Top 100 Companies to Watch in 2024

We are beyond thrilled to announce this year’s top 100 Companies to Watch for in 2024. Huge thank you note to all the founders and their teams who shared their story with our community. Massive congrats to these incredible teams as we know you are are bound to do incredible things in 2024 and beyond. Check out the full list here:

104. TeamCarts
103. Litespace
102. Strategy Solution 
101. SnoozUp
100. SeekUp Strategies 
99. MangoVisa
98. Prelo
97. Akran Marketing
96. ScaleHR
95. Kakushin
94. Savant Recruitment
93. Focus Image Pro
92. CreatorClub
91. KB Consulting
90. Pocketed
89. Borealis Data
88. Linkus Group
87. PERA
86. Joypad
85. Scale Without Borders
84. Pivot + Edge
83. Aceocial
82. Hula
81. Devanow
80. NeuraVue
79. Javelin
78. Nü Benefits
77. MavenMind
76. Peple
75. PR Monkey
74. Quantigo AI
73. ARKI
72. NeedleAID
71. Cansulta
70. Notepal
69. SimpliCity
68. Toast
67. Motiv
66. Fuse Financial
65. MoxyPatch
64. Starling
63. Vambora
62. Simply Eloped
61. WNORTH
60. Souqh
59. VanHack
58. Techempower
57. Discrepancy AI
56. Salubrum
55. Unwrapit
54. Perch
53. Instarails
52. 409.AI
51. ContentBot
50. wrksourcing
49. Summit EHSQ
48. Tenure
47. Equivesto
46. RealSage
45. System-3
44. Pacto Medical
43. SingleKey
42. Deeded
41. Surex
40. Agilicus
39. Venu
38. JobBliss
37. Yield Exchange
36. Hire Hipo
35. Konvi
34. Niura
33. Vetster
32. Matchday Health
31. Karla Rewards
30. Biiibo
29. Blanka
28. Boast
27. Clinify
26. Whistle Technologies
25. Pathcore
24. Huex Labs
23. Edgecom Energy
22. Tenomix
21. MedMe Health
20. Truly Financial
19. Cove Neurosciences Inc.
18. Shinydocs
17. OFX
16. Fortay
15. Synctera
14. FutureVault
13. Part3
12. Railz
11. CruxOCM
10. Wisedocs
9. Chocolate Soup
8. Mappedin
7. Contractor Compliance
6. ZayZoon
5. Index Exchange
4. Islands
3. Bidmii
2. Wagepoint
1. Badal

104. TeamCarts

Founders: Alykhan Kara
Website: https://teamcarts.com/

Elevator Pitch: TeamCarts is revolutionizing the online shopping world by making it a collaborative, social experience. Our platform allows users to create shared carts, get feedback from friends and family, and make informed purchase decisions together for non-commodity goods.

Growth to Date: Since our launch, we’ve seen impressive growth, going viral multiple times on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Our user base is expanding thanks to our unique market approach and organic marketing strategies.

In What Way AI Is Shaping Your Industry? AI is transforming e-commerce by personalizing shopping experiences and optimizing product recommendations. In TeamCarts, AI helps tailor suggestions based on user preferences and interactions, enhancing the social shopping experience.

What’s Next? We’re focusing on expanding our team, seeking dynamic individuals who share our vision. Upcoming partnerships with major brands are on the horizon, and we’re continuously updating our platform with new features to enhance user experience and engagement.

103. Litespace 

Founder: Jack Lau, Zeeshan Shahid
Website: https://www.litespace.io/

Elevator Pitch: An AI-powered suite to engage your employees, create connections, speed up onboarding, build communities, simplify scheduling, and more.

Growth to date: We spoke to hundreds of HR and Culture leaders to uncover their most difficult challenges around culture and engagement. We also have over 75 workspaces created since the beginning of this journey. We are excited about onboarding some great companies as design partners and working with them to build an all inclusive suite of employee engagement tools that addresses the challenges any size company is facing.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI enables us to personalize the entire employee journey. For instance, in coffee chat matches, we can enhance the agenda, facilitating a more meaningful relationship-building from the start. This is just one example; there are numerous other use cases like this.

What’s next? Litespace’s employee engagement platform is now available to support growing organizations. We are focused on growth as we launch new features and integrations. We are working closely with early customers to empower them to make more informed and people focused decisions on how they manage engagement. Finally, we will be fundraising in the next few months.

102. Strategy Solution 

Founders: Paola Ruiz
Website: https://www.thestrategysolution.com/

Elevator Pitch: The SASI platform aims to modernize, transform, and revolutionize the way small businesses and startups plan and track their performance. By using proprietary strategy frameworks and performance metrics powered by AI, SASI offers a wide range of customizable templates and tools to guide businesses through the strategic planning process and set and track clear, actionable goals. The SASI platform also uses AI to analyze data and provide insights on how a business optimizes performance and achieves better results in its specific niche and industry. Whether businesses are just starting out or looking to take their business to the next level, the SASI platform is the perfect partner to help them succeed.

Growth to date: Currently beta testing for lenders and fintech firms.

101. SnoozUp

Website: https://snoozup.io/
Founders: Erfan Shekarchi

Elevator Pitch: Imagine earning money for consistently meeting your sleep goals and completing daily physical activities – it’s a whole new world of motivation and wellness. SnoozUp is a revolutionary web3 wellness application dedicated to transforming lives by incentivizing better lifestyle habits. At SnoozUp, we understand the critical link between sleep, physical activity, and overall well-being. Our mission is to empower individuals to cultivate healthier routines, leading to a significant reduction in Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs). Harnessing the power of smart contracts, SnoozUp adds a ground-breaking incentive layer by seamlessly integrating them into our platform, therefore both Web2 and Web3 users are rewarded for achieving and sustaining positive lifestyle changes.

Growth to date: The MVP of the application is ready, and after conducting audits on smart contracts, we will launch the closed beta version by the end of Q1-2024, if you would like to be among the first people who test SnoozUp, you can register for our waitlist here. We already secured a few partnerships with some of the most famous industry leaders that we will announce soon as part of our marketing campaign.

In what way is AI shaping your industry? Since this is a wellness application, AI plays a big role in our future. We can train an AI model to suggest healthier activities for each individual based on their sleep cycle, wake-up time, and the physical daily activity data that we collect within our app while respecting our users’ privacy as a Web3 application.

What’s next? SnoozUp’s initial version will be launched by the end of Q2-2024, meanwhile we will start a pre-seed fundraising and have our closed beta version and several marketing campaigns launched.

100. SeekUp Strategies 

Key people: stealth mode
Website: https://www.seekupstrategies.com/

Elevator Pitch: We are a boutique entry to executive level consulting firm that seeks high caliber teams for startups and established companies. Our strategy is to immerse ourselves into your vision by assisting your growth with our proven track record. We place some of the best up and coming technology companies in Chicago, Austin, NYC and Boston.
Description: We are a Boutique Entry to Executive Level Consulting Firm that Seeks high caliber teams for Startups. Our strategy is to immerse ourselves into your vision by assisting your growth with our policies, procedures, technology and business development. At SeekUp Strategies we not only place talent but we also work with venture capitalists and stakeholders to establish go-to-market strategies.

Growth to date: Started in October 2023. Currently working with new clients and growing customer base. Currently servicing clients in US, UK, Brazil and India. Looking to expand market reach

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is used very well in certain ATS’s when searching through your pool of candidates to find a match for a particular role. Also, most ATS’s have an AI algorithm built in that will generate suggested candidates from your pool when adding a new job opportunity to it. Automated resume parsing and skill matching algorithms save both recruiters and candidates, and ultimately clients, a lot of time. As for using AI during the interview stage, I suggest tread carefully. Use it only for assessments and not for actual interviewing. You’ll lose the human quality. Also, like I mentioned to Prameela, our recruiters are on the front line. They’re the first face of the company that candidates see and interact with. So, the recruiter needs to embody Mastek by showcasing our culture, attitude, environment, lifestyle, etc. We can’t rely on an AI tool to do this part.

AI tools that listen in and watch our recruiters interviewing candidates can be helpful because some AI tools can review the interview and come back with data and feedback. AI can also be used for diversity and inclusion enhancements.
The onboarding process with AI can be much more streamlined. AI in onboarding digitizes paperwork, faster times going through employee manual, provides onboarding feedback, measures engagements, finds bottlenecks, etc.

What’s next? Business Development Growth and Incubator office opening up in Chicago June of 2024. Get connected for networking events, speaking engagements, and more.

99. MangoVisa 

Founder: Kushi Kaur
Website: https://mangovisa.com/

Elevator Pitch: MangoVisa revolutionizes the immigration process for international students by providing them with digital access to legal representation, including immigration lawyers and consultants.

Growth Update: We’ve garnered 1,000 signups and are on the brink of our official launch.

In what way is AI shaping your industry? The rapid evolution of AI in our industry is exciting. When wielded appropriately, AI has the potential to propel businesses forward. However, it’s crucial to recognize the irreplaceable role of human connections. As founders, it’s our responsibility to gauge the appropriateness of AI in this sector. We must avoid a scenario where crucial immigration decisions, such as deportation and rejection, become automated. Preserving the human touch is essential, and striking the right balance is paramount to prevent immigrants from being solely at the mercy of AI.

What’s next? Our immediate focus is on raising capital to further fuel our growth. Stay tuned for upcoming product launches, partnership announcements, and other exciting developments!

98. Prelo

Founders: Olu Adedeji
Website: http://prelo.io

Elevator Pitch: We make it easy for SMBs to discover and collaborate with venture backed Startups on autopilot.

Growth to date: 4000+ SMBs trust us..includes HR, Marketing & VCs firms.

How is AI shaping your industry? AI is turning the entire industry into a huge business dating app. Businesses can easily conduct exhaustive research on 1000s of companies without ever having to visit their website. Customers can now write high converting introductory emails to their ideal customer in seconds.

What is Next? Partnerships and Distribution. Looking for partnerships that make sense with businesses that have an audience that align with our brand.

97. Akran Marketing

Founders/Key people: Mikas Agarwal
Website: https://www.akranmarketing.com/

Elevator Pitch: We imprint your company on people’s minds.

Growth to date: Since our inception in 1997, Akran Marketing has demonstrated a consistent pattern of success, with a steady annual growth rate of 9%. This long-term stability reflects our commitment to excellence and innovation in the promotional industry.

In what way is AI shaping your industry: Recognizing the transformative potential of AI, Akran Marketing is at the forefront of integrating this technology into the promotional industry. Our commitment to pioneering AI applications positions us as innovators, enhancing our services and offering cutting-edge solutions to our clients.

What’s next? Akran Marketing is advancing on several exciting fronts. We’re pursuing B-Corp certification to underscore our commitment to sustainable and ethical business practices. Additionally, we’re launching the Akran Special Wishes program, offering bespoke experiences, fulfillment, eStore solutions, and unique merchandise boxes to enrich our clients’ marketing strategies. The program emphasizes that our promotional products are more than just items; they support and enhance your overall marketing strategies, going beyond the ordinary to deliver exceptional value. Parallel to these initiatives, we remain dedicated to mentoring the next generation of professionals, ensuring the continuation of innovative and responsible leadership within the industry.

96. Scale HR

Founders: Jeff Waldman
Website: https://goscalehr.com

Elevator Pitch: At ScaleHR, we elevate the skills of leaders and HR in SMB tech companies. We provide tailored training, coaching, mentorship, and strategic advisory. What sets us apart is our unwavering focus on driving real-world application. We don’t just equip leaders and HR with skills; we work side by side to ensure those skills become ingrained habits. Think of us as your catalyst for transformative leadership and HR, propelling your team towards sustained success and innovation in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

Growth to date: 100% growth year-over-year since the company was founded in May 2020.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is playing a massive role in how we learn and develop new skills. Traditional approaches to learning does a poor job in helping learners adopt new skills, change behaviour and tap into different learning styles and preferences. Examples of how AI is impacting skills development are the following:

– Personalized learning paths – AI can analyze learning learning styles and create tailored learning paths that meet the needs of individual learners.
– Adaptive learning platforms – AI algorithms have the ability to adapt learning content based on the progress and performance of individual learners. This allows each learner to receive content that meets their level of skill (i.e. right level of difficulty).
– Data-driven decision-making: AI can generate real-time analytics and insights that can help organizations make tweaks and improvements to their learning initiatives.
– Chabots: AI-driven chatbots provide real-time coaching and mentorship support to learners. They can answer questions, provide informatio, resources and guidance, and solve the problem of learners needing information on a “need to know” basis.
– Supplement to traditional learning methods – AI has enabled the hyper customization of learning and skills development. However, AI is not meant to replace traditional methods, but instead, enhance them.

