EOS gave us the clarity and traction we always needed.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
More focus on operations, systems, and execution — not just funding and ideas. Startups don’t fail from lack of vision; they fail from lack of structure.

What’s next with your company?
We’re scaling with intention — partnering only with clients aligned to our values. At the same time, we’re launching our Entrepreneurial Hub and developing our own AI-driven workflow tools to help founders scale without chaos.

56. Consuy

Founders: Sathvik Lingala
Website: https://www.consuy.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Consuy is an AI-powered enterprise platform that designs and automates tech solutions, transforming how organizations operate.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? Consuy made a pivotal shift by adopting an agentic AI architecture—an ecosystem of 100s of AI agents that function like a team of expert consultants. This bold move enabled the platform to deliver human-like automation for complex enterprise challenges, positioning Consuy as a transformative force in enterprise technology.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? While Consuy is still pre-market, building its foundation for scale, one strategic shift would be placing deeper focus on real-world enterprise feedback loops earlier in development. Engaging with potential users during the architectural phase could have sharpened product direction and accelerated alignment with industry needs.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? Beyond funding, Canada’s startup scene often underplays ambition. There’s a cultural tendency to build sustainably rather than boldly. Consuy believes the ecosystem needs to celebrate moonshot thinking more openly, where startups are not just solving local problems but aiming to define global categories. Vision, not just validation, should be the currency.

What’s next with your company? Consuy is entering a pivotal phase, preparing for pilot partnerships with forward-looking enterprises and expanding its technical team to accelerate product development. The company is also gearing up for its first fundraising round, focused on building the infrastructure needed to scale agentic AI across enterprise environments.

55. CasaYa

Founders: Andres Parra Arze
Website: https://www.rentcasaya.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
AI real estate agent- Automating the rental process of residential properties

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? We turned down incubators and investors early on because they weren’t the right fit. That choice limited our resources, pushing us to work efficiently, learn our clients’ problems quickly, and solve them fast.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? Nothing, every experience was a valuable learning opportunity that brought us to where we are now.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? Canada must place bold, rapid bets on young entrepreneurs, the current slow pace is holding us back.

What’s next with your company? Looking into raising USD $1M

54. Ntangible

Founders: Dan Connerty
Website: https://www.ntangible.co/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
NTangible quantifies mental performance under pressure, helping athletes and teams predict who will thrive when it matters most.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? We made the bold decision to prioritize predictive mental performance over personality profiling; shifting from traditional sports psych to pressure-tested outcomes. This led us to build the first AI-driven assessment that identifies clutch performers and future leaders, transforming how athletes are scouted and developed.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? Our initial data collections process took more time than expected in the early years, when we should have dove in head first further to fast-track that gathering. Something you learn along the way as a founder, but that sticks out the most. Having said that – the AI capabilities in 2022 were no where near what they are today in 2025, so there is some positive happenstance for the longer development timeframe.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
We’d push for more conviction-driven capital and adoption within sectors like sports, where Canadian organizations are almost always last to adopt new tech. Unlike the U.S. and Europe, where early innovation is embraced, Canadian startups often need to prove themselves abroad before being taken seriously at home – especially in sports, where the ecosystem is risk-averse and slow-moving. That mindset needs to change, and I’d selfishly love for our company to help Canadian sports brands win more games before US & European clubs.

What’s next with your company? 
We’re launching new partnerships with pro teams, youth organizations, and recruiting platforms in our newer sports (volleyball, basketball, football), while scaling our AI to power real-time mental scouting reports around team chemistry and potential player fit (which is fascinating to be honest). We’re also looking to close out our SAFE seed round to grow our marketing and sales teams, and have had lots of strong interest post Web Summit from VC’s, Angels, and Accelerators.

53. Engyne

Founders: Sukhpal Saini
Website: https://engyne.ai/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Engyne is a personal content marketer that helps B2B founders build a strong personal brand on LinkedIn

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? I pivoted away from the first iteration of the product that are on track on make $10K MRR. It was a B2B SaaS blog platform powered by AI. After a year of building and selling it, I realized that the market I wanted to sell to didn’t have a strong willingness to pay and the ROI was hard to prove. Last last year, I decided to refund everyone, shut down the product and start again with helping founders build a personal brand.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? I would start with building a strong distribution channel first – a Youtube channel, Tiktok following or get really good at cold emailing. Once I had that down, then I would build a product around the need of my audience.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? Access to good practical startup education. There’s a lot of programs in Canada that do this but they tend to focus on the classroom, 101 level education on how to build a great company. Instead of spending time on the basics that anyone can find on Youtube, playbooks on distribution, sales, marketing, product design are needed.

What’s next with your company? 
Getting to $5K MRR

52. Brikli

Founders: Jonathan Ouaknine
Website: https://www.brikli.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters. Brikli: AI OS for Property Management. Leasing, Rent, Maintenance, Accounting & Vendor marketplace. One roof. Zero friction.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? We didn’t just build another property management software.We built a system. Three designated portals; Landlord, Tenant, Vendor.Connected on one platform, one data model, one workflow. Landlords manage leasing, rent, maintenance, accounting, and post jobs to a native marketplace. Verified vendors bid and get approved in a click. Tenants pay rent, track payment history, and submit maintenance requests that flow directly to the right place. Fewer tools. Fewer logins. Faster decisions. It just works.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? Brikli today is the result of relentless refinement.
If we had to start over, we’d take the most direct path to what we’ve built.Uniting Landlords, Tenants, and Vendors under one roof from day one. I’d make culture the first building block, because the right people create the right product.
We’ve always had the same vision; now we know exactly how to get there faster.
Same vision. Same standards. A faster road to perfection.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? A national Proptech data standard (open APIs for leases, payments, screening) and faster SR&ED/grant disbursement so enterprise pilots move 5× faster.

What’s next with your company? Brikli is on track to become the single platform the rental world runs on.
We’re deepening the connection between landlords, tenants, and vendors, removing the last bits of friction in the rental lifecycle.
The next chapter brings bold partnerships, the right capital, and meaningful features, including credit building for newcomers and students and expansion across Canada and the US, all designed to quietly make legacy systems a thing of the past.
We’re not just building software. We’re building it the way it should have been from the start. Simpli , Brikli.

51. The Good Growth Company

Founders: Daniel Francavilla
Website: https://thegoodgrowth.company

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
We up-skill social purpose organizations and their teams through targeted training and consulting that amplifies their impact.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? Early on we planned to grow a paid membership community, but we realized what our sector really needed was on-demand, high-quality training. This year we shelved the membership, continued building a library that we could license to organizations (and provide this model), and added consulting services that apply the expertise in real time. Doubling down on partnerships — from Founder Institute to universities, government programs, and incubators — enabled us reach new and niche audiences quickly.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? In terms of our offering, we potentially would have treated the training library as our MVP from day one, capturing every workshop and turning it into reusable assets, rather than building a membership. In terms of services, we would have likely bid on training and consulting contracts earlier, instead of focusing on building inbound interest through content.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? Canada has world-class talent, but collaboration still happens in silos. I’d like to see stronger cross-sector bridges — startups, nonprofits, academia, and government co-creating solutions that embed social good as a core metric alongside revenue and valuation.

What’s next with your company? Hosting a flagship event in 2026, which will be an in-person training summit in Toronto that brings our online community together and connects practitioners with subject-matter experts. We are also looking at scaling our paid in-person training like our “AI for Impact” sessions with sector partners after this summer’s pilot. The Good Growth Company will continue adapting to the evolving needs of social purpose organizations, including additional consulting services. Together, these moves keep us impact-focused while growing our reach.

50. Polar Labs 

Founders: Ryan Ovas 
Website: https://polarlabs.ca

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Polar Labs is a boutique engineering firm specializing in custom data & AI solutions to transform your business operations and insights.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
Our boldest decision was to pivot from traditional data engineering, which often focuses on areas like Business Intelligence, to fully embrace a DataOps and DevOps-centric model. The catalyst was the release of Snowflake’s Terraform provider. We realized we could capitalize on our deep software engineering expertise in a way most data firms couldn’t.

By combining this new DevOps focus with our established ability to build bespoke applications, we have been able to approach data engineering and AI development with a completely different, software-first perspective that sets us apart from traditional approaches.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
If I had to start over, I’d ignore the advice we got about picking a really specific niche and all the traditional sales tactics recommended by product salespeople. We realized quickly that very few of those people have started their own services business, and that’s just not how it works. In reality, a service business is built entirely on trust. It isn’t about “value adds” or negotiation; it’s about how quickly you can make someone feel confident that not only can you do the work, but that you won’t let them down or surprise them with sales tactics.

We saw this play out perfectly on an early contract. We augmented another services company with our UX skills, and because we worked well together, we built a real relationship. That trust led to them coming back to us for our biggest data contract yet when they needed Snowflake expertise. If we had followed the traditional advice, we never would have been a part of that project. So if I were starting over, I would spend all my time building community and trust within my network, knowing that it’s those relationships that pay off over time.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
If I could change one thing, it would be to tackle our country’s deep-seated risk aversion by building a real, supportive ecosystem for founders. It is incredibly difficult to start a business here, not for a lack of talent or ideas, but because there’s almost no support network or safety net unless you’re born into money. This forces founders down the same unsustainable path: work in isolation and relative poverty until you must raise money. You try your hardest to raise in Canada, fail, and then go to the States where you find support almost immediately. The catch is they force you to move, and we lose yet another generation of talent and ambition to a brain drain that we never seem to solve.