What’s next? ScaleHR is launching several new leadership programs this year – leading people with disabilities, leading multicultural teams and inclusive leadership. We are overhauling and relaunching our online learning community, GROW, that will offer more learning opportunities for leaders and HR. We are launching a national roundtable initiative to support HR leaders in SMB tech grow their skills, careers and networks, and have started developing an HR leadership development program for up-and-coming HR leaders at tech SMBs.

95. Kakushin

Founders: Spiridoula Trakaki and Aletia Trakakis
Website: https://kakushin.io/

Elevator Pitch: Kakushin propels startups to new heights with a blend of creativity and AI-driven insights, crafting compelling brand identities that resonate in the competitive landscape. We’re more than a branding agency; we’re your trusted partner in navigating the evolving world of transformative branding, where innovation meets execution, and brands become legends.

Growth to Date: Since our February 2021 inception, Kakushin has evolved from a startup focusing on branding to a comprehensive startup support service. By late 2023, we’ve served over 70 clients, achieving industry recognition and notable year-over-year revenue growth through strategic partnerships and a diversified portfolio.

In What Way AI is Shaping Your Industry: Kakushin harnesses the power of AI to revolutionize branding. Our AI-driven solutions play a pivotal role in crafting compelling brand identities, ensuring startups and businesses stand out in an ever-evolving marketplace. From defining brand purpose to creating indelible visual identities, AI empowers our team to provide data-driven insights, making strategic branding decisions that resonate with target audiences.

What’s Next: Kakushin is gearing up for an exciting future with multiple initiatives. We’re actively expanding our team, seeking top-tier talents to bolster our innovation hub. Anticipate thrilling partnership announcements and cutting-edge product updates as we strive to maintain our position at the forefront of transformative branding. Additionally, we’re launching a dedicated group for empowering female entrepreneurs in Africa, fostering a vibrant community for growth and mutual support.But the real game-changer? In 2024, we’re rolling out an immersive 10-week online accelerator program for startups, happening twice a week. It’s not just a program; it’s a journey to empower entrepreneurs with the skills they need to conquer the business world. Join us on this exhilarating ride of empowerment and innovation!

94. Savant Recruitment

Founders: Jessica Smith
Website: https://savantrecruitment.ca

Elevator Pitch: Our vision is to revolutionize the recruiting industry by leveraging cutting-edge technology like AI and automation to streamline processes and deliver massive results for our clients. By using these advanced tools, we are able to match top talent with industry-leading companies up to 30-50% faster than our competitors. This innovative approach has not only led to success for our clients, but also caught the attention of investors who see the potential for growth and disruption in the traditional recruiting landscape. We are committed to leading Savant Recruitment as the next-gen recruiting firm. Savant Recruitment operates all across North America and can facilitate finding you contract talent without you having to lift a finger or worry about the back-end.

Growth to date: 1st year was profitable.

What’s next? As we continue to scale the business with new clients, would like to make some important hires in this business. Hires that are going to help me deliver even faster and continuing to give unparalleled experiences to clients and candidates. Our goal is to be the leading recruiting agency in North America, due to early adoption of new technology, and great service!

93. Focus Image Pro 

Founders: Dilara Cossette
Website: https://focusimagepro.com/

Elevator Pitch: At Focus Image Pro, we specialize in fractional demand generation solutions tailored for B2B SaaS companies. Our approach is to empower start-ups with innovative marketing strategies, combining a mix of unique skills and personalized marketing plans to achieve quick results.

Growth to Date: There has been a noticeable increase in demand for our fractional services. Within 3 weeks since launching Focus Image Pro, we’ve brought on board three new clients, which is a testament to our team’s dedication and the strong trust our clients place in our expertise. Our commitment to delivering exceptional results has been key to our success, and we are excited about continuing on this upward trajectory.

In What Way AI is Shaping Your Industry? In our daily operations, AI plays a pivotal role, from buyer intent analysis to segmentation and marketing automation. We and our partners leverage a variety of AI platforms to enhance our marketing strategies. Although there are concerns about AI potentially replacing human roles in the future, currently, it serves as a powerful tool within the marketing industry, enriching our capabilities and enabling us to achieve superior results.

What’s Next? The upcoming year is filled with exciting developments for Focus Image Pro. Since January, we’ve already signed three partnership agreements and are aiming to secure at least 20 more in 2024. Our growth largely depends on referrals and word-of-mouth, which have been incredibly effective for us in the past. These new partnerships are set to not only broaden our network but also enhance the value we deliver to our clients.

92. Creator Club 

Founders: Anthony Chiaravalloti, Chris Cundari, Mark Simone, Daniel Francavilla
Website: https://www.creatorclubstudios.com

Elevator Pitch: CreatorClub is a one-stop hub for content creation empowering brands, agencies, and marketers to streamline their content creation process from start to finish. CreatorClub simplifies the content planning, production and approval process, connects brands with creators, and provides access to a fully-equipped studio space..

Growth to Date: Venture backing from Anthony Lacavera’s Globalive, onboarded over 100 creators on our roster, a dozen clients under management, integrated AI into our platform and hosted over 12 events.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? It is impacting the content industry in every way — from how content is created, translated and organized to the way it’s distributed and even measured. It impacts how we understand our audience and content performance, and collect information on our customers and competitors. CreatorClub has integrated AI into our platform.
What’s Next: Raising our next round of financing, expanding to the US, and launching our software to the market.

91. KB Consulting

Founders: Kasey Bayne
Website: https://www.kaseybayne.com/

Elevator Pitch: Startups and entrepreneurship is our greatest passion at KBC, and our team is dedicated to helping businesses build strategic, metric-driven marketing programs that bring real results. Bringing together growth and analytics, we work with small businesses and entrepreneurs to develop the programs that bring in new leads, new customers, and new revenue!

Growth to date: Now in our 6th (!!) year of business, we’ve experienced massive growth over the last year. Our roster of clients has grown over 2x, and we’re helping clients beyond the startup stage as they grow – setting them up with the tools they need to measure and track growth for long-term success.
The team is growing too! With a strong list of partners and experts, we’re able to provide everything from our core offering of Fractional CMO and HubSpot Revenue Operations work, combined with performance marketing, results-driven content, and stylish graphic design that brings it all together.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is a game changer, that’s for sure! One of the things we need to look at as marketers, as founders – is how can our team best use these tools? How can we use them to make us more efficient, to allow us to save time and provide more value to our clients? For KBC, it’s not about having AI write content or replace the creative process – more about using AI for idea generation, using it to get feedback on things you’ve written (does the AI summary match your intentions?), and helping to automate some of the tasks that take up too much time with too little value.
It’s so exciting to see new technology and tools, and how we can use those tools to help us grow our companies, provide even more value to our clients, and just nerd out on cool stuff!

What’s next? We are beyond excited for what the next year has to bring for KBC and our clients! With new tech tools and features, automations and metrics tracking – we’re able to help our clients make better business decisions, faster. The world is moving so fast, and giving our clients the tools and knowledge they need to adapt and grow – that’s what makes us excited to wake up every morning and do what we do best, Along with that, as co-founder of Boreal I.S., our new (and free!) Slack app is coming soon: Standup For Me! We’re solving one of our biggest frustrations with this one, and we know so many founders can relate – say goodbye to never ending time wasting standup meetings, and hello to the easy way to share updates across the team, no matter what time zone you’re in at the moment. Sign up to be one of the first to try it, for free, here!

90. Pocketed

Founders: Brianna Blaney & Aria Hahn
Website: https://hellopocketed.io/

Elevator Pitch: Pocketed helps Canadian businesses easily access over $5.9B annually in grants, tax credits, and incentives with our intelligent matching platform and funding solutions. Since launching in 2021, Pocketed has helped more than 12,000 companies access over $100M in capital. Money to make key hires, invest in innovation, expand to new markets, and accelerate their growth. Whether you’re building a start-up or scaling an established company, there is money out there to help you grow. Create your free Pocketed account today using referral code FoundersBeta: https://hellopocketed.io/

How it got started Building a business is hard, and one of the biggest barriers is money. As founders we’ve lived this pain, trying to find money to start and grow our own companies. While there is more than $5.9B in grants, tax credits, and incentives available annually to Canadian businesses, the landscape is confusing and hard to navigate. That’s why we built Pocketed. There are thousands of programs available throughout the year, with more than 1,500 programs in Pocketed’s intelligent platform that are currently accepting applications. Programs come and go quickly, often with criteria and deadlines changing unexpectedly. Pocketed helps to solve this problem with our intelligent matching platform and funding solutions.

Growth to date: Since 2021, Pocketed has scaled to support over 12,000 businesses, helping them secure funding to make
their first hire, purchase critical equipment, invest in research and development, and expand internationally. In 2023, we beta launched Pocketed Enterprise for consultancies and business support organizations, including big 4 accounting firms and accelerators, helping them secure more funding for their customers.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? In this new era of generative AI, Pocketed is developing powerful tools to shape new possibilities to support our users through their funding journey. AI is redefining the landscape of grants, from search to application, and we’re thrilled to lead this charge. We’re preparing to launch cutting-edge AI solutions meticulously
designed to optimize and streamline every aspect of the grant funding journey, from search and recommendations to applications and reporting. It’s not just about adaptation; we’re actively shaping the future, empowering our users to achieve faster and easier success with grant funding. Eager to be part of this groundbreaking journey? Secure your spot on our waitlist for exclusive early access! Join us as we revolutionize the future of grant funding.

What’s next? As we continue to grow, Pocketed is transforming. Through strategic partnerships and a focus on a great customer experience, we are on the fast track to scale, securing more funding for businesses and amplifying our impact. Accelerate your funding journey with Pocketed’s industry-leading solutions for non-dilutive funding in Canada and beyond. Don’t miss out — ride the wave of growth with Pocketed!

89. Borealis Data

Founders: Joel Andrews, Kasey Bayne
Website: https://www.borealis-data.com/

Elevator Pitch: Borealis is a boutique SaaS product development and DevOps consulting firm. There are so many ways we can describe the work we do, but the best way to summarize – we make products and develop solutions to make life easier. All of those things that “we wish we had,” or the moments that stop you in your tracks and give you a 90s infomercial style, “there has to be a better way!” – that’s where our passion lies, and where our products come from.

Growth to date: The last year has been an amazing adventure in startup life! We always tell people startups are like a rollercoaster – big challenges, but also big wins! For Borealis Isolated Postgres, we’ve seen a growth in paying customers of more than 2.5x, including onboarding our first enterprise customers! Being able to bring security to more companies, in a way that supports their development efforts, is so rewarding, and we’ve got some great companies on board as we continue to grow. Along with this, we’ve formalized our DevOps consulting branch! If you’re a startup or growing company, looking to get your systems and DevOps set up, or getting ready for compliance audits – we’re here to help!
Behind the scenes, we’ve been working hard on our newest product, a Slack app making daily standups easy in Standup For Me (sign up to be one of the first to try it, for free, here!)

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is such a buzzword these days, much like “Web 2.0” and “mobile optimized” before it So many companies are jumping into AI, without thinking strategically – is it actually making your customers’ lives better? Think of all the frustrating chat bot experiences we’ve all had! That being said, we’re huge fans of automation at Borealis – how can we use tools like AI to make life easier (it’s what we’re all about). How can we automate some of the more repetitive tasks, so we can focus on higher value work, and the things that we’re passionate about.
Using AI and other tools to free up time for experimentation, for growth, for customer conversations and research – that’s the real value of AI for us

What’s next? We’re continuing to grow our DevOps consulting branch. Working with some amazing companies, helping them develop strong, secure, best practices – we’re getting to help build the DevOps foundations, to give dev teams the tools they need to be successful in the long run. We are beyond excited about Standup For Me – a brand new (and free!) Slack app! With remote work, time zones, and the million hats we all wear in startups, Standup For Me makes it easy to share the work you’re doing, and see what is happening with others, in a way that’s quick and efficient. (Sign up to be one of the first to try it, for free, here!) Borealis Isolated Postgres continues to grow – we’re supporting more and more companies, of all sizes, as they prioritize their security efforts in their Heroku apps.

We’re continuing to get out into the startup, tech, and founders communities – in Vancouver, in Canada, and beyond! It’s such an amazing time to be an entrepreneur, and we’re lucky to work with so many other talented founders as we grow this ecosystem (thank YOU FoundersBeta for your support here!).

88. Linkus Group 

Key people: Adam Gellert and Abby Goldstein
Website: http://www.linkusgroup.com/

Elevator Pitch: Linkus Group is a highly personalized recruitment agency working with busy Founders, HR and Hiring Managers across North America on hires they want to get right. Over the last decade, we’ve made it our mission to help our clients make the best key hires and maximize their internal time and productivity. We typically only accept referrals and work with a select few companies from the early stage and as they grow. We prioritize Senior to Executive roles and partner up with companies ranging from 1-100 employees, from bootstrapped and seed to Series B (and beyond). Our one KPI is repeat business.