The government says “small business is the backbone of the economy,” but where are they? When people point to programs like SR&ED or IRAP, they’re missing the point. Those programs are so complicated and gated that entire industries have formed just to navigate them, forcing you to give up a cut of the money you desperately need. We don’t just need cash; we need practical support like salary matching programs, grants, and tax credits that are actually accessible. There is no reason it should be this hard, and the current system feels designed to fail its most ambitious people.

On top of the financial struggles, our startup community is sparse, fragmented, and often transactional. When I was part of the Kitchener-Waterloo scene in 2014, I was immediately inducted into a network of genuine friends who knew that a rising tide raises all ships. That’s why I’m trying to build initiatives like Supercollider—to create social settings where the goal is to make actual friends, not just LinkedIn connections. Ultimately, this is a systems design problem that also plagues our arts and science sectors. We must invest in genuine community and safety nets, because the current system, by its very design, leads to two outcomes: struggle or the States.

What’s next with your company?
Our focus is on steady, sustainable growth across the board—continuously expanding our network of partners, growing our team, building out our portfolio, and deepening our skills. Polar Labs will never raise money from a VC. This independence will allow us to focus entirely on our long-term vision: to be known as a company that produces the highest quality work, attracts the highest quality talent, and above all, takes exceptional care of its people.

49. Quantigo AI

Founders: Nasib Ahmed
Website: https://quantigo.ai/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Quantigo AI empowers businesses by transforming human insights into machine intelligence through cutting-edge AI data solutions.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
One of the boldest decisions we made was to expand beyond computer vision annotation and evolve into a full-spectrum AI data solutions provider. Instead of limiting ourselves to data labeling, which is where we initially built our reputation, we committed to supporting clients across the entire AI data lifecycle. This included investing in upstream capabilities like data collection through our own contributor platform and downstream services such as LLM training and fine-tuning.

This strategic shift allowed us to offer more value, move upmarket, and position ourselves as a long-term partner for clients tackling complex AI challenges. It fundamentally changed our trajectory, from being a service vendor to becoming a trusted, integrated solutions provider, helping businesses unlock the full potential of AI.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
If we had to start over today, we would invest earlier in our brand positioning and quality reputation. While we built strong operational capabilities and client relationships, we underestimated how much brand perception and third-party validation influence scaling, especially in a highly competitive market with low entry barriers.

We would also have accelerated our investment in compliance and technology from the start, aiming to achieve ISO and GDPR certifications earlier. These elements are now central to our growth, but having them in place sooner would have allowed us to win more enterprise clients earlier and position ourselves as a higher-trust partner from day one.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
If we could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, it would be to enhance access to risk-tolerant, early-stage venture capital for deep tech startups like ourselves. While Canada boasts strong talent and government support, many investors remain cautious, favoring less capital-intensive sectors over high-risk, high-reward fields like AI data annotation. Nasib Ahmed might advocate for more specialized VC funds focused on deep tech, coupled with mentorship to help founders like himself scale globally faster. This shift would have empowered Quantigo to accelerate its expansion into 18 countries and compete more aggressively with international rivals, fostering a bolder, more innovative ecosystem

What’s next with your company?
We plan to significantly grow our team to enhance both our capacity and domain expertise. This expansion will support the rollout of two major initiatives: worQcircle, our internal contributor platform designed to scale high-quality human-in-the-loop workflows, and the AI Data Marketplace, a discovery hub for open and proprietary datasets that supports faster, more efficient model development.

Our priority is to deepen strategic partnerships that enable us to deliver truly end-to-end data solutions, from collection and labeling to anonymization and LLM fine-tuning. At the same time, we’re investing in more advanced tools and internal platforms to ensure we stay adaptable, efficient, and ahead of industry needs. Through this integrated approach, we aim to empower our clients to thrive and scale confidently in the fast-moving world of AI.

48. SimpliCity

Founders: Briana Sim, Ian Sim
Website: https://www.simplicitycms.ca/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
SimpliCity is the only composable content management and digital services platform purpose-built for Canadian municipalities.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
We actually made two bold bets: building a composable CMS from scratch specifically for Canadian municipalities instead of adapting existing solutions, and staying 100% Canadian-owned and operated when competitors were offshoring.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
We would have focused exclusively on SimpliCity much earlier. We spent years building aspects of it ‘off the side of our desks’ in our consulting and development services company’s lab (radical.io) when we should have been all-in, giving us more time to build market relationships and compete effectively.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
More non-dilutive funding opportunities through grants and favourable credit terms, plus better government pilot projects and procurement processes. Many Canadian startups can solve real public sector problems but get hindered by risk-averse government procurement processes that don’t give them pathways to prove their value.

What’s next with your company?
We’re building toward our bigger vision: making SimpliCity the platform that municipalities use for all their public-facing digital services. Our current focus is expanding our customer base while developing housing permit integrations, citizen self-service capabilities, and ongoing platform enhancements that make daily tasks easier for municipal staff.

47. Katalyze

Founders: Reza Farahani
Website: https://katalyzeai.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Katalyze AI helps pharma get medicines to patients faster using agentic AI to cut deviations, streamline production, and ensure quality.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
We bet early on agentic AI for regulated pharma manufacturing before “AI copilots” were mainstream. Instead of chasing generic LLM hype, we built a reasoning engine that works with GMP data, regulatory constraints, and the messy reality of production. That conviction helped us win trust from global leaders like Sanofi and BMS.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
I’d move faster with conviction. Early on, we underestimated how urgently pharma needs solutions. If I started today, I’d double down on speed, getting from idea to impact in months, not years.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
Canada produces world-class technical talent but often loses them to U.S. ecosystems that move faster on risk capital and enterprise adoption. I’d change that by building stronger commercialization pathways so deep-tech companies don’t just invent breakthroughs here, but also scale them here.

What’s next with your company?
We’re building the first true “Agentic AI Copilot” for biomanufacturing, one that doesn’t just analyze data, but reasons, takes action, and drives compliance-safe outcomes. The next chapter is scaling from site pilots to global rollouts with pharma giants—so medicines reach patients faster, more affordably, and more reliably.

46. ConSoul

Founders: Cindy Diogo
Website: https://www.consoulapp.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
ConSoul is a workplace support platform. AI copilots + human help that actually do the tasks, not just point to them. As the aging crisis forces employees out of work — disproportionately women — ConSoul keeps careers and financial freedom on track.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
Our boldest move was to stop playing small. Instead of chasing one-off wellness pilots, we doubled down on insurers to scale impact.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
I’d double down earlier on distribution partnerships. Tech is essential, but partnerships with employers and insurers determine who scales.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
More risk appetite. Too many founders are pushed into “safe” incremental products. Having been on the employer side, I know innovation is what retains talent. Canada needs to say yes more often — especially to solutions tackling systemic crises.

What’s next with your company? We’re already in beta with our new layer of agentive AI and human support that predicts needs and offloads the mental load. Employees — especially women — are overwhelmed not just by tasks but by the invisible labour no one sees. By taking on the administration, ConSoul gives people back the space to protect their mental health and keep their careers intact.

45. Toast

Founders: April Hicke
Website: https://www.trytoast.community/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Helping women in tech get the jobs they want, the pay they deserve, and a community that supports them every step of the way.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
One of the boldest and most intentional decisions we made at Toast was to launch the Champions Program with 100 percent male sponsors. In tech, men still hold the majority of leadership positions and, whether consciously or not, are more likely to sponsor other men. Women are often left with advice but not access. We wanted to break that pattern by designing a program that doesn’t just talk about allyship, but builds it in with purpose and structure. So we created a six-month sponsorship program that pairs mid-to-senior women in tech with male Director-level and executive leaders. These Champions are not mentors in the traditional sense. They are sponsors, responsible for opening doors, making connections, advocating in decision-making spaces, and helping women move into leadership roles.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
If we were starting Toast today, we would lead with more conviction and stop trying to fit ourselves into startup molds that were never built for us in the first place. In the beginning, we spent a lot of time trying to translate our vision into language that made sense to traditional funders and advisors. We trimmed down the bold parts of our model, softened the community-first approach, and tried to make ourselves look more like a typical high-growth tech company. That slowed us down. We knew what women in tech needed. We saw that advice alone wasn’t enough, that community without opportunity wasn’t sustainable, and that mentorship without access to power would never close the gap. But instead of building fully around those truths right away, we spent time proving that our work was “legitimate” in the eyes of people who didn’t always understand it.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
If we could change one thing, it would be the lack of inclusive and risk-tolerant early-stage capital. The Canadian startup ecosystem still favors familiar faces, proven templates, and traditional metrics of success — often at the expense of innovation, diversity, and real-world impact. As a women-led business, we’ve experienced firsthand how difficult it is to access meaningful funding without reshaping your vision to fit what investors are used to seeing. Right now, only about 4 percent of venture capital in Canada goes to women-led businesses, and that number drops even further for racialized and Indigenous founders, who collectively receive less than 1 percent of VC funding. These numbers reflect a system that is still deeply exclusionary, especially toward founders who are building outside the mold. Much of the support available — from accelerators to grants — is tied to outdated expectations like technical IP, early revenue, or access to elite networks. Founders with community-driven models or service-based innovation are often told they don’t scale, even if they’re solving urgent problems. It becomes a constant uphill climb just to be taken seriously. We need a shift in how Canada defines innovation and who it’s willing to back.

What’s next with your company?
Toast is entering a focused growth phase, with our next steps centered on strengthening recruitment, deepening partnerships, improving operations, and unlocking new revenue opportunities. Toast has the energy, traction, and team to grow with intention. What’s next is not just more, its smarter systems, deeper alignment, and a commitment to sustainable impact.