Growth to date: 1000+ hires at Startups and SMBs with 95% retention beyond 12 months.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? Hiring is human so it plays a role in efficiency but not decisions. AI can be applied to parts of matching, sourcing and screening but is currently limited on selection, and hiring decisions. We’ve built our own product (HiredHippo) where we are on a mission to make hard hiring easy.

87. Pera 

Founders: Meryl Kaye De Leon
Website: https://www.peragrowthhub.com/

Elevator Pitch: PERA Growth Hub is breaking down the gap of opportunity and connecting business owners, entrepreneurs, and late-stage founders to equity and debt solutions.

What’s next: I’ve been taking my own advice, and in the beginning I vowed to grow sustainably, and to find the right partners to grow PERA with. I’m looking forward to bringing on more team members in 2024, and establishing far-reaching, and deeper partnerships with firms the country. While we grow, we remain wholly focused and committed to providing value to our Clients. While the type of work we do is transactional in nature, our relationship and services to our Client is fully focused on providing value geared towards their full benefit.

86. Joypad Design 

Founders/key people: Muhammad Jaffar, Melissa Anne Morgan
Website: https://www.joypadstudios.com/

Elevator Pitch: JoyPad is an on-demand design and development studio committed to pushing boundaries and crafting extraordinary digital experiences. We are your partners in branding, product, development, strategy, and content creation.

Growth to date: Since July 2023, JoyPad has successfully collaborated with 31 clients, ranging from pre-seed to Series A companies. Our portfolio includes the design of over 25 MVPs and the development of more than 10 websites. Also! We expanded into a team of 10 talented individuals

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI, particularly generative AI like Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), is reshaping our industry by revolutionizing the creation of visual assets. At JoyPad Studios, we leverage generative AI algorithms to swiftly produce diverse and realistic images, accelerating the design process and fostering creativity. This technology not only enhances our ability to create high-quality visual experiences but also enables personalized content generation, leading to increased user engagement.

What’s next? Partnership with foundersbeta (all foundersbeta members receive 15% off of their first invoice)
We are looking to hire 2 product designers to join our talent pool for some cool upcoming projects!

85. Scale Without Borders

Founders: Nouhaila Chelkhaoui
Website: https://scalewithoutborders.com/

Elevator Pitch: Scale Without Borders helps immigrants access resources to succeed in tech, and helps employers tap into brilliant, diverse immigrant tech talent.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? Like most businesses in tech, we are anticipating major transformations due to AI. We are particularly looking into adopting AI technology that will advance our talent management processes, and screening for candidate qualifications and traits and their fit with various roles, although we will never remove the human touch in our screening processes.

What’s next? We’re going to continue to do what we’re doing, and will focus on scaling our work to amplify impact. We’re also looking to have a heavier presence in various provinces in Canada, and building more partnerships and presence with other countries particularly in North and South America.

84. Pivot + Edge

Founders: John Fleischauer
Website: https://www.pivotandedge.com/

Elevator Pitch: Startup hiring simplified. We help Seed and Series-A companies attract, engage, and hire the right people to grow their startup. If you’re struggling to hire, then you’re in the right place.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is making the recruiting industry – both on the job seeker and the recruiter side – far more efficient, but also far less human… at least right now. The reason is tools such as ChatGPT are all very new and popular at present, and most are using it to cut corners on tactical, but important tasks such as creating resumes, cover letters, job postings, sourcing messages, and preparing for interviews – on either side of the table. Unfortunately, the end result of this approach, at least for now, is lower quality results, faster. As we learn more about how we can all genuinely use AI in a positive way as it relates to the very human experience that is hiring, and the AI tools themselves become much smarter with more interactions with actual humans, I can see a lot of benefits of leveraging AI in the future. Things like organizations adopting AI-based NLP candidate concierge services, two-way feedback collection devices at every step of the hiring process, and even creating and administering job-specific functional assessments – such as coding or writing assignments as an example. It’s still the early days of AI in recruiting, and it’s natural to see the vast majority of users focus on the lowest-hanging fruit at the beginning, but there is so much upside to evolving our approach to leveraging technology to still provide a “human” experience, I’m very excited to see all of this unfold!

83. Aceocial 

Founders/key people: Michael Liu, Eric Lay, Frank Chen, Victor Ou, Arda Erturk, Oliver Xin, and Parry Chan
Website: https://www.aceocial.com/

Elevator Pitch: Aceocial is a Canadian organization dedicated to creating a better startup ecosystem for all ambitious founders, investors, corporations, and students in Canada.

Growth to date: Since our inception in Sep 2022, we’ve organized over 50+ events, with more than 7000+ attendees in partnership with Fortune 500 corporations (AWS, Microsoft), world class conferences (Collision, Elevate, Futurist Conference), government organizations (InvestHK), and some of the top VCs in the Canadian ecosystem (Inovia Capital, Golden Ventures, Brightspark Ventures, Staircase Ventures, Mistral VC, Forum Ventures).

What’s next? Come check out our event calendar here: https://www.aceocial.com/

82. Hula 

Founder: Hailey Ji
Website: https://www.hula-events.com/

Elevator Pitch: HULA is an offline social tool that matches users with like-minded companions to attend mutually interested IRL events together. Just like Uber “everyone can go anywhere”. For HULA, it’s “everyone can find someone to go do something IRL together”

Growth to date: To date, HULA has welcomed 10k+ community members and facilitated 8k+ online-to-offline connections. HULA also established B2B2C partnerships with Ticketmaster, Ticket Evolution, and 70+ lo6al NYC vendors.

What’s next? HULA will focus on strengthening its ML-led pairing algorithm to help more people get connected with like-minded companions faster for offline experiences. HULA will also focus on achieving it’s modern 4-way marketplace ecosystem that’s focused on a.) community discovery (friend discovery, event discovery), and b.) community building (creators, vendors, ticketing platforms, consumers) to reinvent being social.

81. Devanow

Founders: Konstantin Melkov
Website: https://www.devanow.com/

Elevator Pitch: Welcome to Devanow, where we revolutionize bookkeeping for Canadian and US small businesses and startups. Imagine a world where your bookkeeping is not just a task, but a strategic advantage. That’s what we offer at Devanow. For a predictable monthly rate, we take the reins of your bookkeeping, payroll, accounts payable, and receivable. Our service is more than just number crunching; it’s about organizing your workflow to empower decision-making.
But how do we stand out? We specialize in online bookkeeping, utilizing a sophisticated digital tech stack. This means integrating automation wherever it’s beneficial, saving you time and money. Our approach ensures high-quality bookkeeping and efficient workflows for collecting financial data. The result? Reliable information for your critical decisions and more time for you to focus on what you excel at – growing your business.
Choose Devanow, where bookkeeping meets innovation, and where your financial workflow becomes a catalyst for success.
Growth to date: In 2023 our subscriptions grew by 65%

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is an exhilarating frontier in the financial sector, bringing forward remarkable advancements. At Devanow, we’re excited about these developments, but we also believe in a balanced and realistic approach to integrating AI into bookkeeping. Here’s the thing: AI, particularly in the form of Large Language Models (LLMs), is revolutionizing the way we process and understand large volumes of data. These models are adept at parsing through information, but they operate on statistical analysis rather than human-like reasoning. In bookkeeping, reasoning and context are key.

We recognize that while AI can enhance efficiency, the human touch remains irreplaceable for insightful financial management. Moreover, the effectiveness of AI hinges on the quality and organization of the input data. The financial world has seen significant improvements in data collection and processing. However, challenges remain. Data can be fragmented and its relevance can diminish rapidly. That’s where Devanow’s expertise comes in. We don’t just rely on automation; we integrate it thoughtfully into our processes. Our focus is on organizing and maintaining high-quality data, ensuring that our AI-enhanced services are as effective and reliable as possible.

What’s next: Our website 4.0 is scheduled to be released in early February 2024. In mid to late 2024 we are excited to introduced some internally developed tool to a selected number of our subscribers.

80. NeuraVue

Founders: Afshan Ahmad
Website: https://www.neuravue.com/

Elevator Pitch: At NeuraVue, we’ve developed a cutting-edge AI platform that’s transforming safety and surveillance monitoring. Our technology leverages advanced machine learning and computer vision to analyze real-time video feeds, enabling swift detection of critical events such as falls, physical abuse, and emergency situations. What sets us apart? Our system not only automates surveillance but also learns and adapts to specific environments, ensuring enhanced accuracy and reliability. This makes NeuraVue an indispensable tool for senior care facilities, educational institutions, and businesses seeking a proactive approach to safety.

Growth to date: Since its inception, NeuraVue has achieved significant milestones and progress, underscoring our advancement in the AI-driven surveillance sector.

– Product Development and Innovation: From initial concept stages, NeuraVue has developed into a fully functional AI platform with sophisticated machine learning algorithms and computer vision capabilities.
– Team Expansion: Our team has grown to include top talent in AI development, sales, and customer support, enabling us to scale our operations and continuously improve our product offering.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is fundamentally reshaping the industry of surveillance and surveillance, particularly in the realm where NeuraVue operates, by introducing transformative changes in several key areas:

Real-Time Monitoring and Response: AI has revolutionized surveillance from passive recording to active monitoring. Systems like NeuraVue can analyze vast amounts of video data in real time, immediately identifying and alerting on unusual or dangerous activities. This shift dramatically reduces response times to incidents, enhancing overall safety and surveillance.

Predictive Analytics: AI’s ability to identify patterns and predict potential incidents before they occur is a game-changer. By analyzing historical data and current trends, AI can forecast areas or times at higher risk, allowing preemptive measures to be taken.

Behavior Analysis and Recognition: AI-driven systems are capable of complex behavior analysis, such as detecting aggressive behavior, unusual movements, or identifying individuals in need of assistance. This is particularly beneficial in settings like senior care facilities, where prompt detection of falls or health emergencies can be lifesaving.
Automation and Efficiency: AI automates the labor-intensive process of monitoring surveillance feeds, allowing human resources to focus on responding to alerts and proactive surveillance management. This not only improves efficiency but also helps in reducing operational costs. In summary, AI is not just an add-on in the surveillance and surveillance industry; it’s becoming the backbone that drives innovation, efficiency, effectiveness, and adaptability. For NeuraVue, leveraging AI is integral to delivering advanced, reliable, and ethical surveillance solutions.

What’s Next? The journey just got more thrilling! Hold onto your hats, because NeuraVue is entering an electrifying new chapter! Fresh off the success of our beta launch, we’re now steering full throttle towards commercialization, bringing our groundbreaking AI-driven security solutions to the broader market.

Commercialization and Expansion: The beta phase was just the beginning. We’re now gearing up to introduce NeuraVue to a wider audience, ready to revolutionize how businesses approach security and surveillance. With the success of our beta testing, we’re more confident than ever in the power and potential of our platform.

Special Offer – Free 2-Month Trial: In celebration of this milestone, we’re rolling out an irresistible offer – a 2-month free trial for any B2B organization eager to experience the future of security technology. This is more than just a trial; it’s an invitation to witness a paradigm shift in real-time monitoring and AI efficiency. Reach Out and Transform Your Security and Surveillance Experience: All you need to do is drop us a line at contactus@neuravue.com.

79. Javelin

Founders: Justin Ford and Coleman Chan
Website: https://www.javelinsportsinc.com

Elevator Pitch: The Javelin app is aiming to connect people through volleyball.

Growth to date: Javelin Sports is currently hosting over 50 drop in games per week in the Toronto area.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI will allow for a new class of operationally intensive businesses to exist. Javelin Sports is leaning into this by using AI to allow us to optimize offerings for volleyball players.

What’s next? We’re working on providing more ways for people to play and organize volleyball games. We’re also planning launches in other cities.

78. Nü Benefits

Founders:  Marcus Acaster
Website: https://www.getnubenefits.com

Elevator Pitch: Nü Benefits is Canada’s leading low-fee, high-value employee benefits brokerage. Stop paying for services you don’t need. With Nü Benefits we won’t send you hockey tickets or take you for a 5-course lunch, but we will offer you industry-leading benefits plans without paying high fees.
Growth to date: Nü Benefits has quickly gained recognition for its innovative solutions and commitment to helping startups thrive. With a strong focus on understanding the unique needs of startup founders, they’ve become a trusted name in the industry for both employee benefit plans and Health Spending Accounts (HSA)

How is AI shaping your industry? Artificial intelligence has allowed insurers to reduce their administrative costs and help eliminate fraudulent claims through machine learning. This results in lower rates for the end consumers.

What’s next? Nü Benefits continues to invest in innovative solutions and partnerships with tech-forward insurers to provide start-up founders with more cost-effective options for providing benefits to their teams. Nü Benefits will also be offering a number of limited-time offers during 2024 for FoundersBeta members to take advantage of even lower fees. Stay tuned!

77. MavenMind

Founders: Anastasia Artemova, Yuliya Slavnova
Website: https://www.mavenmind.ai

Elevator Pitch: We’re shaping the future of work in Canada by connecting newcomers & job seekers to opportunities faster and teaching them skills to excel.

Growth to date: 2,000 Early Beta signups, community of 50,000 newcomers.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? It is harder than ever to find signal among the noise. AI is bridging the knowledge and skill gap, and helps job seekers access more and better opportunities. This increases competition and floods recruiters with profiles to sift through. AI is also creating more noise than ever with automated job search assistants and job posting tools. The future of work is in building trusted ecosystems where every candidate has a unique edge to offer and employers can hire with confidence. The most impactful role of AI is to increase candidate personalization and hiring precision. It’s in increasing quality, not quantity – that’s where MavenMind comes in.

What’s next? 
The year 2024 is the year we go to market:
– Soft launch the MavenMind candidate readiness platform in Q1 2024 and are looking to onboard more Recruitment and Education partners.
– Scaling our newcomer and coach network to offer specialized support to help our candidates land jobs with precision and confidence. If you’re an employer or recruiter starving for high quality candidates and want to tap into a pool of high-skilled newcomers in Canada, reach out to us, MavenMind can help.

76. PR Monkey 

Founders/key people: Nima Olumi, Codrin Cobzaru
Website: https://www.prmonkey.com/

Elevator Pitch: PR Monkey revolutionizes the way businesses and PR agencies interact with the media. By leveraging advanced AI and comprehensive databases, our SaaS platform streamlines the PR process, making media outreach and journalist engagement more effective and less time-consuming. Our dual-service model caters to both agencies and in-house PR teams, offering a suite of tools to enhance media visibility and brand reputation.

Growth to Date: PR Monkey has experienced remarkable growth since inception, expanding our user base to encompass over 100 active organizations, which include a blend of PR agencies and in-house marketing teams. The introduction of our “brand functionality” in April propelled a 350% surge in app interaction, underscoring the platform’s impact in enhancing media outreach efforts and operational efficiency for our users.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is fundamentally transforming the PR industry by automating routine tasks, enriching media outreach strategies, and providing deep insights into journalist interests and media trends. PR Monkey utilizes AI to offer unprecedented efficiency in creating personalized pitches, tracking media mentions with sentiment analysis, and generating dynamic media kits that adapt to current news cycles. This empowers our clients to predictively and proactively navigate the PR landscape with data-backed decisions.

What’s next? PR Monkey is scaling up, with our sights set on broadening our user base and enriching our platform capabilities. In the pipeline are enhanced white labeling functionality and partnerships aimed at expanding our media database, ensuring our users have the most comprehensive tools at their disposal. Additionally, plans are underway to grow our team, focusing on product development and customer success to maintain our edge in innovation and user experience within the PR tech space.

75. Peple 

Founders: Chris Melnick-MacDonald
Website: https://www.peple.io/

Elevator Pitch: Peple is transforming the way recruitment works, making it faster and more accessible for both job seekers and employers. By integrating sophisticated tools and insights, we help job seekers reach their career goals while enabling employers to cut the recruitment process from weeks to days. Our platform levels the playing field, giving every organization the chance to establish a vibrant job board and tap into a previously unreachable talent pool. Join Peple to be part of a movement that’s reshaping the future of hiring.

Growth to date: In 2024, we’ve reached a milestone with over 31,000 users and a significant expansion of job boards on the Peple network.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is revolutionizing recruitment for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) by automating time-consuming tasks, enhancing candidate matching through data analysis, and providing scalable solutions to identify top talent efficiently. This technology levels the playing field, allowing SMBs to compete with larger corporations for quality candidates by offering streamlined, personalized hiring experiences. AI’s predictive analytics and machine learning capabilities also help in reducing bias and improving the diversity of hires, thereby transforming the landscape of recruitment for businesses of all sizes. Peple is at the forefront of harnessing AI’s potential in recruitment.

What’s next? Amidst our team’s expansion and remarkable growth, we are embarking on our inaugural fundraising effort. We eagerly anticipate enhancing our partnerships with both existing and prospective clients!

74. Quantigo AI

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

Elevator Pitch: At Quantigo AI, we specialise in providing high-quality training data to empower companies across multiple verticals to build on the foundation for training their machine learning models, thus making them more robust. Thriving as the cornerstone of the AI industry, our relentless commitment to excellence and innovation has been our greatest strength.

Growth to date: With our meticulously selected team, which has significantly increased in size and strength over the years, we have been delivering a diverse range of data annotation projects across the agriculture, retail, construction, through to the sports and security sectors, among many others. Today, our end-to-end solutions for machine learning support a large network of clients spanning across more than 20 countries globally, along with current expansion plans to new markets. The sheer range of our clientele exemplifies the extent of our adaptability and value of our services, even across different scales of businesses.

Through our core mission from inception, we strive to work closely with all our clients, acting as their trusted advisor and tackling their pain points. The approach we have taken to achieve our excellence has been through leveraging a combination of both technology and human expertise. For instance, our robust team of annotation experts are consistently trained in utilising the latest techniques and tools in the industry, thus ensuring our exceptional training data quality is continuously maintained. Our persistent commitment on precision, quality, and adaptability has been the driving force of our growth till date, as we have continued to solidify our position in the industry as a highly dependable AI partner for delivering high-calibre data and in turn, helping to grow the capabilities of AI-driven companies worldwide.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? The landscape of AI advancements has been ever-evolving, and so it has been crucial for us to adapt to the changing requirements by leveraging automation and continuously refining our annotation processes to align seamlessly with the evolving needs of our clients. This approach has enabled us to streamline our processes more effectively, enhancing both efficiency and accuracy in our data annotation services. For instance, the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) and other open-sources models has opened up new dimensions, allowing us to explore more complex use cases that were once perhaps deemed challenging. Hence, at Quantigo AI, we are not just adapting to these AI-driven changes; we are leveraging them to further boost innovation, meet the evolving demands of our clients, and in turn, delve into an array of viable use cases that push the boundaries of what we can achieve with AI in our dynamic industry.

What’s next?  We are entering a transformative phase where our focus as a company on more talent, partnerships, and product development will propel Quantigo AI to new heights, whilst continuing to honour our clear vision to pave the way through AI innovation and industry leadership.

In the upcoming year, we will be embarking on a strategic expansion, scaling our talented team to meet the increasing demands of the dynamic AI landscape, as we recognise the invaluable contributions of our current team and so, aim to onboard further exceptional talents, who will share our vision of pushing the boundaries of AI capabilities.

In addition, building on our success and in line with our mission to grow impactful collaborations, we will continue to fortify our existing partnerships and establish new ones, as we aim to extend our reach to new markets in order to further drive a collaborative ecosystem that accelerates innovation at a global scale. Lastly, we are working to develop our very own, in-house built AI product, leveraging advanced technologies and our deep understanding of industry requirements; we are aiming for this product to deliver unparalleled value in the dynamic world of AI.

73. ARKI

Founders: Natalia Bakaeva + Mehdi Karamnejad (We are experts, obsessed, and hungry to solve this problem!)
Website: https://www.getarki.com/

Elevator Pitch: ARKI is an AI-driven 10x productivity enhancement tool tailored for architectural, engineering, and interior design firms facing challenges in digital asset management and the effective reuse of design artifacts. Designed with a commitment to a jobs-to-be-done-centric approach and seamless interoperability, ARKI offers a cost-effective solution for firms that lack the resources for expensive tools or the capacity for manual data organization.

By automating tagging, indexing, and retrieval processes, ARKI streamlines access to years of a firm’s collective design expertise, enabling swift location and reference to previous projects without needing full-time maintenance staff.Our platform is a comprehensive enablement tool, transforming how organizations access and utilize design data. It encapsulates a searchable repository of internal design insights, empowering teams with predictable project outcomes while ensuring adherence to schedules and budgets.

With ARKI, architects, engineers, and designers can easily tap into a wealth of previous project work, mitigating costly errors and fostering significant time savings across all project phases—averaging 200 hours saved per staff member annually, equivalent to 2000 hours or a full-time employee for every cluster of 10 people.Emphasizing ARKI’s role as the single source of truth, our solution employs AI to preserve and utilize past design expertise, generating architectural assets through natural language navigation. ARKI is designed to be software-agnostic, integrating smoothly into any design firm’s workflow to address interoperability challenges. This adaptability ensures that ARKI helps produce functional, aesthetically pleasing designs that comply with codes and environmental commitments and significantly reduces the time and costs associated with designing and building human habitats.

Growth to date: Our beta platform is underway with three design partners and nine onboard users in two companies, tapping into 1000 ready-to-use searchable units for daily architectural tasks. This ensures a smooth start as we integrate with firms’ internal databases.

In what way is AI shaping your industry? Data organization, categorization, and search are currently predominantly manual processes. We see a world where architects, engineers, and interior designers can quickly use current knowledge to design buildings that follow standards, compliance codes, and environmental commitments. Additionally, the housing crisis in Canada and the US underscores the urgent need for accelerated housing design and construction, where AI can significantly expedite the process.

ARKI empowers professionals to focus on groundbreaking design instead of tedious details. Mid-size design firms represent a market struggling to manage their substantial digital assets due to the prohibitive cost of advanced digital asset management tools and outdated technology that uses manual tagging. Our search tool lets designers ask what they are looking for in a way they’d speak to a colleague. ARKI provides knowledge continuity at your fingertips.

What’s next?
Product Launch is Q2 2024
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72. NeedleAID

Founders: Jamie Magrill
Website: https://www.needleaid.ca

Elevator Pitch: NeedleAID is creating the next generation of safe sharps management products, including safe one-handed needle preparation and disposal devices (also called NeedleAID)! Needlestick injuries are ranked third among concerns for healthcare workers who use needles – our mission is to eliminate needlestick injuries while also optimizing the workflow and disposal process for sharps and other biohazards materials.

Growth to date: NeedleAID has brought on board key early users including the University of British Columbia and McGill University, and have an oversubscribed beta trial running now with more than 40 sites across Canada – contact us at info@needleaid.ca to be added to our trial! We are also currently finalizing our pre-seed raise of 500,000CAD and bringing key investors and hospital partners on board as stakeholders to ensure the success of our scale up!

In what way AI is shaping your industry?AI has been slow to impact the healthcare industry because of tight regulation and red-tape, however there are easier-to-target areas including logistics, waste management, and workflow optimization where AI is likely to make early inroads in the next few years.

What’s next? Exciting things are coming this year in our product roadmap – we can’t disclose too much, but keep an eye on NeedleAID or sign up to our mailing list (https://www.needleaid.ca/newsletter-signup)

71. Cansulta

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

Elevator Pitch: Cansulta is a global collaboration platform & community that provides businesses with easy & affordable access to vetted professionals. We’re the digital bridge between enterprises and world-class consultants: consulting for the modern era. Better business awaits!

Growth to date: Cansulta now offers the diverse expertise of MORE THAN 150 vetted professionals in every business area, for every industry and need. Our growing partner network and community provides discounts and collaboration with other trusted providers and specialists, such as C-suite and fractional leadership, web development, CRM, legal, payments, cost reduction, and grants/funding.

What’s next: Even more professionals, features & solutions are on their way in 2024!
– Associates (junior consultants) are now available to complement internal teams or work alongside senior consultants
– Workshops, webinars & drop-in sessions with industry experts
– Training for Consultants and Founders
– New, flexible subscription and prepaid options let you collaborate as needed, from a short live consultation to large multi-month, multi-team projects

70. Notepal 

Founders: Edwar Dommar, Farid Rismanchi, Liborio Lomonaco and William Tarbett
Website: https://www.notepal.ca/

Elevator Pitch: NotePal is an education platform where Ontario grade 1-8 teachers can collaborate and share educational resources to improve student achievement. Teachers can buy and sell quality lesson plans, assessments, and other educational material based on the Ontario curriculum. NotePal’s vision is to not only provide teachers with access to teacher-created, ready-to-go educational resources but to also cultivate a collaborative community. Whether you are an experienced teacher, a teachers college candidate or a homeschool teacher, you will have the opportunity to collaborate and share your expertise and creativity with one another, follow and chat with one another and schedule meeting time to work together. Our goal is to create an education hub that fosters collaboration and brings the education community together for the purpose of improving student performance.

Growth to date: The platform was recently launched in December 2023 and despite the holiday season, NotePal secured 10 active users and more than 30 educational resources have been submitted on the platform so far. We have a growing user-base and teachers have expressed interest in joining and contributing to the platform in the new year. We are excited to further introduce our platform to private and public schools and onboard more teachers onto NotePal.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? The introduction of artificial intelligence to the education field can be a great opportunity for teachers and for NotePal. AI can empower teachers to create a variety of lesson plans and other educational resources in a quicker and more efficient way. However, it is critical for teachers to understand the limitations of AI as it might not be able to create tailored and engaging resources that fit the individual needs of students. Teachers still need to add their personal touch to AI-created resources to refine them and to ensure they accommodate diverse learning styles. At NotePal, our future goal is to integrate AI into our platform as an additional tool to supplement teachers in creating their educational resources.