44. Navio

Founders: Brooke Finlay
Website: https://navioimmigration.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Expert Canadian immigration advice without the law firm price tag.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? Rejecting the status quo and re-designing our business model to solve problems people actually care about.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
Fail faster.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
Encourage risk-taking and normalize failing

What’s next with your company?
Scaling impact – stay tuned for our next bold move!

43. Stingrai

Founders: Arafat Afzalzada
Website: https://www.stingrai.io/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Stingrai prevents breaches through real-world penetration testing by vetted white-hat hackers powered by a modern PTaaS platform.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? A bold decision that changed our trajectory was building a custom PTaaS platform and assembling a team of highly skilled, vetted white-hat hackers. This approach allowed us to uncover critical vulnerabilities often missed by others and empower developers to remediate issues faster and more effectively.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? If I had to start over, I would focus earlier on go-to-market strategy and team building. We made our share of mistakes, but those lessons shaped who we are today and helped us build a more resilient and focused company.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? If I could change one thing, it would be improving access to early-stage funding. Many promising Canadian startups struggle to scale due to limited investment opportunities. A stronger funding ecosystem with more risk-tolerant investors and better support for emerging founders could help unlock Canada’s full innovation potential.

What’s next with your company? We are focused on scaling our team and growing our customer base. Our mission is to become a global leader in offensive cybersecurity built in Canada.

42. Cansulta

Founders: Alexandra Kapelos-Peters
Website: https://www.cansulta.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Cansulta connects companies with 200+ vetted experts & proven solutions—delivering world-class consulting that powers smart, sustainable success.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
In 2025, we doubled-down on Gurus (AI chatbots trained by our human team and consultants) and our newest intelligent Business 360 assessments, while still building the core expert marketplace. This meant diverting precious resources to parallel products with no guarantee of uptake… but we believed democratizing expert knowledge at $4 a month was worth the risk!

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
Now in year 5, we’re now an old, sage startup. Three things I’d change: Invite more people in sooner. I waited too long to tap the extraordinary minds already in my network because I feared it looked weak or needy. Mistake! In reality, people love to help and to contribute, and their early support could have accelerated everything from product decisions to client introductions.
Formalize an advisory board from day one. Having respected voices officially on board—championing the vision, spotting blind spots, and opening doors—would have locked in deeper commitment and flagged strategic challenges earlier.
Get a “good enough” testable MVP to market sooner and involve customers earlier. I would spend far more time in the field, testing pricing and UX with clients. Catching “will they buy?” signals at week two, not month twelve, shortens every future milestone. TL/DR: Those lessons now guide every new initiative we launch, and they’re the reason Cansulta is scaling faster—and smarter—today. (And, maybe I’d also buy a crystal ball—would’ve saved me a lot of spreadsheets!)

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
Canada has incredible talent and ideas, but startups need better bridges to scale globally—fewer silos, faster access to capital, and more practical support that goes beyond pitch competitions and networking events. We need to empower underdogs to compete on a world stage. I’d inject a “think-bigger-faster” mindset into the ecosystem. Canadian founders often play polite and incremental while US or European peers swing for global dominance. Some concrete fixes:
Narrative shift. Celebrate audacious wins just as loudly as prudent milestones so ambition feels normal, not risky.
Scale-up funding bridges. More late-seed and Series A money earmarked for international go-to-market, not just domestic pilots.
Export-first playbooks. Accelerators and government programs that teach founders to price, hire, and sell for a worldwide audience from day one. Bold ideas don’t lack talent here—they just need an ecosystem that nudges us to shout a little louder and sprint a lot sooner.

What’s next with your company?
Cansulta is evolving into a 24/7 solution hub for businesses and a growth engine for consultants. We’re scaling our AI-powered Gurus, expanding Business 360 assessments, and building partnerships with accelerators, banks, and SaaS platforms to bring expert advice where entrepreneurs already work. We’re also relaunching Turnaround Tuesdays and other community favorites. Our goal: make expert help as easy and habitual as streaming a song or video.

41. Linkus

Founders: Adam Gellert
Website: https://www.linkusgroup.com

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Linkus Group is a high-touch, well-connected recruitment partner specializing in early-stage hiring for startups and SMBs (1–250+ employees). We help founders and growing teams make exceptional hires across Executive, Operations, Revenue & Marketing, Engineering & Product, Finance, and HR—maximizing internal time and driving long-term growth. Trusted by 500+ companies, our success is measured by one KPI: repeat business.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
We started saying no to clients who compete with our current clients. Doubled down on quality over quantity — focusing on niche, hard-to-fill roles over $100K base for Founders, Executives, and HR leaders at SMBs and Startups. That shift kept us laser-focused and delivering our best work.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
Hire 9s and 10s only — fewer, better people. Today, we’ve got the most solid team in recruiting (in my opinion), which makes us tough to compete with and 10x stronger than we were before.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? Less politeness, more speed. Just say no if you’re not interested — don’t wait and pretend. Too many great ideas die here because founders are scared to move fast and break things.

What’s next with your company? 
Scaling to be the #1 HR & Recruitment Firm for Startups and SMBs across North America

40. ollon.ca

Founders: Chris Ellefson
Website: https://www.ollon.ca

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Ollon is a boutique software development agency helping teams deliver modern, maintainable apps while providing technical leadership.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
A bold decision we made was to build a fully Canada based, client facing development team. Our developers embed directly into client teams, rather than operate from an offshore delivery center. This hands on, high accountability model has positioned us as trusted technical leaders.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
If I were to start over, I would prioritize working on the business rather than in it much earlier. That means delegating sooner, building the right team faster, and creating space to focus on strategy, growth, and long-term value.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
The Canadian startup ecosystem needs a shift away from its overly conservative corporate culture. Risk averse procurement by large enterprises and government agencies prevents local startups from landing the reference customers they need to scale. Combined with cautious Canadian investors, this often pushes Canadian companies to look to the U.S. for both funding and growth opportunities

What’s next with your company?
We’re focused on scaling through strategic partnerships, supported by a dedicated team member leading this effort. This includes targeted marketing initiatives and building a robust partner ecosystem designed to support long term business development. The goal is to create sustainable, scalable growth through strategic collaboration.

39. Athena Chat

Founders: Shao Hang He
Website: https://athenachat.bot/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Consumer friendly AI Assistants that focuses on visual and productivity

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
Focus on building integrations as the main Go-to-Market Strategy.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
Automate even more tasks with AI Agents.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
More funding for consumer technology.

What’s next with your company?
Sales and Marketing: generate the most revenue with the least funding possible.

38. Punchcard

Founders: Sam Jenkins, Estyn Edwards
Website: https://punchcard.io/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Punchcard Systems is Canada’s fastest growing software and technology partner serving over 150 trusted clients across Canada and the United States. As an industry-leading technology consultancy firm, we specialize in building innovative digital experiences including custom software, automation, web and mobile apps, and optimization of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem of applications for scale-ups and midsized enterprise with a focus on impacting their metrics that matter.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
Our first bold decision came in 2020, when we chose to move to a fully remote work model and ultimately stay remote. This decision allowed us to build a team across Canada, uniting incredible talent in every discipline. The result: we deliver better, faster, and stronger. The next bold leap was to move beyond the traditional consulting model and reinvent how digital transformation services are delivered. We built Punchcard around small, senior-led teams enabled by AI. This model values expertise, speed, and outcomes over hours billed. Both decisions reflect one of our core values: “show up, take risks, and ship it.” They set us on the path to becoming a national partner in digital transformation, reshaping our growth, attracting the right clients, and positioning us as builders of what’s next.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
We would build subscription and productized services from day one. Too often, consulting work is trapped in project-based models that make it harder for clients to see value quickly. By focusing earlier on outcome-driven, repeatable services, we could have accelerated both client impact and company growth. That shift is underway now, and it is already creating stronger, longer-term relationships with our clients.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
Canada needs to bet bigger on ambition. Too often, founders and investors play it safe, aiming for incremental progress instead of global scale. We need an ecosystem that rewards speed, experimentation, and bold bets. The talent and ideas are here. What is missing is a culture that pushes us to move faster and think bigger.

What’s next with your company?
In 2025, we are making big bets on building our sales and marketing engine, while continuing to invest in core products and platforms like Punchcard CORE, our software development growth engine that helps us build faster than ever before. As part of our 2030 vision, we are also launching new product companies, starting with our first product studio venture, Standard Field Systems. We are committed to creating valuable IP right here in Canada, and positioning Punchcard as a national leader in digital transformation.

37. PulseFX

Founders: Marc Racette, Katherine Li, and Shane Slater
Website: https://www.pulsefx.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
PulseFX helps individuals and businesses save money on foreign exchange by offering smarter, faster, and more transparent FX solutions.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
One of the boldest decisions we made was to reposition PulseFX not just as an FX provider, but as a comprehensive partner for businesses managing cross-border finance.

At the time, we could have stayed focused narrowly on transactional FX, but instead we expanded into lending, trade finance, and industry-specific solutions. It was a risk that required rethinking our strategy and educating the market, but it transformed us from a transactional service into a long-term partner for clients. We also made a bold move to lean heavily on partnerships with accountants, consultants, and VCs. Diverting resources from direct sales was risky, but it gave us credibility and access to clients we couldn’t have reached as quickly on our own.