What’s next? In 2024, we will be introducing NotePal to private and public schools through hosting in-person workshop sessions to walk teachers through our platform and its features. We will be partnering with ed-tech conferences to showcase and display our product to gain further traction and exposure. In addition, we will be introducing new features based on user feedback. In the future, once we have a strong user-base and a wide variety of educational resources, we hope to partner with school boards to implement NotePal in the classrooms and to expand to other provinces starting with Quebec.

69. SimpliCity 

Founders: Briana Sim, CEO and Ian Sim, CTO
Website: www.simplicitycms.ca

Elevator Pitch: SimpliCity is the only composable content management and digital services platform purpose-built for Canadian municipalities. Works for you today; grows with you tomorrow.

Growth to date: We started from the realization that although governments want to provide direct digital services to their citizens, current website tech was never designed for the integrations necessary to make this a reality. For the past year and a half, we have been working behind the scenes to build a new technology platform for website content and data integrations. Our Founding Partner, the District of North Vancouver, signed up as our first customer while we were still in development, as they believe in our vision and the power of our platform. Our first public release with their content and integrations on SimpliCity will be happening soon. Stay tuned on our LinkedIn for the Go-Live announcement.

In what way is AI shaping your industry? We’re seeing AI digital assistants (including chatbots) become popular for municipalities across Canada, particularly for information sharing, but also to speed up permit applications and more. AI is all about data, but existing website technology that saves as HTML makes your content difficult to use in these instances. We are changing the way content is created. In SimpliCity, content is represented as structured JSON data, and everything in SimpliCity is provided via APIs. This means your content can now be used for AI model training cleanly. In plain English, your content can now become useful and reusable as chatbot answers. We have a larger goal of bringing together various forms of AI with data and integrations from many vendor systems, along with secured public user access, to enable relevant, timely, and personalized access to information and services.

What’s next? After our public launch with the DNV, we will be connecting with municipal stakeholders and partners,
and demoing SimpliCity while we exhibit at various conferences within Canada. We’re looking to expand
nationwide across Canada in 2024 by building relationships with three to five additional Founding
Partners to pilot SimpliCity, provide input on features to add to Release 2 of our platform, receive
exclusive discounts, and help shape the future of municipal service delivery excellence. On the
development roadmap, we are working to introduce CRM integration, citizen service authentication, and
payment processing to the platform

68. Toast 

Founders: Marissa McNeelands, April Hicke
Website: https://www.trytoast.ca/

Elevator pitch: Toast is revolutionizing the tech industry by tackling gender equity head-on. Founded with a mission to shift the tech landscape, Toast provides a dual solution: a unique AI-driven recruitment tool that eradicates gender and socioeconomic biases in hiring, and a vibrant membership community that combats the ‘lonely only’ syndrome among women in tech. By partnering with companies committed to diversity to increase gender diversity on their teams and offering women and non-binary individuals robust support, mentorship, and career advancement opportunities, Toast is not just a platform but a movement towards creating a more inclusive and equitable tech environment.

Growth to date: Since its launch in 2023, Toast has made significant strides in addressing gender disparities within the tech sector. Our efforts have been recognized through multiple awards, including the DEI Initiative of the Year, and Glory Media’s changemakers of the year, highlighting our impact on gender equity in tech. We’ve successfully hosted over 100 events hosting over 2000 women and allies. Our unique AI-powered job matching and community-building initiatives have attracted over 75 companies and over 7000 individuals committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, setting a new standard for recruitment and community support in the tech industry.

In What Way AI Is Shaping Your Industry: AI is transforming the tech industry by automating and optimizing recruitment processes, yet it’s often marred by bias. Toast is pioneering the ethical use of AI to challenge and rectify these biases, ensuring a fair and inclusive hiring process. Our AI algorithms are trained on diverse datasets to mitigate gender, foreign work experience, and socioeconomic biases, enabling companies to access a wider talent pool and women to find roles where they can thrive. By harnessing AI for empowerment, Toast is leading the way in creating a tech industry where diversity and inclusion are not just buzzwords but the foundation of success.

What’s Next? Looking forward, Toast is committed to enhancing our AI algorithms for more accurate and unbiased job matches, further expanding our membership collective, and increasing our outreach and impact. We aim to enrich our platform with more skills-based mentorship including our Champions program – introduced this year to encourage men to be sponsors and champions for women – inclusive job matching, career coaching, and community support to empower more women in tech. Additionally, we plan to spotlight Canada and beyond as a prime location for inclusive tech talent as we expand to the US to bring our unique approach to tech hiring and community support across North America. With sustainability and financial viability at our core, Toast is set to continue supporting women in tech, driving systemic social change, and cementing our role as a leader in ethical AI recruitment and gender equity in the tech industry.

67. Motiv

Founders/Key People: Clark Lai, Mariya Besedina
Website: https://motiv.digital

Elevator Pitch: Motiv Innovation Group, an award-winning digital innovation firm and venture builder, operates synergistic business lines. Motiv Digital, our corporate venture builder, aids organizations in designing, launching, and scaling digital products and business ventures. Forward, our growth-as-a-service agency, partners with startups and growth-focused companies to build scalable growth systems, offering holistic strategies for accelerated growth. Motiv Public serves public-sector and non-profit organizations with digital agency services. Lastly, Motiv Venture Studio is dedicated to building and launching digital ventures, applying proven strategies and technologies.

Growth to Date: Since 2013, Motiv Innovation Group has made a significant impact worldwide, with our projects and ventures reaching millions globally. This success is quantified by generating over USD $1.5 billion in market value, a testament to our effective strategies and innovative approach in the digital space. Our diverse portfolio across various sectors underlines our capability to drive substantial growth and create value in the digital innovation landscape.

In what way is AI shaping your industry? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the innovation and venture building landscape. We recognize the potential of AI to enhance all aspects of our business, from empowering our team to delivering unparalleled value to our customers, partners, and the broader ecosystem. However, we maintain a balanced perspective, viewing AI as a powerful tool that complements but cannot replace the essential human elements of ingenuity and creativity.

What’s next? Motiv Venture Studio is set to launch a $20 million venture studio fund in Western Canada. This initiative aims to support digital ventures, utilizing strategies and technologies that have been refined over a decade. This new fund represents our commitment to continue driving innovation and success in the digital venture space.

66. Fuse Financial 

Founders: Aamna Zia
Website: https://fusefinancial.ca

Elevator Pitch: One app for all your small business finance needs. Easy banking, fast payments, and smart money management. Invoice in minutes, control spending, and automate accounting.

What trends do you see in your industry? Reality is banking in Canada and around the world sucks. It’s exclusionary and unhelpful to Canadian small businesses – especially in Canada. Tell me last time you went into your business bank account and said I actually got something done without relying on 6 different apps to facilitate payments? So now we have 6 different apps that small businesses have to deal with while trying to grow their business and serve their clients. Business banking hasn’t seen a revival at all. While more than 95% of businesses in Canada are small businesses with less than 20 employees.

I believe that the financial management industry will undergo a major transformation in the next five years, driven by the need for simplicity and efficiency. Businesses will look for user-friendly tools that can handle multiple financial tasks in one platform, such as banking, payments, invoicing, spending, and accounting. These tools will help businesses save time and resources and adapt to their changing needs. I think that the future of the industry is about creating financial solutions that are easy to use and aligned with the goals of businesses. The demand for solutions that make tasks like invoice collection, spending management, and bookkeeping more straightforward is on the rise. This shift reflects a broader desire among businesses to save both time and resources. In essence, the industry is moving towards financial solutions that prioritize ease of use and align seamlessly with the evolving needs of businesses.

65. MoxyPatch 

Founders: Remy Warren
Website: www.MoxyPatchUSA.com

Elevator Pitch: MoxyPatch is an over the counter device used to prevent the mild to moderate leaks due to stress urinary incontinence (SUI) in females. MoxyPatch aims to humanize leaks by getting the conversation started about SUI and to offer an eco-friendly and accessible solution for the 1/3 of all women who experience this frustrating and often embarrassing problem.

What’s next? Official launch for MoxyPatch!

64. Starling 

Founder: Sarah Brown
Website: https://trystarling.com

Elevator Pitch: Starling is a specialty delivery service designed for unique foods. It was founded in 2020 by two sisters, Sarah and Kate Brown. It began as a movement to support local businesses, offering an affordable on-demand home delivery service for Toronto’s local shops, and it has since evolved into a comprehensive logistics network.

Growth to date: We’re really happy with our traction! Our customer base has increased 2.5x year-over-year on a referral basis alone. We’ve hired an incredible team which is now allowing us to turn our attention towards outbound marketing for the first time.

63. Vambora

Founders: Amadeu Ferreira, Mark Dickens, Laura Ferreira, Alessandro Santos
Website: https://www.vambora.com/

Elevator Pitch: Imagine relocating to a new country, faced with the daunting task of establishing your financial credibility from scratch? Vambora is reshaping this challenge by harnessing Open Banking to establish a global ‘financial identity’ system. Our platform converts intricate banking data into a straightforward Trust Profile, enabling newcomers to effortlessly secure housing and financial services without the obstacles of conventional credit checks. For property managers and financial institutions, Vambora provides a more holistic perspective on an individual’s financial well-being beyond a typical credit score, empowering them to assess with efficiency and confidence.

Growth to date: We launched our Closed Beta in April, initially concentrating our efforts on the housing sector as a tenant screening solution. Upon releasing the Public Beta in September, we have expanded our services to cater to customers in the insurance, telecommunications, and financial services industries as an underwriting solution. To support our rapid expansion, the team has grown from four to nine members, encompassing five full-time employees, one advisor, and three consultants, all unified by the mission to facilitate financial access for a wider audience of consumers.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is reshaping the FinTech industry by optimizing fraud detection, improving customer service through chatbots, and revolutionizing investment management with robo-advisors. It’s also enhancing credit scoring accuracy and overall operational efficiency. Vambora’s strategic plans involve leveraging AI to empower service providers to make swift, precise, and confident lending and decisions. Additionally, Vambora aims to integrate AI to offer personalized financial recommendations aligned with consumers behaviors and financial goals, further enhancing the value of its solution within the FinTech landscape.

What’s next? Vambora has a number of significant developments, having recently onboarded Alessandro Santos as our full-time CTO. This strategic move signifies a commitment to bolstering our technical leadership. Additionally, we’re migrating our infrastructure to the cloud so we can implement best development practices to ensure scalability and high security standards. As part of our growth strategy, we are actively onboarding new affiliates and partners, aiming to promote financial inclusion for a broader audience of newcomers. We’re introducing a range of new products in our marketplace, signaling a dynamic phase of innovation and expansion for Vambora. Overall, due to the momentum of Open Banking in Canada, we have been approached by a large number of potential enterprise clients. We currently have a pipeline that if fully realized has the potential to bring in over $5M dollars in revenue for the company.

62. Simply Eloped

Founders: Janessa White and Matt Dalley
Website: https://simplyeloped.com/

Elevator Pitch: Weddings are costly, stressful, time-consuming and let’s be honest, usually not very fun to plan. Simply Eloped is the top elopement company in the US and makes the process of planning a wedding for 20 guests or less easy, cost-conscious and enjoyable! We personalize every ceremony we do – from cat backpacks to Lord of the Rings themed ceremonies. Located in 34 destinations around the US, Simply Eloped has everything you need for your magical day.

Growth to date: To date, we are in 34 destinations around the US, have married over 10,000 couples and are on track to hit 9M in bookings for 2023.

What’s next? We’re about to launch a new program called OMG Elopements which will be luxury elopements (think helicopters, hot air balloons and more!). We’re also launching a sister company called Wedfora which will be leveraging the tech Simply Eloped has built and allow couples and vendors to connect directly on our all-in-one planning platform.

61. WNORTH

Elevator Pitch: An award-winning membership and conference dedicated to bridging the gender power gap by elevating women in the leadership pipeline.

Growth to date:
Since being founded in 2015, we have hosted over 400 events, 7 Conferences and have over 20,000 past event and workshop attendees.  Our membership tripled in size at the start of the pandemic, as we were virtual first since 2018, and now have over 1,500 members across North America, many of which are a part of our Corporate Membership program with global  organizations such as Indeed.com, TD, SAP, Aritzia, Accor, Cisco and PepsiCo.

In what way is AI shaping your industry?
Amidst growing concerns about artificial intelligence, the technology is poised to change the collective approach to productivity and efficiency. Artificial intelligence can help offer purpose-driven, immersive events that streamline business operations. The automation of tasks, from generating copy to organizing meetings, allows organizers and attendees to simplify processes to yield results. In the conference and event space, artificial intelligence will reframe the way we interact with one another, allowing more time for innovation and creative endeavours to thrive. 

What’s next?
The WNORTH Conference, Canada’s largest destination gathering for women in leadership, is heading to Whistler for its eighth annual installment. In an exciting partnership announcement, TD Bank has signed on for a two-year presenting sponsorship of the conference, in support of women’s professional growth. This year’s event will offer both in-person and virtual attendance options, surrounded by the theme of “Lift As We Climb,” and emphasizing the transformative power of connection and mentorship in bridging the gender power gap in business. With captivating keynotes, interactive workshops, and thought-provoking discussions led by renowned speakers and business leaders, the conference aims to explore the essence of inclusion, community, and mentorship. Notable speakers include leaders from PepsiCo Foods Canada, Cisco, Translink and TD Bank.

60. Souqh

Founders: Ahmer Rafiq
Website: https://souqh.ca/

Elevator Pitch: Experience a simplified home ownership experience. Simply connect, collaborate and transact with real estate services and home improvement professionals – using one homeownership hub.

Growth to date:
– 3,000+ Service Providers across Ontario
– Partnered with OREA (Ontario Real Estate Association) to offer Souqh’s home
ownership hub as an affinity member benefit to 96,000+ Realtors across
Ontario.
– 8,000+ transactions facilitated through Souqh (1 yr.)
– 10+ strategic partnerships launched (OREA, MREB, Borrowell, Prepare for
Canada, several real estate boards across Ontario, etc.)
– $725K pre-seed capital raised through angel investors
– Accepted into DMZ PropTech incubator
– Cash flow positive

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is significantly shaping the Proptech (Property Technology) industry by introducing innovative solutions and transforming various aspects of real estate. Here are several ways AI is influencing the Proptech sector: predictive analytics towards market trends, using AI algorithms for property valuations, using AI powered chatbots and VA’s, facial recognition and security, smart home integrations and blockchain for real estate transactions.

Overall, AI is playing a pivotal role in revolutionizing the Proptech industry, making it more efficient, data-driven, and user-friendly. As technology continues to advance, we can expect further innovations and improvements in the way AI shapes the real estate landscape.

What’s next:
– Expansion into BC, AB in 2024
– Continued partnerships with key market enablers and channel partners
– Growing product/sales/customer success teams
– Raise seed round in 2024

59. VanHack

Founders: Ilya Brotzky
Website: https://vanhack.com/

Elevator Pitch: VanHack helps tech talent relocate, either by getting a new job or moving with their current employer. Trusted by 1000+ companies worldwide, including Brex,1Password, Thinkific, Bench, and SkiptheDishes rely on VanHack to fill their intermediate/senior developer roles from its community of 450,000+ tech professionals all ready to work remotely or relocate.

VanHack provides end-to-end hiring and relocation support. Our platform sources, screens and matches the right talent to your job in minutes. After a hire is made, our in-house hiring and global mobility experts offer additional assistance with remote starts and relocation services.

We also just launched the “Canadian Engineering Office” where we help tech talent that’s already working remotely for global companies relocate to Canada in just a few months while keeping their current job.

Growth to date: VanHack has helped fast-growing companies make over 2,000 hires.

What’s next: VanHack’s goal is to help relocate 10,000 engineers in the next 5 years. If you are looking to hire developers outside your local labour market, quote “Founders Beta”at signup and be eligible for 25% off placement fees off your first hire.

58. Techempower 

Elevator Pitch: We enable your software innovation with generative AI, fractional CTO, VP Engineering and engineering specialists.

Growth to date: We’ve been in business for twenty five years, so growth isn’t our primary focus. That said, 2024 is definitely going to be a big year in tech, and our workload reflects that.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? It’s no surprise that the software industry is an early AI adopter. What is surprising is how much of a game-changer it’s been already. When used properly, LLMs have a multiplication effect on productivity – turning one A engineer into ten. This helps us stay competitive. It makes work more fun too! There’s a lot of talk about AI replacing software engineers – even Jensen Huang said that kids shouldn’t learn to code. I think it’s too early to say. Even if it does happen, there’s a lot of engineering to be done before then. Right now, ChatGPT is an 80% solution. The remaining 20% has to be filled in by smart engineers. The introduction of ATMs initially led to more bank teller jobs, not fewer. I suspect that the same will happen, at least for the next ten years.

What’s next? We’re working with several stealth AI startups on some very exciting projects across many domains. I can’t say much about them, but I can say that AI will be everywhere sooner than you think. Can you imagine it? A website chatbot actually being useful? It’s a fantastic time to be in tech.

57. Discrepancy AI

Key People: Lisen Kaci
Website: https://www.discrepancyai.com/

Elevator Pitch: Discrepancy AI leverages the power of artificial intelligence to review legal documents for errors and inconsistencies. 90% of proofread legal documents contain errors – with errors accounting for one third of all settlement payments in claims. Errors in contracts, depositions, wills, and more are high stakes for law firms. Discrepancy AI allows legal professionals to focus on billable hours while supporting their team on efficient document review. Discrepancy AI is the ultimate AI partner for law firms, supporting your team in their efforts.

Growth to date: Launched in beta with user testing beginning in February. If you want to try the product, get in touch on our website. You will be able to sign up for an account in February.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? We are an entirely artificial intelligence-driven platform, meaning your per-word cost and time spent on reviewing legal documents drops significantly. The legal industry has been quick to adopt technology, and AI is no exception.

What’s next? We are partnering with legal technology startups that can whitelabel our solution and bake it into their own platform offerings as well as companies focused on e-discovery and e-filing.

As well, we have a free trial that allows people like you and I to use Discrepancy AI – review your employment contract, real estate agreement, marriage contract, and more for an extra “set of eyes” to support your review efforts.

56. Salubrum

Founders: Osama Usmani and Osama Usmani
Website: https://www.salubrum.com/

Elevator Pitch: Salubrum, is on a mission to evangelize the North American healthcare market to Medical
Tourism, by making the industry safe, affordable and easy for both patients and health systems.
Firstly our Travelwise Passport, is a free to use digital tool that provides prospective medical
tourists with pricing insights, clinic verification, travel and stay bundles and insurance packages.
Our competitive advantage is that we can process the approval, claim and payment process for
HSA and FSA accounts for US based patients. Secondly, our Salubrum Preferred Partner
Network (PPN), is a niche PPN composed of trusted international clinics and specialized
individual practitioners based in North America. Health systems such as insurance companies,
retail health companies and benefit providers can use our PPN to enhance their current offering
with cost savings, quick turnaround times and necessary compliance.

Growth to date:
– HealthPass was a Finalist in TECDE UOttawa’s Startup Pitch Competition (2020)
– Recognized as part of the ‘Top 50 Healthcare Companies of 2021’ awards by the
International Forum on Advancements in Healthcare (IFAH).
– Alumni of the 6th TreeFrog Accelerator Cohort (2022)
– Alumni of Collision Conference – ALPHA Program (2023)
– Recognized as #15 on the ‘500 hottest startups at Collision’, article by
FoundersPress (2023).
– Welcomed our first evangelist client, Quironsalud, the largest private healthcare
network in Europe.
– Welcomed LA based media company, Artest Management Group led by former NBA
player Metta World Peace, as a strategic partner.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? Salubrum believes in helping patients through digital tools, and helping health systems through compliance, our mission and culture therefore is rooted in innovation and technology. Although
we do not use AI in our solutions we are perfectly positioned to help the industry transition their
offerings into the digital and now AI age by being their catalyst for innovation by opening our
doors to new AI projects, tools and services.

What’s next: Salubrum is very excited to start working with our Partners at Artest Management Group
in 2024, and hope to hold our raise in Q1 2024. Salubrum is also very close to closing a deal with a retail healthcare giant in the US whose name starts with C and ends in S, to have them use our growing PPN as part of
their referral network. We hope to have more news in the new year, fingers crossed!

55. Unwrapit

Founders: Linsay Moran, Peter Deitz, Taylan Pince
Website: https://www.unwrapit.com

Elevator Pitch: Unwrapit is a digital corporate gifting and incentive platform that is proud to support businesses in their efforts to gift more sustainably at scale, resulting in tangible insights all neatly wrapped in a branded experience.

Growth to date: 10%+ growth year over year

In what way AI is shaping your industry? Within the corporate gifting industry we’re seeing a “scramble to AI” just like there is in many other industries. We’re watching that from afar. What we’ve learned is that gifting is intensely personal. Both for the company giving the gift (i.e. picking/curating the right thing) and for the person receiving it. While there are many benefits to AI (and pitfalls), we would argue that gifting is an area in which human interaction, intervention and curation is critical for success.

What’s next? we have some fun new product updates on the horizon, our customers are getting more control over their gift campaigns! And we’ve recently announced a partnership with Butterfly Ethical Gifts for companies that may like the apeal of a digital campaign but still want to include a more traditional physical option (or two) that is thoughtfully curated like the rest of our gift options.

54. Perch

Founders: Alex Leduc
Website: https://myperch.io/home/

Elevator Pitch: Perch is a digital platform that makes mortgages simple. Our recommendation engine helps first-time home buyers optimize their path to homeownership and assists existing homeowners in maximizing their returns on their properties.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI serves two core purposes in the mortgage space: One is to determine which mortgage is the best choice for a client. The other is to optimize a user’s mortgage options based on their unique situation. Perch is at the forefront of both of these use case.

What’s next? 
– Massive partnership announcements (stay tuned)
– We are launching some huge new features in the next quarter that enhance the customer experience and better enable them to get a better pre-approval.
– Growth of Perch Capital, our mortgage fund (currently yielding 9.28%).

53. Instarails 

Founders: Yamini Sagar
Website: https://www.instarails.io/

Elevator Pitch: About one in nine people, or 800 million, currently receive money from their families who have migrated abroad for better-paying jobs. Millions of businesses, employees, contractors, gig-workers, and families receive money from abroad. Many of these businesses and migrants come from low-and-middle-income countries, and the funds they receive also help support their home countries’ economies. About 1.4 billion people around the world are unbanked or financially excluded, the majority being women and impoverished. Let’s focus on small business owners like Afia, who export handwoven bags from local artisans in Nigeria to global eCommerce marketplaces. When the eCommerce marketplace sends her $10,000, approximately $668 is charged in fees and margin. $668 could be one-third of a person’s annual income in Nigeria!

At Instarails, we are passionate about helping people and businesses, especially those in low-middle-income countries, who are often hit hardest by exorbitant fees and the monopoly of certain payment providers. Our mission is to see everyone financially included and treated with the same respect and dignity, regardless of their financial status. We want every country to thrive financially, and we can make that happen together.

At Instarails, we provide an alternative solution for cross-border payments. We provide a network that makes payments instant, inexpensive, and inclusive to everyone, especially those in low-middle-income countries. We have developed Instarails as a B2B SaaS company to address the root of the problem. If every bank and business adopts the Instarails network, we can collectively contribute towards improving the global economy and providing financial inclusion. We can return the billions of dollars charged in fees to these hardworking businesses and people who deserve it.

Growth to date: We have integrated and are going live with seven global business clients in February 2024. We have thirteen more companies on our waitlist that are ready to integrate with our platform in Q2 2024.

Collaboration opportunity: I am seeking businesses in the United States that can benefit from instant, inexpensive, and inclusive cross-border payment solutions. Our platform enables companies to make payouts via bank accounts, e-wallets, or cash, all through a single platform. If you are a small business, we offer a web portal for sending payments, and there is no need for integration. On the other hand, if you are an enterprise business, I would love to collaborate with you in a pilot program. I am confident that you won’t look back once you try our platform.

What’s next? We are thrilled to announce the launch of our platform in February 2024! Our clients can send B2B, B2C, and C2C payments via bank accounts, mobile wallets, or cash pickup in over 75 countries and 50 currencies. Our clients include banks, businesses, e-commerce marketplaces, and mobile app companies.

52. 409.AI

Founders: Mike Magnacca
Website: https://www.409.ai

Elevator Pitch: 409.AI helps business leaders complete IRS compliant 409a valuations that are used to protect the equity value of their employees. Through the integration of ML/AI, we help businesses complete these valuations 10x faster, 50% cheaper, and infinitely easier.

Growth to date: Grown from two employees to five FT employees and two PT employees in last three months. Currently working with clients in Canada, USA, and Australia.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? For us, AI has unlocked the ability to build a valuation differently from the ground up. Instead of manually entering data, we can use APIs that capture 10,000 data points that we can instantly run through our machine learning trained model of over 200,000 businesses. We can also use AI find comparable companies to benchmark against. And we can save hours of report writing through generative ai. With AI, our valuators are able to save 10’s of hours of work on each valuation and pass along those savings to our customers!