If I had to start over today, what would I do differently?
We’d launch our content and education efforts from day one. We waited too long to start building a knowledge base, and in hindsight, it’s one of the most powerful ways to differentiate yourself. FX markets move quickly, and our goal is to bring value by helping clients understand the risks and how markets can shift. Clients want more than a service, they want a trusted advisor. Educational content does exactly that, and if we’d done it earlier, it would have accelerated both trust and growth much faster.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
It would be the speed at which our banking sector operates, especially when it comes to innovation and infrastructure. Compared to other regions, Canada’s financial institutions tend to be cautious and slow-moving, creating real friction for startups building in fintech, cross-border trade, and global payments. We see this gap every day. And with that perspective, we have the opportunity not just to highlight the challenge, but to help find solutions Canadian companies need to stay competitive on the global stage.

What’s next with your company?
We’re building on the momentum from our brand refresh and the expansion beyond FX. What started as a focused effort to bring transparency and service back to foreign exchange is now evolving into a broader mission: to become the go-to financial partner for businesses operating across borders. Next up: Expanding our product offering beyond payments and FX, with a focus on cross-border lending, credit facilities, insurance, and other tools that help businesses manage risk and growth in international markets.

36. Biiibo 

Founders: Roger Sabat, Alex Sabat, Amanda Sabat
Website: https://www.biiibo.com

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Biiibo is an on-demand marketplace and platform for construction supplies that streamlines the purchase and delivery of materials in the construction industry. Through the Biiibo app, homeowners and professional contractors can better manage their renovation projects, find the supplies they need, and order their materials ahead of time or on-demand within the same day. Biiibo’s subscription service, Biiibo Pro, gives customers access to free deliveries, material discounts, and other PRO exclusive benefits. In addition to the material marketplace, Biiibo offers builders and contractors tools to better manage their projects and their teams, enabling builders to build more efficiently.

What’s next with your company? we’re growing our sales and engineering teams, building generative AI tools to supercharge the customer experience, and pushing innovation harder. Our goal? Smarter, faster solutions that keep builders and contractors ahead of the game.

35. BrightIron

Leaders: Mandeep Saini, Rebecca Graham
Website: https://brightiron.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters. Multi-service firm providing fractional strategic and professional expertise to the tech community.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? Expanding from just Finance services, to now include HR and go-to-market services for more holistic support for our clients and their journeys.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? Expanded our fractional services sooner. We were a finance services company for nearly 10 years before we expanded into HR and Go-To-Market. Every step has been continuous learning and meeting incredible founders. That said, we are thrilled to have helped many successful NA startups from a finance perspective and at a variety of stages of growth.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? More early-stage funding and smaller scale quality events.

What’s next with your company? Growth, partnerships and more services!

34. Motiv

Leaders: Clark Lai, Mariya Besedina
Website: https://motiv.digital

Describe what your company does in 140 characters. Motiv is a venture builder and innovation firm that fuses strategy and technology to accelerate innovation, turning ideas into high growth ventures.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? We made the bold decision to framework the venture building process itself, transforming what is often seen as an ad-hoc, high-risk endeavour into a disciplined, technology-enabled system. By augmenting proven methodologies with enabling technologies and AI, we introduced unprecedented speed, structure, and precision into how ventures are launched and scaled. This shift established Motiv as a trusted partner in corporate venture building and empowered us to build our own portfolio of ventures with the same speed, structure, and reduced risk.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? When we began, corporate venture building was still an emerging idea–not yet widely practiced. Much of our early work involved proving that innovation could be approached with the same discipline as product development: structured frameworks, measurable outcomes, and enabling technologies to reduce risk. Over time, as we refined our methods and built a track record, we’ve seen the broader ecosystem grow more receptive to this approach.

If we were starting today, we would be doing so in an environment that is more open to partnership, supported by more advanced tools such as generative AI, and backed by greater recognition of the need for systematic innovation. The vision itself hasn’t changed but the ecosystem has evolved in ways that allow us to apply that vision with even greater speed, clarity, and impact.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? Canada has no shortage of talent, ideas, or entrepreneurial spirit. Where we see the greatest opportunity for change is in strengthening the pathways that connect Canadian ventures to global markets. Too often, promising startups and corporate-led innovations succeed domestically but struggle to scale internationally. Greater emphasis on commercialization, cross-border partnerships, and investment readiness would give Canadian ventures the ability to grow beyond local success stories.

As a venture builder, we see this challenge firsthand. The ventures that achieve the greatest impact are those that combine Canadian strengths, like technical talent and institutional support, with access to global networks of customers, capital, and expertise. Building stronger bridges to those opportunities would allow Canadian ventures to lead on the world stage.

What’s next with your company?  What’s next for Motiv is the continued growth of our role as a leader in innovation and venture building. The demand we see today is not only for ideas but for the ability to translate strategy into market-ready ventures with speed, structure, and reduced risk. Organizations across enterprise, growth-stage startups, and public institutions are looking for disciplined partners who can de-risk innovation while positioning new ventures for growth. This is where our frameworks, enabling technologies, and experience converge.

For Motiv, the path forward involves both deepening partnerships and scaling ventures. We are expanding the way we work with corporate partners who want to innovate beyond their core business, while at the same time advancing our own portfolio of ventures through commercialization and traction. Growth for us also means looking outward, strengthening global networks of talent, capital, and partnerships to connect our ventures to the opportunities they need to succeed.

Internally, we are building the teams and capabilities required to sustain ventures beyond launch, ensuring that success is measured not only by speed to market but also by long-term value creation. We welcome those who want to shape the future of venture building with us.

33. eeva

Founders: Adrienne Jung,  Jarrod Nicho
Website: https://eeva.ai

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
eeva is your life’s command center: an app that organizes what matters at home and automates the busywork with AI.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? One bold decision was to stop building feature by feature and instead re-architect eeva into a true “life OS.” Instead of chasing incremental productivity tools, we committed to unifying all aspects of home and life management under one system, powered by AI and automation. This shifted us from being seen as “another app” to positioning eeva as a category-defining platform, which unlocked investor interest, major partnership opportunities, and a clearer path to scale.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? If I had to start over, I’d bring in top tech talent much earlier. In the beginning, we focused on vision and design, but underestimated how critical it was to have senior engineers and a strong technical leader from day one. Having that foundation sooner would have accelerated development, avoided some costly rebuilds, and positioned us to launch faster. The upside is that it taught us the value of building with the right people at the right time, something we don’t compromise on anymore.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? If I could change one thing, it would be access to senior talent. Canada has incredible founders and early-stage energy, but too often top tech and product leaders get pulled to the U.S. Scaling startups here would be faster if we had stronger incentives to keep that talent in Canada.

What’s next with your company? Next up for eeva: we’re hard-launching eeva 2.0 this fall, securing B2B2C partnerships with employers and real estate developers, and preparing for our next funding round by year’s end. We’re also growing our team with senior product and partnerships talent to support scale.

32. TravelAI

Founders: John Lyotier and Chris Jensen
Website: https://www.travelai.com

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
AI Personalization and Vertical Solutions for the Travel Industry

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
We took out second mortgage on our house to buy assets of bankrupt predecessor company as we knew that buried within the assets was a server full of data that unlocked our growth.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
Get to profitability as fast as possible and never stop being on the right side of the ledger.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
Celebrate entrepreneurship rather than tearing down successful companies. Encourage youth that running your own business is a noble calling as its ripple effects impact all facets of society.

What’s next with your company?
Launching new product lines and growth through acquisition.

31. Leni 

Founders: Arunabh Dastidar, Gaurav Madani, Zain Nathoo
Website: https://leni.co/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters. Leni provides AI analysts for Multifamily and commercial real estate. It’s everyone’s favourite teammate.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? We took on the ambitious task of building the first universal data model for the industry. This required years of research and cultivating business relationships to connect the closed systems of real estate and private equity while maintaining the highest level of data security. This breakthrough opened up a new world of AI analysts that we can now bring to the industry, overcoming the big data challenge that makes AI possible for real estate.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? If I had to start over, I’d be even more selective with early hiring—curiosity and grit matter more than fancy resumes. Those shifts would’ve sped us up.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? I would increase access to early-stage capital while reducing bureaucratic barriers that slow innovation in the Canadian startup ecosystem.

What’s next with your company? We’re working to enable the first 10,000 real estate owners and operators to grow with the help of AI analysts.

30. Hera Fertility

Founders: Thiv Paramsothy, April Rutter
Website: https://herafertility.co/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
AI-powered sperm health platform to accurately predict and improve male fertility and total men’s health with personalized health recommendations.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? We made the bold decision to focus on male fertility as the primary entry point, even though the broader market often centers women. It was a contrarian bet—but it allowed us to stand out, address an overlooked but critical part of the fertility equation, and build credibility with both clinicians and patients. That focus led to deeper clinical partnerships, a more compelling product, and a clear wedge into total men’s health—reframing the conversation from fertility as a “woman’s issue” to a shared responsibility.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? Not listen to everyone’s advice and just go directly to the user and launch MVP and see if you get adoption and true PMF. If not, pivot fast.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
I’d make it easier for ambitious Canadian startups to access early, risk-tolerant capital. Too often, Canadian investors wait for U.S. validation before leaning in—especially in regulated or science-based industries like digital health. We need more conviction at the earliest stages, more operators-turned-investors who understand the grind, and more belief that globally significant companies can be built right here, not just scaled here after the fact.

What’s next with your company? 
Closing this round – $1.5M USD (50% committed) and hiring machine learning engineers.