What’s next? Excited to announce some major partnerships in the next couple months as we go from launching our newest product to scaling!

51. ContentBot 

Founder: Nick Duncan
Website: https://contentbot.ai

Elevator Pitch: Write content 10x faster with the help of AI. ContentBot exists to help founders and content marketers create more meaningful content easier and faster. AI has come a long way since I first got excited about the concept 20+ years ago. With the advancement of OpenAI’s GPT-3, I was finally able to make a product that could add considerable amount of value to time-strapped founders and content marketers. As a founder, I know how hard it is to swap those “hats” as we move from marketing to product dev to support and back again. Having an AI take on the bulk of creating content for my startup is an amazing way for me to free up more time to do other essential items that will help my startup succeed. This is the reason ContentBot exists today.

What’s next? Grow, grow and grow some more. We are heavily focused on our customers at this stage and we are committed to fully understanding what levers to pull next.

50. wrksourcing 

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

Elevator Pitch: wrksourcing is your trusted virtual assistant and workflow solutions partner supporting entrepreneurs and business owners who are committed to growth. We help you save time by expertly handling administrative, sales, and marketing tasks, allowing you to channel your energy into strategic, revenue-generating endeavors. At wrksourcing, we advocate working smarter, not harder – the key to unlocking your business’s full potential.

Growth to date: From humble beginnings in January 2021 with a leadership team of 2 and 3 virtual assistants, wrksourcing has undergone a remarkable transformation. Presently, our leadership team boasts 6 members overseeing crucial areas such as Sales and Marketing, HR/Recruitment, Finance, and Client Success, supported by a core team of 35+ virtual assistants, specialists, and workflow experts. In terms of financial success, we’ve achieved a healthy 198% revenue increase from Fiscal 2021 to Fiscal 2023.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? We’ve been getting asked a lot lately on whether AI is going to replace the human roles – specifically the work of our virtual assistants and specialists. We see the rise of AI as an opportunity to seamlessly blend human touch with cutting-edge technology.

We’re actively investing in AI platforms ourselves to enhance the efficiency of our virtual assistants, transforming them into Super VAs. By incorporating AI tools, we aim to continuously elevate our services, providing clients with unparalleled value and staying at the forefront of technological advancements in our industry.

What’s next? Looking ahead to 2024, wrksourcing has exciting plans in store. A particular focus lies on expanding our Workflow Solutions product, an innovative offering born out of a deep understanding of entrepreneurs’ needs. Conducting comprehensive workflow audits allows us to identify and address foundational gaps before matching clients with virtual assistants. This personalized approach, coupled with creating tailored workflow plans, SOPs, and implementing these systems, distinguishes us in the outsourcing space. The goal is to not only make our clients’ lives easier by having proper processes and systems in place, but to also foster increased productivity and revenue for the entire organization. As we evolve, we believe our genuine and personalized approach to supporting entrepreneurs, combined with the Workflow Solutions offering positions us as leaders in the outsourcing arena.

49. Summit EHSQ

Founders: Dave McLean, Matthew Roberts
Website: https://www.summitehsq.com/

Elevator Pitch: Summit EHSQ is a Professional Services & Managed Services Provider (MSP) enabling organizations to leverage technology to drive their Environmental, Health, Safety and Quality Management programs. We work with organizations to implement technology solutions, with a focus on the Intelex suite of products, leveraging our 20+ years of combined experience in supporting a host of diverse global brands.

Growth to Date: Over 300 Projects Completed with more than 100 Clients, with $0 of External Funding

48. Tenure 

Founded: Jonathan Hilis
Website: https://tenurefi.com/

Elevator Pitch: Meet Tenure, that platform that is redefining employee benefits beyond generic health plans or standard rewards. We empower companies to offer personalized, purposeful, and portable benefits, allowing employees to choose and carry their tailored packages to any company. This not only streamlines and reduces administration and procurement costs but also enables employees to customize benefits, from dental and medical coverage to mental health support, retirement plans, debt repayment, and vacation funds. No more generic, one-fits-all strategy for employee benefits – the future is personalized, purposeful, and portable. With Tenure, the fusion of customization and convenience is transforming the paradigm of employee benefits.

Growth to Date: Tenure currently has 15 companies, with 1,500 employees signed up for phase one launch, redefines workplace engagement. In Phase One, employers can provide targeted monetary incentives aligned with employees’ personalized savings goals, ensuring rewards are tailored to individual preferences. In addition to employer rewards, automated features like savings matching, cashback, and round-up on purchases expedite the growth of employees’ savings, facilitating the achievement of their individual savings goals. Employers can scale reward criteria and budgets, enabling the definition of earning mechanisms within the company, adaptable to the company’s financial performance. In this phase, Tenure aims to quantify improvements in employee engagement, including reduced turnover, increased productivity, and elevated company internal Net Promoter Score (NPS).

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is revolutionizing the execution of organizations, facilitating the creation of highly personalized benefits for both employers and employees. By enabling streamlined trend analysis, AI has eliminated the outdated one-size-fits-all approach, paving the way for more personalized strategies. As AI continues to advance, we anticipate the rapid evolution of more sophisticated products that will swiftly enhance the lives of our customers.

What’s next? Following the personalized and purposeful focus of the first phase, our next phase emphasizes the portability of employee benefits. Collaborating with industry partners, we aim to streamline the process, enabling companies to easily activate and deactivate benefits, while empowering employees to carry these benefits with them. This innovation will revolutionize employer competitiveness, allowing for flexible cost benefits that can be strategically leveraged in hiring and employee retention efforts.

47. Equivesto 

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

Elevator Pitch: Equivesto is an investment portal and licensed Exempt Market Dealer that allows qualified Canadians to invest in private market opportunities including startups, local small businesses, pre-IPO, real estate, and private funds – Starting at $100 CAD. Founders can raise up to $1.5M CAD from their extended community leveraging Equity Crowdfunding, or any amount using other exemptions.

Growth to date: $50M+ Raised, 4500+ Investors, and 80+ Campaigns since launch in September 2020.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? A couple of the ways AI is improving our industry: 1) Backoffice/Compliance – A large cost-centre for most financial institutions is the man hours needed to meet compliance requirements. Humans, augmented with AI is a growing trend shown to increase the speed and accuracy paperwork can be complete. 2) Investment Company Admin – AI is helping Venture Capital, Private Equity, and Family Offices operate with a much leaner team. Taking over many of the administration tasks and allowing partners to focus on their core business. AI has also been proven to help managers with deal sourcing and the initial vetting of opportunities.

What’s next? Equivesto is continuing to grow at a rapid pace and service more and more Canadian investors and founders. One area we are further developing is our work with Angel Investors & Funds. In the last quarter, we have launched 3 new products for fund managers/partners, angel leads, and operators of Angel Syndicates, Venture Funds, and Real Estate Funds. These products are designed to help funds streamline their investment process, meet Canadian compliance requirements, and improve the overall experience for investors & issuers. Learn more at: https://equivesto.com/raise-for-funds

46. RealSage 

Founders: Arunabh Dastidar, Gaurav Madani, Zain Nathoo
Website: https://realsage.com/

Elevator Pitch: RealSage is an AI-powered decision support system for asset owners and managers. We use advanced Data Science and Machine Learning models to help asset managers make better decisions across their portfolios.

Growth to date: We have grown over 400% in the last year and continue to have over 140% net retention rate

In what way AI is shaping your industry? In the real estate industry, AI is now playing a pivotal role, transforming practices by enabling advanced data analysis and automating routine tasks. This technological integration leads to more precise property valuations, efficient transaction processes, and enhanced customer experiences.

What’s next? We are expanding rapidly across the US market and continuing to partner with savvy asset owners who are looking to incorporate AI in their regular decision-making workflow.

45. System-3

Founders: Elan Pratzer, Malka Lewittes
Website: https://www.system-3.com/

Elevator Pitch: System-3 is a SaaS-based solution that is fundamentally changing how organizations assess their leadership talent. Our predictive Leadership Simulation enables organizations to make more accurate, objective, and informed evaluations and decisions on their current and emerging leadership talent. System-3’s leadership talent solutions include succession planning, talent evaluation, team effectiveness, and high-potential talent identification.

Growth to date: System-3 raised a seed financing round in early 2023 and has built a significant client list of enterprise companies, private equity and venture capital investors, and executive search firms. We are also continuing to expand
our partner channels. With its technology, Industrial and Organizational science, customer success, product development and sales teams, System-3 is positioned for continued growth.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? A key trend we are seeing in the market is the significance of data. Executives, investors, and boards are looking for objective data to support their human capital decisions. They are no longer satisfied with subjectivity as the basis for their talent assessment. System-3 uses algorithms and model that reduce bias and support objective decision-making.

While there is an important role for AI in talent decisions, the models underpinning the technology must be sound, built carefully and constantly evaluated so as not to create adverse
impacts. Humans will need to continue to remain deeply involved in talent decisions.

What’s next? We are consistently enhancing and refining our Leadership Simulation and data analytics platform. We are always looking to partner with organizations, and companies whose mission is aligned. Please reach out if you are interested in working with System-3!

44. Pacto Medical 

Founders: Robert Halvorsen, Ryan Stinebaugh, and Ian Speers
Website:  www.pactomedical.com

Elevator Pitch: Prefilled syringes dramatically improve health and safety outcomes for the doctors and clinicians who use them, though their design is not optimized for medical transport.Prefilled syringes come with their plunger rods almost fully extended, which take up precious space during every step of the supply chain – sterilization, shipping, storage, distribution, and end-of-life. To solve this, we’ve invented a collapsible syringe with a 40 percent smaller packaging footprint relative to traditional prefilled syringes. Our design saves shipping costs, reduces waste and emissions, and brings the safety and quality benefits of prefilled syringes to more patients around the world.

Growth to Date: Pacto Medical has prototyped, tested, and refined multiple versions of our patent-pending design with stakeholders from 13 countries. We have also grown our team from three to seven people within less than a year. We have also developed numerous public, private, and non-profit partnerships to support our work. This growth has been supported through our participation in numerous accelerators, including the Harvard Innovation Labs, and MIT’s NSF-affiliated Spark program. It has also been made possible through the awards and grants we have received from the Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge, Harvard Innovation Labs, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, UMass Lowell Innovation Hub Clean Green Challenge, Dartmouth College Entrepreneurs Forum, and the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport.

In what way is AI shaping your industry? AI is being increasingly leveraged throughout the supply chain and logistics industries to support the fast and efficient movement of products from place of manufacture to use. This includes using AI to find the most efficient ways to consolidate and ship items while utilizing the least amount of highly limited shipping and storage space. These efforts are critical to keep items moving through supply chains quickly, while limiting cost and carbon emissions. However, many of these efforts only appear downstream of the product itself. We aim to address the root of what is making some healthcare products unnecessarily expensive, difficult, and carbon-intensive to move through the supply chain – their actual design.

What’s next?  Our high-fidelity 3D printed prototypes need to be transitioned to production-ready injection molded parts. We will be conducting extensive reliability testing to ensure our molded parts can withstand the full brunt of the medical supply chain as well as the wide variety of environmental conditions present across the world. We will also conduct thorough user testing to confirm that our products are universally intuitive. We are simultaneously finishing up and filing our patents and trademark. Further partnerships, participation in accelerators, and funding announcements are expected to be released in early 2024.

43. SingleKey

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

Elevator Pitch: SingleKey helps residential landlords take the risk out of renting by offering the industry leading tenant screening solution as well as a Rent Guarantee program that secures rental income for landlords in the event of tenant default.

Growth to date: 110,000+ users

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI tools hold great potential in streamlining tenant screening processes by leveraging data to inform human decision-making, employing features such as ID verification to increase confidence in sight-unseen rentals and to reduce risks for landlords.

AI-driven tenant screening tools also show promise in enhancing underwriting for rent guarantees by utilizing data to predict the risk of rent payment defaults.

Another way that AI is shaping the rental industry is in the way it’s being used to refine rental ads with well-crafted copy and visually compelling material to attract high quality tenants.

Integration of AI into communication tools will also help set clearer expectations between landlords and tenants, ultimately raising communication standards and reducing conflicts for smoother rental operations.

What’s next:
-International credit checks to help tenants who are new to Canada get approved
-New Report 2.0 – Upgraded tenant screening platform
-Tenant Passport and Universal Rental Application to help improve housing accessibility for tenants
-Reporting rent to the credit bureau to help tenants build their credit

42. Deeded

Founders: Reuven Gorsht
Website: https://deeded.ca/

Elevator Pitch: Deeded is reimagining the closing experience for Real Estate. By combining advanced technology and deep expertise, Deeded delivers a seamless real estate closing experience for all parties in a transaction. Think of it as the “check out button” when you’re buying or selling a home. You can seamlessly complete your closing online.