29. Fortay

Founders: Marlina Kinnersley
Website: https://www.fortay.co/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Fortay.ai is an innovative inclusion and leader coaching-centric Employee Experience platform that helps forward-thinking organizations build diverse, healthy, high-performance cultures for organizational success. With a revolutionary, holistic, human-centered approach, Fortay empowers companies to drive better business, talent, and growth outcomes through modern, survey-based, AI-powered technology.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
This requires a multi-faceted approach, starting with increased access to early stage capital. Enhancing government grants and tax incentives for startups, alongside encouraging private investment via venture capital and angel networks, would significantly boost early-stage funding. Additionally, promoting diversity and inclusion within the ecosystem will attract a wider range of talent and ideas, fostering innovation. Implementing policies that support work-life balance and affordable childcare can also make entrepreneurship more accessible to all Canadians. Doing so would create a more dynamic and inclusive startup environment that propels Canada to the forefront of global innovation. Our co-founder, Bohdan Zabawskyj, exemplifies this commitment through his TrueNorthCTO community, a pan-Canadian not-for-profit community of over 2,400 technology leaders that share insights, collaborate and support each other for greater growth.

What’s your next?
Continue to scaling our platform.

28. Binoloop

Founders: Purvaja Soochit, Kanishk Patel
Website: https://www.binoloop.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters. We build regulatory AI that helps governments cut permit delays, automate compliance, and deliver faster services to millions.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? We bet on creating our own regulatory LLM—RegLLM—when everyone else was chasing generic chatbots. That choice unlocked real contracts with cities and federal agencies because we built AI that actually understands policy, not just predicts words. It put us years ahead in a space where trust, accuracy, and auditability matter more than hype.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? We’d also spend more time in San Francisco earlier—testing, failing, and iterating faster. Being in the right ecosystem accelerates everything: mindset, connections, velocity. We’d ship faster and talk to users even more obsessively from day one.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? The funding model. Right now, it’s risk-averse and overly bureaucratic—whether you’re raising from VCs or applying for grants. That’s the opposite of what startups need.

We’d shift toward a U.S.-style approach: more founder-first capital, faster decisions, and real support for startups solving complex public problems—like housing, infrastructure, or compliance. AI that clears permit backlogs or accelerates benefits access isn’t “boring”—it’s transformative. But in Canada, that kind of work is still underfunded and undervalued.

What’s next with your company? We just opened our seed round and are gearing up to launch our permit product to market in the coming months. Atlas is already being beta tested in new U.S. cities, and we’re expanding RegLLM to power permit review in Canada as well. We’re hiring ML engineers, policy experts, and GTM leads to scale regulatory AI across 25+ governments by the end of 2026.

27. Friendlier

Founders: Kayli Smith, Jacqueline Hutchings
Website: https://www.friendlier.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters. Friendlier helps businesses replace single-use packaging with reusables through our fully integrated reverse supply chain solutions.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
We integrated washing infrastructure with software to operate the full reuse system ourselves – unlocking massive value for customers and enabling rapid scale.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
We’d secure larger early funding to scale infrastructure faster, expanding to more regions sooner rather than building incrementally.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? Stronger support for operationally complex, hardware-enabled startups – not just software – so innovators tackling real-world infrastructure challenges can scale.

What’s next with your company?
Expanding custom reuse solutions for Canada’s largest brands while automating micro-sanitation facilities to boost efficiency, reduce costs, and grow capacity.

26. Maple

Founders: Ruchi Varshney, Aswinkumar Rajendiran, Aravindkumar Rajendiran
Website: https://maplebilling.com

Describe what your company does in 140 characters. Maple is an end-to-end revenue management platform that streamlines the needs for SaaS billing and revenue reporting regardless of your sales motion or pricing model.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? Our whole team is squarely based in Canada even though we are remote. This helps us find the best talent all while being in a friendly time zones for maximal collaboration.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? None at the moment!

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? We need to buy more of each other’s offerings. We build top notch solutions within Canada and sell to other countries, but we need to be our own customers first.

What’s next with your company? Building more partnerships and focusing on our GTM engine.

25. Maman Biomedical

Founders: Dr. Latchmi Raghunanan
Website: https://mamanbiomedical.ca/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Developing needle-free technologies for fertility drug administration – delivering the same drugs with fewer risks and none of the needle trauma. #NoMoreNeedles.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
While most biotech startups operate in stealth, we’ve built in public from Day 1 – a deliberate strategy born from necessity.

As a first-time, underrepresented founding team without deep-pocketed networks or institutional backing, we couldn’t afford to wait for validation behind closed doors. Building in public helped us earn trust, attract allies, and prove traction before revenue. By sharing our progress, failures, and lessons in real time, we’ve turned transparency into credibility and momentum.

Community has become our not-so-secret weapon: a source of insight, support, and strength that’s helped us move faster, stay grounded, and open doors we couldn’t have reached alone.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
I’d slow down. In the rush to prove ourselves and move fast, I took on too much for too long – and made some early hiring decisions that added more weight instead of lightening the load. It was a valuable learning experience, but one that accelerated my road to burnout. I’d give myself more permission to pace the build and protect my energy along the way.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
Canada’s startup ecosystem is increasingly risk-averse. The definition of “early stage” has shifted; now even non-dilutive funding demands traction, guarantees, and a de-risked path to success. But truly early-stage, deep tech ventures don’t come with guarantees. They require vision, time, and capital.

We need systems that reward investors willing to take those early bets – especially those deploying patient capital into pre-revenue startups solving hard problems. Whether through tax incentives, matching programs, or risk-sharing mechanisms, it’s time we start rewarding conviction, not just consensus.

What’s next with your company? 
We’re currently raising a $500K Pre-Seed Tranche 1 to bring our first product – a needle-free device that replaces daily hormone injections during fertility treatment – to market within 24 months. We’re securing clinical and manufacturing partnerships, preparing for regulatory submissions, and initiating our first clinical usability study. We’re also expanding R&D capacity with targeted hires to accelerate development of our next-generation microneedle patch for sustained hormone delivery.

24. Kompass

Founders: Cory Friedman
Website: https://www.kompaspm.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Finally, a property management and accounting software designed to be clear and easy to use. Kompas is an all in one platform designed by property managers for property managers. Our platform’s mission is to simplify complex accounting workflows for real estate management companies while also providing a platform that supports the entire organization’s operation across leasing, maintenance, payments and communications.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
Our founder was running a property management business and refused to accept the status quo of the incumbent property management softwares on the market. He took his accounting and property management expertise and dove head first into no code engineering. 10 months later, the MVP for Kompas was born and launched as an internal tool. This internal tool helped grow the portfolio from 700 units to over 4,000 units – and thus the Kompas value proposition was born.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
If I  had to start over today, I would overprovision for development and engineering timelines and budgets. The famous saying is you don’t know what you don’t know. And boy did we learn what we didn’t know during the development of Kompas. Many aspects of our development were underestimated in terms of the complexity in the backend and interconnectedness of the entire database. Starting over today, I would have a much better understanding of realistic expectations for delivering enterprise software solutions.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
Tough to say. I am relatively new to the startup ecosystem so have not fully felt the pain and suffering of some of the shortfalls in Canada. Size of market compared to US is often discussed – however – I find the size of Canada’s market as a massive opportunity to gain momentum and headwind as a young company building software for an underserved market.

What’s next with your company?
Upcoming fundraising round as well as scaling our business across Canada and the US. We are also growing our team on both the engineering and GTM side. We only hire Canadian and we have roots in both Montreal and Toronto on our team.

23. Mycroft

Founders: Mike Kim, Jonathan Mendes, Jan Jedrasik
Website: https://www.mycroft.io/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.  Mycroft is building the AI Security & Compliance Officer that runs your security, compliance, and IT ops so you don’t need a full team.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? Focusing on outcomes for customers.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? In hindsight, starting our partnership strategy and ecosystem earlier would have been valuable, as partners have played a major role in driving our growth.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? There’s too many celebrations on small wins/bets and not enough rewards for crazy-wacky founders.

What’s next with your company?  Mycroft to be embedded and everywhere to really change the global cybersecurity landscape.

22. Boast

Leaders: Anastasia Hambali, Golnaz Raoufi
Website: https://boast.ai/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters. Boast automates R&D tax credit claims, helping companies get more money, with less effort—accurately, quickly, and audit-ready.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? By far the most transformative inflection point in Boasts scaling journey wasn’t technological or product centric, it was our decision to confront customer churn head-on rather than obscuring it behind growth metrics. This moment of strategic clarity arrived after our rapid pandemic-era expansion, when we realized that acquiring new customers, while losing existing ones, wasn’t genuine scale, but rather an unsustainable simulation of growth.

The shift began with an act of organizational courage: acknowledging the reality of our churn problem and recalibrating our plans to reflect achievable targets rather than aspirational projections. This unflinching self-assessment represented a fundamental recommitment to the customer-centered principles that had driven our early success.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
If we had to start over today, there’s one thing we’d do differently: build the education muscle much earlier. When we launched Boast, we were obsessed with solving a deep inefficiency in how R&D tax credits were claimed—hours lost to spreadsheets, time away from engineering, money left on the table. So we built the tech, stacked the team, and chased the problem. But what we underestimated was just how big the awareness gap really was.

We met brilliant founders and finance leads who had no idea they were eligible. Teams spending millions on innovation that went completely unclaimed. Others who avoided the process altogether, convinced it was only for companies with full-time tax departments. These weren’t edge cases. This was the norm.

If we had a reset button, we’d start by building trust and clarity. We’d go deeper in community. We’d invest earlier in education, meet more teams where they are, and give them simple, confident answers to one big question: “Do we qualify?”

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
If we could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, it would be how we treat failure—not just in pitch rooms, but in boardrooms, hiring decisions, and peer networks.

Canada has no shortage of brilliant founders. We’ve seen groundbreaking ideas, powerful engineering, and teams solving real, systemic problems. But too often, the appetite to take bold swings is dulled by a culture that still equates failure with finality. A startup that misses early revenue targets is quietly dropped from conversations. A founder who doesn’t land a seed round after their first go is seen as risky. The system leans toward polish and perfection, not progress.

One team we worked with built an AI product aimed at tackling bias in hiring. Their solution had clear potential, a well-researched foundation, and early partnerships underway. But after a round of enterprise feedback pointed to critical UX gaps, their momentum stalled. They went out to raise capital to make the necessary changes, and instead faced closed doors. Not because the problem wasn’t valid or the vision was unclear, but because the Canadian investment ecosystem tends to value traction over tenacity. That same team later relocated operations to the U.S., rebuilt their product, and found backers who understood the value of iteration. Today, they’re working with Fortune 500 companies on equity strategy.

That story isn’t an outlier. It’s a reflection of a larger pattern: when a single misstep outweighs the long-term vision, the ecosystem loses out on what could be generational companies.

We need to reframe the narrative. Instead of hiding failures, founders should be encouraged to talk about them openly. Investors should ask not just what went wrong, but what was learned. Incubators and accelerators could host sessions dedicated to failed launches and product pivots. We need to normalize the idea that most companies don’t get it right the first time, and it’s the reality of building something meaningful.

Progress doesn’t come from playing it safe. It comes from experimenting, falling short, regrouping, and doing better the next time. The most resilient companies in the world weren’t born from perfect conditions. They were built in environments where trying again was expected.

If Canada wants to lead the next wave of innovation, it’s not only about better funding or more incubators. It’s about shifting our collective mindset. Supporting the rebuild. Making failure part of the process, not the end of it. Because when founders know they have room to stumble, they take bigger steps. And that’s where the real breakthroughs happen.

What’s next with your company?
A lot! It all starts with people, partnerships, and making R&D funding more accessible than ever.

First, we’re putting real energy into customer delivery. We’ve learned that no matter how smart the platform is, it’s the experience that keeps people coming back. So we’re rethinking every touchpoint—from onboarding to audit support—to make it smoother, more personal, and genuinely helpful. That means clearer education for first-time claimants, more hands-on support when it counts, and quicker answers when you’re on a deadline. We’re expanding our customer success and technical teams so companies always feel supported, not just served.

On the product side, we’re growing fast. Our focus is to go beyond SR&ED and U.S. R&D credits and give companies access to the full spectrum of non-dilutive funding programs—CDAE, IDMTC, early-stage innovation grants, and others. Founders and finance leaders shouldn’t need a full-time tax team to tap into the programs meant to help them. Our platform is getting smarter and more intuitive, with deeper integrations into the tools customers already use like Jira, GitHub, QuickBooks, and Rippling. Less manual work, more peace of mind.

We’re hiring too. From product to partnerships to customer success, we’re growing the team with people who care deeply about impact, believe in non-dilutive capital, and want to build something that lasts. Every person we bring in adds to the culture, not just the headcount.

21. Equivesto 

Founders: Ryan Correia & Alexander Morsink
Website: https://equivesto.com

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
A licensed EMD & online portal for private businesses to raise capital and Canadians to invest in vetted startups, small businesses, real estate, and funds.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
Over the last few years, we chose to diversify away from equity crowdfunding exclusively to include raising for private funds, real estate, and SPVs. This was a pivot from our original plans, but the change allowed us to broaden our reach to new markets, service a more sophisticated investor base, and grow our business at an exponential rate. We will continue to support startups and their equity crowdfunding rounds but also double-down on our highest demand areas of traditional issuances.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
Starting over again today, we would probably follow the same journey, as the lessons we learned along the way were invaluable to our growth and understanding of the Canadian capital raising space.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
We would like to encourage more Canadian investors to learn about the possibility of investing into local private businesses and help Canadian culture overall be more supportive of investing into entrepreneurs.

What’s next with your company?
Next for Equivesto is continuing to roll out our Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) offering, which is a highly efficient way for Angel Investors, LPs, VCs, and other investors to syndicate at a reasonable cost. Overall, we are looking to grow our online EMD business in Canada and help more local founder and investors connect.

20. Hux Labs

Founders: Anik Seth, Kiran Kadekoppa
Website: http://www.huex.ai/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Voice is the invisible interface and has seen the most traction as demand for contactless services increased. Brick and Mortar and Retail locations are facing severe labor crises. We are bringing voice automation and providing a digital employee to augment their ground staff.

What’s next with your company?
We want to deploy our solution rapidly and expand across Food / Restaurant chains, followed by expansion into Retail, Healthcare and other industries.

19. SingleKey

Founders: Viler Lika
Website:  https://www.singlekey.com/en-ca/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
SingleKey helps landlords, property managers & realtors intelligently screen tenants, guarantee rent, and reduce risk with modern rental tools.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
Originally, SingleKey focused on helping landlords reduce the risks of renting. This year, we made a bold bet to expand beyond landlords and build tools that support tenants in their rental journey. Today, SingleKey offers a Tenant Portal with solutions that help tenants build and monitor their credit, while also protecting themselves and their belongings from damage and liability with affordable insurance offerings. Since launching in Q2, more than 100,000 tenants have found value in using the tenant portal.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
Hire top talent as early as possible. Like many founders, I was too hands-on and in the weeds in SingleKey’s early days, trying to do everything myself. In hindsight, that slowed us down and often made me the bottleneck. Bringing in the right people sooner would have accelerated growth and freed me to focus on the bigger picture.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
A major challenge in the Canadian startup ecosystem is the funding gap that appears after the seed stage. While early capital from angels, accelerators, and government programs is accessible, raising larger Series A or B rounds ($5–20 million) is far more difficult, pushing many founders to seek U.S. venture capital. This often brings trade-offs like relocation pressure, reduced control, and smaller valuations compared to U.S. peers.

To close this gap, Canada needs more domestic scale-up funds, faster and founder-friendly government support, and greater involvement from corporates as both investors and anchor customers. Without these changes, many promising companies risk selling early or shifting abroad to grow.

What’s next with your company?
SingleKey’s goal is to help 1 million people rent with confidence by 2026 while leading the North American shift toward modern rental processes and setting a new standard for rental safety. We’re on the lookout to scale our team with passionate people who want to build trust between landlords and tenants.

18. FutureVault 

Founders/key people:  G Scott Paterson (Co-founder, Executive Chairman), Daniel Kenny (Chief Executive Officer), Kristian Borghesan (Chief Marketing Officer)
Website: https://www.futurevault.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
FutureVault is the industry leader of Digital Vaults, helping financial institutions, firms, and advisors become the most trusted partner in clients’ lives.

What’s next with your company?
We continue to expand our footprint in Canada and the US, with an emphasis on enterprise institutions and wealth management organizations.

17. Wingbuddy 

Founders: Chris Hakim
Website: https://www.wingbuddy.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Wingbuddy is a leading tour operator offering exclusive travel packages throughout Europe, The Americas, Asia and the Middle East. Maximize your travel experience and remove the hassle of planning.

What’s next with your company?
We’re scaling the platform to more destinations and unique experiences, while enhancing digital tools to make trip planning even easier.

16. CRUXOCM

Founders: Vicki Knott and Roger Shirt
Website: https://www.cruxocm.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters. CruxOCM is an innovator in AI-powered industrial automation software for the energy sector, transforming pipeline operations through adaptive automation technology. Its fully integrated modular solutions improve safety, efficiency, and performance in control rooms, leading to significant OPEX savings and higher profitability. CruxOCM’s solutions have been successfully deployed by oil and gas companies across North America, helping industry leaders optimize their pipeline operations.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? A bold decision was choosing to pivot CruxOCM away from LNG projects during the pandemic and double down on pipeline automation, which ultimately set the company on its growth path.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? If CruxOCM had to start over, they’d likely focus sooner on their core strength, pipeline control room automation instead of first exploring LNG projects.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? If CruxOCM could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, it would be easier access to growth-stage capital so companies don’t feel pressured to move to the U.S. to scale.

What’s next with your company? What’s next for CruxOCM is expanding partnerships with major energy operators, growing the team to meet demand, and continuing to scale their pipeline automation solutions globally.

15. 409.ai

Leaders: Adam Czach
Website: https://www.409.ai/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
We make business valuations faster, more affordable, and more accurate by leveraging AI.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
We recently started to take on valuations for the Entire Portfolios (ASC 820), not just individual companies. This opens us up to a whole new market of PE firms but our technology requirements increased so we’re doublding down on our focus on innovation.

Our technology already has a lot of capabilities that add a ton of value to PE firms, but diving into new markets is always bold at first.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
Diversify our customer acquisition strategy earlier. We were solely focused on one channel for a long time which was successful for us, but adding new streams of leads would have helped us accelerate even faster.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
Shoot for Gold, not silver or bronze. Canada has plenty of mid market and medium sized businesses, but we don’t have a ton of mutli-billion dollar giants. As we see in the US economy right now, although macroeconomic conditions aren’t ideal, the general S&P500 and NASDAQ syndicates are increasing, and that’s primarily due to a few key giants that continue to grow.

I would love to see more Canadian startups have ambitions greater than $100m and start to build innovations that truly disrupt industires. I also think the government could do more to support small startups. Grants often go to the biggest companies who don’t need it, but it would be great to have a grant fund that encourages people to start a business or expand their small business into something bigger.

There’s a great book by Anthony Lacavera – How we can Win, which dives into all this more.

What’s next with your company?
Partnerships! We’re partnering with a lot of adjacent FinTech companies to offer more value to both of our customer bases and make startup finance, accounting, and compliance an easier process.

14. Burai

Leaders: John Laslavic, Mark Bania
Website: https://www.burai.com

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Burai maps how your organization actually works to deploy AI Agents based on how work happens, not hypotheticals.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
Pursuing the largest Enterprise logos immediately. The reception has been incredible and is enabling us to forecast incredible growth.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
Move faster. This isn’t to say we’ve been slow, it’s to say that in this new age of AI it’s not about weeks or days, it’s about hours and minutes. Every opportunity to shave time off a deployment, a GTM decision, etc. matters, period.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
More exposure to the great businesses coming out of Canada. Theres tremendous talent and great ideas – more exposure is necessary to ensure Canadian startups see more Canadian investment and less ownership flowing out of Canada.

What’s next with your company?
Stay tuned ;). Big news is coming, fast!

13. Blanka

Founders: Kaylee Astle, Adam Chuntz, Doug Long
Website: https://blankabrand.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Blanka is a SaaS platform to customize and sell premium beauty products under your own brand – we handle fulfillment for you.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
One of the boldest (and most impactful) pivots we’ve made thus far is un-gating core parts of our app and customer experience in order to deliver more value up front. It’s more natural to want to force a user to signup and pay for your service in order to receive value from you as a business owner. However, when you take a step back and think about how to really create long term loyal users, shifting to a freemium model makes a lot of sense. Instead of hiding our best features behind paywalls, we restructured the Blanka experience to let users explore, customer, and even visualize their branded products before committing to any level of payment. This decision flipped our traditional funnel to focus on building trust and demonstrating value first, and seeking to generate customer revenue second. In doing so, we’ve increased user engagement, improved churn, hit a record level of MRR, and fundamentally reshaped our growth curve.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
If we were starting over today we would tell ourselves to trust our gut from the get go and be confident in our business decisions. It’s easy to second guess yourself and get distracted by industry noise, what competitors are doing, and feel pressure to follow conventional startup patterns. Our biggest learning has been that the clearest signals come from within our own walls and the inputs of our earliest adopters.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
If we could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, it would be to foster a deeper culture, understanding, and appreciation for risk-taking and boldness in company ambition.

Canadian startups benefit from incredible talent, world-class academic training, and supportive government initiatives and funding. However, we often see a tendency toward incremental growth rather than embracing the kind of 10x thinking that leads to category defining and industry disrupting companies. There’s a level of cultural hesitation to think globally and build for the world, not just for Canada.

At Blanka, we’ve learned that competing internationally and being aware of the change makers on the other side of the world pushes all of us in tech, ecommerce, manufacturing, and beyond to shift our mindsets to audacious decisionmaking; the bigger you think the less focused you are on fitting in and the more you’re forced to lead with confidence and intelligent risk-taking. We’d love to see more forums, mentorship, and funding opportunities that encourage Canadian founders to take bigger bets, move faster, and be unapologetically ambitious.

Canada has all the ingredients to foster not just successful startups, but truly disruptive global brands. The more we lean into that possibility and respect the ones at the helm, the stronger the ecosystem will become.

What’s next with your company?
At Blanka, we’re constantly focused on experimenting, learning, iterating, and innovating to bring a better solution to the market for our clients. We’re exploring gaps in the gifting and promotional product ecosystem and how we can provide a more sustainable, premium, solution. Our priority is to help brands share their stories and strengthen their branded gifting strategies by making it easy to personalize meaningful products and seamlessly dropship them to any doorstep. Helping brands create memorable moments and build lasting connections wherever they need to show up.

12. Humi 

Founders: Kevin Kliman and Matt Loszak
Website: https://employmenthero.com/en-ca/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Humi is an all-in-one HR, payroll, and benefits management platform built for Canadian businesses. It centralizes and automates a wide range of HR functions, making it easier for organizations to manage their workforce—from hiring to retirement.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?We’d improve access to funding for startups at every stage. Too many promising Canadian companies struggle to scale because capital and support networks aren’t as accessible here as in other markets.

What’s next?
We’re focused on expanding our platform to deliver even more tools that empower Canadian businesses from advanced HR automation to deeper insights that help leaders build thriving workplaces.

11. Part3

Founders: Jack Sadler, Corey Stanford, Jess Luczycki
Website: https://www.part3.io/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Construction admin software for architects: Part3 streamlines submittals, field reports, drawing management, and project workflows.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
One of the boldest decisions we made was to lean heavily into artificial intelligence. At a time when many firms in our industry were cautious about adopting AI, we made the choice to invest significantly in building AI-powered tools specifically for architects. This decision transformed Part3 into an innovation leader in construction administration, opening up new possibilities for how our users manage submittals and drawing management. That investment has fundamentally reshaped our trajectory and accelerated our growth.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
If we were starting over today, we would double down even earlier on AI as a core part of our product strategy. While we ultimately made the shift and it has paid off, we can see now that the demand and opportunity for AI in architecture and construction were even greater than we first realized. Starting with AI at the center from day one would have allowed us to scale even faster and deliver more value sooner to our customers.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
We would like to see more late-stage capital flowing into Canadian startups. While there is strong support for early-stage ventures, scaling companies often face challenges securing the growth capital needed to compete globally. Having more Canadian funds and institutional investors willing to back startups beyond seed would strengthen the entire ecosystem and keep more high-potential companies rooted here.

What’s next with your company?
Following our most recent seed round — where existing investors, led by Graphite Ventures and Chicago Ventures, doubled down on their commitment to Part3 — we’re focused on two major priorities: expanding our team and accelerating our AI roadmap. We’re continuing to build AI-driven features that help architects save time, reduce risk, and improve collaboration. At the same time, we’re growing our presence in North America and exploring strategic partnerships that can help us bring these innovations to even more firms.

10. Vetster

Founders: Mark Bordo, CEO and Regan Johnson, CTO
Website: https://vetster.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Vetster connects millions of pet owners with licensed veterinarians through 24/7 telehealth, making pet care more accessible and convenient.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
Our journey has been shaped by constant discovery, trial and error, and rapid learning, all essential parts of building something new. We were fortunate to enter a fast-growing segment of pet health, and navigating the unexpected challenges along the way has only made us more resilient and adaptive. It’s all part of the process, and we’ve come to embrace it. I wouldn’t change a thing!

What’s next with your company?
We’re scaling on every front. Our platform continues to evolve, and we’re expanding our reach through strategic partnerships and ecosystem integrations. A national collaboration with Pet Valu is raising awareness for virtual care across 380 stores in Canada. We’ve also partnered with Ren’s Pets, Fetch, and are integrating with Doctegrity and FIMC to broaden access to care through retail, insurance, and wellness channels.

In 2024, we launched Vetster for Business, bringing virtual vet care to workplaces as a modern healthcare benefit. Already adopted by companies like Amazon, RBC, and Samsung, these partnerships are accelerating adoption and helping more pet parents access care on their terms.

Internally, we’re proud to be building a company that reflects our values, with 56% of our team made up of women, and 40% representation in leadership. With a growing team and purpose-driven partnerships, we’re creating lasting impact for pets, pet parents, and the veterinary community.

9. ChocolateSoup

Founders: Pj Lowe, Dan Silivestru, Megan Hall
Website: https://chocolatesoup.ca

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Chocolate Soup powers culture with curated gift boxes and custom LEGO® minifigs that make employee recognition easy, personal and accessible.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory? We decided to vertically integrate as much of our production process as possible. This required significant capital investment, but resulted in an exponential decrease in our production time and significantly increased agility. Going vertical helped us win more business and improve the service level and quality for our customers.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently? I’d build the software layer at the same time we were testing out different gifting options. Once we figured out the correct product market fit, we still had to do many tasks manually instead of skipping the early spreadsheet chaos and scaling more efficiently.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be? More support for early to mid-stage startups. From mentoring, space, access to equipment, and funding. Additionally, a stronger “buy Canadian” mindset is needed. Early-stage companies require paying customers more than grants, and large public- and private-sector buyers should lead by procuring home-grown technology.

What’s next with your company?
Continued growth and expansion into more international markets.

8. Crafty Ramen 

Leaders: Miki Ferrall, Jared Ferrall, Khalil Khamis
Website: https://craftyramen.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
We’re bringing restaurant-quality frozen ramen home to mouths across North America.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
It’s so hard I don’t think I would do it again based on what I know today.

What’s next with your company?
US and Mexico expansion!

7. Purity Gas

Founders: Alan Hopkins and Chris Styles
Website: https://puritygas.ca

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
We design and engineer nitrogen gas generation systems, allowing manufacturers to generate nitrogen on site for a fraction of the financial & environmental costs of traditional methods.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
We can grow the Canadian startup ecosystem by implementing more initiatives like the Haltech Incubator program. This kind of infrastructure supports innovation and companies like ours through enhanced access to grants, strengthened networks and peer groups, mentorships, and skill development. As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to feel isolated. But being a part of a community like this, with like-minded individuals, makes the entrepreneurial journey feel more collaborative and impactful.

What’s next with your company?
Purity Gas is poised for substantial growth in 2025, focusing on innovation, sustainability, and market expansion. We are deepening our presence in the U.S., launching new products, and introducing digital tools for real-time monitoring and optimization. To support this growth, we’re scaling our engineering, sales, and customer support teams to enhance client experience and service delivery.

6. Wisedocs

Founders: Connor Atchison, Jenna Earnshaw
Website: https://www.wisedocs.ai/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Wisedocs is an AI-powered claims documentation platform purpose-built for insurance and medical record processing. Trained on over 100 million documents, the platform delivers structured, defensible outputs, from summaries to insights, all with expert human oversight. Wisedocs empowers insurers, legal teams, and third-party administrators to improve operational efficiency, reduce administrative burden, and enhance decision accuracy.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
We started Wisedocs to help individual claimants navigate the complex claims process, born from our co-founder & CEO Connor Atchison’s experience as a caregiver and veteran in the Canadian Armed Forces. Wisedocs initially set out to build a solution for individual claimants, empowering them to navigate their own documentation and claim reviews. But as we dug deeper into the ecosystem, we realized a hard truth that the inefficiencies were systemic, not isolated. Fixing the experience for one person at a time wasn’t enough.

So we made a bold pivot. Instead of serving claimants directly, we built a solution for all those who process and adjudicate claims, including insurers, legal teams, and medical evaluators. This shift allowed us to make a far greater impact by driving speed, accuracy, and fairness across the entire ecosystem, while staying true to our mission of empowering those who need a voice, autonomy, and support.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
If we had to start over, we would invest earlier in building a strong go-to-market foundation and prioritize assembling the exceptional team we’re proud to have today. Like many product-led teams, we were deeply focused on perfecting the technology but underestimated how important it was to tell our story, educate the market, and build strong sales motions early on.

We’ve since built a strong GTM team and strategy that matches the sophistication of our solution. With hindsight, aligning sales and marketing earlier with our product roadmap would have accelerated our growth curve and improved customer success from day one.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
It’s no secret Canada produces world-class talent and innovative solutions but too often our startups are underfunded or scale too slowly due to limited access to capital at the earliest stages. If we could change one thing, it would be creating more aggressive early-stage capital systems that reward bold ideas and ambitious execution. We need more pre-seed and seed-stage funds willing to bet on Canadian founders at the same speed and scale that is seen in the U.S. and Europe. A system designed to support bold, early-stage ideas would help foster local innovation and attract global investors to participate in our ecosystem’s success.

What’s next with your company?
We’re entering an exciting growth phase over the next 12 months, with a focus on expanding into new markets, starting with the strategic opening of our Washington, D.C. office. Wisedocs is scaling our go-to-market momentum by extending our reach beyond North America, particularly into jurisdictions with high volumes of medico-legal and insurance claims documentation.

We’re forming strategic partnerships with enterprise claims management systems to embed our technology deeper into core workflows and expand our impact with federal agencies and state funds. To support this growth, we’re hiring across multiple departments to meet increasing demand while maintaining the high-quality service our customers expect.

We’re also accelerating our R&D efforts to enhance our proprietary AI models and deliver new products and features across our claims documentation platform—enabling claims teams and stakeholders to streamline their workflows, reduce manual effort, and focus their expertise where it matters most.

5. Able Innovations

Founder: Jayiesh Singh, Philip Chang
Website: https://www.ableinnovations.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Able Innovations’ ALTA Platform® is a smart robotic device, designed to advance the standard of care for patient transfers in healthcare. This automated system is the first of its kind that enables lateral patient transfers to be conducted effortlessly, safely and in a more dignified manner by just one staff member.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
A bold decision we made was during COVID- hospitals stopped responding as we were looking to understand interest. A lot of companies pivoted to making UV sanitizing robots or put time into ventilator projects. There was real temptation as both funders and our future customers stopped responding. We decided to stick to our convictions that the problem we are solving will only get worse, and our technology can play a big role in emerging as a leader in hospitals automation. As a result, we are able to be where we are today, had we pivoted, things would have been vastly different.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
If I could start over, I would have forged stronger relationships earlier in markets such as Boston and San Francisco where the pace of doing business is fast, and there are established ecosystems.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
The Canadian Startup ecosystem is quite unique full of very supportive institutions. We need to get things in gear so that we are a productive ecosystem generating the best companies in the world. Access to capital is a key thing holding high potential companies back in Canada.

What’s next with your company?
We are focused on scaling our operations, raising our Series-A funding round, and expanding our team.

4. Airfairness

Founders: John Marzo, Zohair Khan, David Linardi
Website: https://www.airfairness.com

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Flight delays can ruin a trip before it begins so we make sure every trip feels like a vacation by fighting the airline so you don’t have to.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
We decided early on to use our business model and fee structure to fuel growth by doubling down on trust. For our service, we take a commission of any compensation collected on behalf of our customers and we made the decision to not collect any payment until AFTER the passenger received 100% of their payout. This is obviously risky and leaves us with all of the risk. Passengers had the freedom to sneak away and not pay for the service we provided, but thankfully we have yet to have a single missed payment to date. Gotta love Canada. We love our customers.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
I would lean more into strategic partnerships way earlier in the growth cycle. Having seen what’s possible when the right groups of people work together, I would have leveraged our presence in the Canadian ecosystem significantly sooner. The appetite for Canadian collaboration is so high at the moment and most often, 1+1=3 when it comes to working with Canadian companies with similar goals and level of ambition.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
I would remove shame, humbleness, and softness from every aspect of how we interact with the rest of the world. Yes we’ve collectively built a reputation for being ‘nice’ and cemented our legacy on the world stage as “their friendly neigbour”, but it’s time to call in the chits and favours from everyone else and start acting like the powerhouse that we are. Canadian founders, innovators, builders and creators are some of the most talented and globally recognized groups of individuals that currently exist and it’s time we act like it.

What’s next with your company?
Unannounced government partnership, Series A in October, giant affiliate system with massive eSports, travel agencies, and world-class group travel companies, and our flagship mobile app that will change the way passengers travel the world and build new memories.

3. Gambit Technologies

Founders: Patrick Belliveau, Ryan Burgio, and Chris Silivestru
Website: https://gambitco.io/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
We build AI personalities that deliver real outcomes.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
Spend an obscene amount of time focusing on people a personality engine. User engagement is a function of a great personality and without engagement you can’t drive results.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
I’d rethink every job function on Day 0. Business is simple, deliver a product or service for more money than it cost you to make. Traditional Org structures are tailored to humans, this is no longer the world we live in thus lining it key activities that are needed with agentic workflows is the way to go and where the Agents fall short, hire humans.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
Canada needs an economy that supports taking risk, the government does well in investing in innovation but most companies find their customers abroad. Invariably that leads them to focus their efforts abroad etc. For context we had the US government as a client before we had a Canadian client. Let that sink in…

What’s next with your company?
We’re growing through reinvesting profits and finding great partners to work it. It’s been so much fun to build workflows that drive meaningful results for our entire ecosystem.

2. Wagepoint

Leaders: Ben Richmond
Website: https://www.wagepoint.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Payroll made simple for Canadian small businesses, with tools that enable accounting partners to serve them better.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
We made the bold decision to invest in a full platform rebuild from the ground up. The transformation has improved ease of use for small businesses and our accounting partners tremendously. More importantly, it has laid the foundation for automation and AI capabilities that will set Wagepoint apart beyond payroll compliance and remittances.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
If we started over today, we’d focus even more heavily on our community of accounting partners who share our core values. They’ve been instrumental in helping us create meaningful solutions for small businesses.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would
it be?
I’d love to see a greater adoption of emerging technologies across the startup ecosystem. It’s a huge opportunity for Canadian innovation.

What’s next with your company?
Our focus remains on making payroll simple and friendly for Canadian small businesses and the accounting partners who serve them. That means ongoing platform improvements, deeper automation, and thoughtful AI implementation that genuinely saves time and cuts complexity. We’re also scaling our partner channel, which has become an incredibly important part of how we reach and support Canadian businesses.

1. Stay22

Founders: Andrew Lockhead, Hamed Al-Khabbaz
Website: https://www.stay22.com/

Describe what your company does in 140 characters.
Stay22 is a Canadian travel tech company that connects content creators and publishers with affiliate marketing opportunities. Its platform uses artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help content creators generate incremental revenue through travel bookings. In 2024, Stay22 reached new milestones, including $500 million in GMV and $25 million in revenue, while helping to monetize 182,000 pages across the web with 1.5 billion views.

What’s a bold decision your team made that changed your company’s trajectory?
Pivot from the events industry to the creator economy during the pandemic. In early 2020, Stay22’s revenue plummeted from $128,000 in January to just $9,000 in April, 90% drop. Our company’s primary clients, event and ticketing platforms, disappeared. We pivoted into activity-based travel, and started providing accommodations to that audience, then shifted into creators economy and the rest is history.

If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?
I’d trust my instincts more and not always wait for the data to catch up. Data is critical, of course, but it often lags behind what your gut already knows. Some of the best decisions I’ve made came from intuition, I’d lean into that sooner.

If you could change one thing about the Canadian startup ecosystem, what would it be?
I’d love to see more recognition and celebration of bootstrapped companies. Too often, the spotlight is reserved for VC-backed startups, but there’s incredible innovation and resilience in founders who build sustainable businesses without outside capital. Those stories deserve to be told.

What’s next with your company?
We’re hiring at an astonishing rate, and expanding into Retail and Social Media. The momentum is real, we’re on track to surpass $1B in GMV this year. Not bad for a company proudly rooted in Canada, proving that global-scale growth can happen from here.

That is a wrap. Know any rising companies that should be on our radar for next coverage on Top 100 Companies 2026? Let us know!