Reuven’s (founder) most recent home buying experience quickly turned from excitement to a disappointment that left him and his family spending a weekend at the local Holiday Inn because because of an unexpected delay with his closing. After spending weeks dealing with the aftermath, Reuven noticed how inefficient and opaque the closing process was and how most of the technology used to manage the process was from the 1990s. Deeded was born to bring the closing experience to the 21st century, making home buying the happy and exciting moment that it should be.

Growth to date: Lots of homeowners closed seamlessly (and with rave reviews). Expanded in Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta, with more provinces to be launched.

What’s next? We’re expanding our platform and products to solve for many of the friction points that happen when buying or selling a home, adding value and making it a great experience for everyone involved in the transaction.

41. Surex

Founders: Lance Miller CEO/Matt Alston COO
Website: https://www.surex.com/

Elevator Pitch: Surex is an online insurance brokerage, allowing Canadians to Compare, Save and Purchase Car and Home insurance all online.

Growth to date: We have been in business for over 10 years, we have over 200 people working for Surex, and over 50,000 customers.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? We personally have used AI with regards to some of our processes to reduce human error, and to speed up production, and effienciency. Surex has invested heavily in AI and building automation tools that eliminate manual workflows for our back office, which has led to a 30% increase in efficiency. For example, Surex invested in building an AI-based tool that monitors our clients’ renewals and proactively notifies their advisors when re-shopping the policy is required.

Surex prides itself on differentiating how we do business from other more traditional broker models. Our clients are assigned to a dedicated advisor to ensure they have one point of contact to assess and assist in their changing insurance needs. Clients no longer have to be frustrated by telling their story multiple times to new individuals, while having information slip through the cracks by speaking with departments.

What’s next? We are always looking for great licensed insurance brokers to join our team! New partnerships are always in the works, and we are always improving

40. Agilicus 

Founders: Don Bowman, Angelo Compagnoni
Website: https://www.agilicus.com/

Elevator Pitch: Agilicus is transforming the way modern workforces connect to corporate resources whether information systems or operational technology. With a foundation in Zero Trust, Agilicus is a more secure alternative to VPNs and traditional remote connectivity solutions. Our cloud-native platform is helping organizations of all types and sizes expand the reach of company resources without compromising security. Mobile users, frontline workers, contractors, vendors, and partners can all be equipped with secure access that was previously unattainable. With Agilicus, any organization can provide single sign-on, using existing credentials, to any resource, using any device, without a VPN or client; simply, securely, and economically.

Growth to date: Agilicus developed the platform with strategic customers through paid trials. These customers needed to provide secure remote access to hundreds of frontline line workers to corporate applications. Those organizations are now customers. With their support, feedback, and a proven need for an affordable, easy to deploy cybersecurity platform, Agilicus is acting on its vision of a safer internet and adding new clients. In 2021, through our initial success, Agilicus was proud to introduce it’s platform and bring on institutional investors. Today, Agilicus is being used to enable secure remote access to operational technology and critical systems, including water treatment facilities and critical infrastructure.

What’s next: We are resolute in our mission to deliver secure remote access to organizations of all sizes, helping to make the internet a safe place to do business.

39. Venu 

Founders: Adham El-Khadem
Website: https://venu.ai/

Elevator Pitch: Venu is MENA’s first platform to bring people together to meet, create, and celebrate. Whether you’re on the hunt for the perfect birthday space, film set, wedding venue for your big day, or a creative loft for a team offsite, Venu gives you the keys to your cities’ best spaces. Our marketplace makes it easier than ever to find, compare and book unique spaces for any event with a single-click at 0% commission and with discounts up to 25% OFF. We offer a SaaS that helps hosts manage bookings, visits, leads and more from one place.

One of our interesting features would be the AI smart search! People can find their perfect venue just by typing what’s on their mind, from the event type, their budget & whatever they need, and in a few clicks, the AI will match them with their suitable venue.

Growth to date: In 250 active days, we’ve been able to bring 500,000 people together to celebrate, meet or create in 8 cities across Egypt in which 200,000+ are active users. We hosted 1,000+ events generating a total of $800,000 in sales to more than 750 venues. We’re growing now 300% MoM in terms of bookings. This is when we started offering the world’s first free-commission SaaS for venues to manage bookings, visits and leads from a single place.

And here’s a little bit of what we have achieved so far:

– Ranked #1 event startup in the MENA region according to SEMRush as of July 2023
– Ranked #23 among the Top 500 Companies in Collision, North America’s fastest-growing tech conference
(first & ONLY Egyptian-born company on the list)
– Partnered with well known corporates with an access of 50,000 employees (e.g.: General Electric, HassanAllam Holding, TheGrEEKCampus, etc.)

In what way AI is shaping your industry? Venu aims to facilitate the booking of venues through its tech-enabled platform, whether they are using it for family or corporate events like birthday parties or team-building exercises, or for creative purposes such as film shoots or to record a musical album.

Through the app’s dedicated search engine, users can find, compare and book the space they want in just a few taps. What makes Venu stand out is its ever-expanding database paired with its use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). So even if a location would usually be above your budget, the AI can predict the pricing of the venue and the best days to host the occasion, all in one minute.

What’s next? Now armed with a dedicated team, an established platform, a previous GTM, a successful SaaS, and an unwavering commitment to growth, we set our sights on the B2B market. Following our inbound techniques, we’ve closed corporate partnerships with a total budget for events worth $2M+/year and will continue partnering with those companies. In parallel, we have unlocked a new recurring revenue by adopting 50+ subscribers in just 30 days. We will be expanding our SaaS services to different markets to offer the world’s free-commission SaaS for venues. In the next year, we plan to bring 1,000,000 people together to celebrate, create or meet all while being live across 15+ cities.

38. JobBliss 

Founders: Angie Kramer
Website: https://jobbliss.com/

Elevator Pitch: JobBliss is a platform that simplifies contractor and remote team management. With JobBliss, companies can build, manage, and track their freelancers, contractors, and vendors in one dashboard. The platform helps businesses create their own private freelancer talent pool, ensuring that they have the right people when they need them.

Growth to date: JobBliss has an impressive client list, including Rothy’s, Walmart International, OPG, Intuit Canada, Corus Entertainment, and SGSco.

37. Yield Exchange

Founders: Yvette Wu
Website: https://yieldexchange.ca/

Elevator Pitch: For organizations looking for the best rates on their GIC investments, Yield Exchange is your one stop solution to connect directly with over 20 financial institutions for quick and easy depositing.  For financial institutions looking to secure high-value deposits from new or existing clients, Yield Exchange is your connection to thousands of municipal, non-profit, and SME organizations.

Our two-sided platform is the first of it’s kind, bringing the speed and transparency of an exchange trading platform to the world of GIC investing. What used to take days of scheduling calls and negotiating rates, now only takes seconds. Upon signing up, depositors get access to a range of instantly available rates or make a request for our financial intuitions to competitively bid on their investment.

We give power to back to investors to make informed financial decisions, while offering financial intuitions an easy way to connect to meet rate sensitive clients and build new relationships, all in a single platform.

Growth to date: Within 2 years since launching the platform, we currently serve over 150 different Canadian municipalities across 3 provinces and have secured 22 different financial institution partners. Some of our biggest municipal clients include Whistler, Victoria, Leduc, and Vancouver. We have also expanded outside the municipal finance space, securing over 100 more SMB and non-profit clients, including a number of large nationally recognized names. As of January 2024, we have reached over 1 billion dollars in deposit requests posted to our platform. With an average request size of over 3 million.

For us, this has been a clear signal that these large institutional depositors have been a seriously untapped market for disruption. The speed of growth we’re seeing while at pre-seed funding has been unrelenting and we’ve have begun collecting notable awards within the business community, including winning the 2022 Amazon Webservice Firehood Pitch Competition, Top Female Founder at New Ventures BC, and 40 under 40 business in Vancouver. The next step for us to to keep up the pace and continue reaching even more folks in Canada and beyond!

In what way AI is shaping your industry?  AI is going to flip the treasury management industry on it’s head. One of the most crucial things an AI needs to be effective is a great data set, and financial institutions have access to some of the most insightful data sets in the world. With open banking around the corner, the ability for fintech to innovate using AI can happen at lightning speeds.  In the treasury world, financial institutions stand to benefit significantly in areas like managing liquidity needs, forecasting future cashflows and even pricing deposits. They will be able to track their risk ratings in real time and automatically make adjustments.

For investors, AI can quickly identify investment opportunities, dynamically rebalance portfolios, and maximize returns while managing risk effectively. It will be able to automate repetitive tasks, improve the decision making of organizations and potentially even auto invest in GICs through platforms like Yield Exchange!

What’s next? By the time this is published, we should have just launched our biggest new feature to date! We’re bringing all-in rates to our platform, giving depositors the chance to instantly see what the GIC market has to offer. Additionally, we’re creating new functionality to support product development and client acquisition for financial institutions. We have one more huge partnership in the pipeline that is poised to seriously take Yield Exchange to the next level, making the entire process of opening accounts and posting a deposit truly seamless. We can’t quite share what that partnership is yet since we’re still nailing down the details, but it will definitely be something to look out for!

36. Hire Hipo

Founders: Adam Gellert
Website: https://hirehipo.com/

Elevator Pitch: Hire Hipo is revolutionizing hiring with a pre-vetted marketplace of high-potential candidates & companies. Think of a curated LinkedIn where the quality is good, and you want to interview every applicant. We aim to eliminate the need to attract, source and verify talent and reduce hiring time by up to 95%.

Growth to date: 35,000+ candidates in Canada, 100+ successful hires, 95% stayed beyond a year.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is challenging to apply to an industry where its business is people and people change. We use a combination of service and technology to forge this gap and see AI playing a leading role in how efficiently candidates and companies interact with one another, receive information, and improve matching.

What’s next? Looking to partner with hiring managers, recruiters, career coaches, and boot camps who want to join our referral network and earn cash for referring and vetting talent.

35. Konvi 

Founders/key people: Eran Peer, Ioana Surdu-Bob
Website: https://konvi.app

Elevator Pitch: Konvi is a global investment platform for exclusive assets such as luxury watches and classic cars. We enable anyone to access and benefit from a multi-century old asset class that has until today been accessible only to the ultra wealthy.

Growth to Date: We have seen 100% average MoM growth on our MRR within the last 6 months, and expect to grow 4x by the end of 2023!

In what way is AI shaping your industry? AI is currently touching and affecting every single industry. Within the alternative investment and general high-tech space, we are seeing AI as particularly transformative, whether it be within the asset selection/management tooling, all the way to creative content editing and generation. We see that AI is currently massively reducing the general operational burden in this space.

What next? In this tough fundraising environment, we have remained disciplined while continuing to see growth. We see this and next year as the perfect time to pounce ahead within the industry and hold our ground as market leaders. We are particularly excited about the M&A opportunities and consolidations underway, for which we will make several announcements very soon.

34. Niura 

Founders: Ryan Ahmad
Website: https://www.niura.io/

Elevator Pitch: Where young people are facing higher levels of stress and productivity is decreasing more quickly than ever, we need a solution that tackles the root causes of lower focus levels and constant procrastination. Productivity software intended to decreasescreen time or organize your schedule is only a bandage solution at best – their implementation is often uninformed, and more often than not, apps and calendars become more stressful to maintain than they are helpful. We need a solution created for you, by you.

Niura brings a revolutionary concept packaged in a familiar format by integrating brain performance monitoring technology directly into wireless earbuds, so you know exactly what’s happening inside your head. These earbuds are designed for high-performing individuals like students and professionals to monitor their cognitive patterns and suggest optimal work-rest cycles, making concentrating in a world full of distractions easier than ever. Engineered to work smarter, Niura earbuds blend into everyday routines, gamifying deep work and flow state, turning it into a more engaging experience.

Growth to date: For the last two years, we have worked tirelessly on developing our initial product, bringing together engineers and researchers to create an innovative product and app for our users to make the most of their time and outperform their peers. Since our founding in 2022, we have raised funding from over 30 early investors. Additionally, over 60 publications have highlighted our work, most notably TechCrunch 2023, Yahoo Finance, and the first Men’s Health Magazine documentary, Generation Flex (2024).

In what way is AI shaping your industry? AI is pivotal in developing our product by enhancing the user experience across various facets. Beyond the fundamental task of data analysis, we’ve harnessed AI’s capabilities for advanced signal processing, where machine learning algorithms filter and interpret complex electroencephalography (EEG) signals.

These algorithms distinguish between brainwave patterns related to focus and other neural activities, ensuring accurate readings. Additionally, our product centralizes the user experience with AI-driven personalization, where the system learns from the individual’s unique brain activity patterns and adapts its recommendations for optimized focus and productivity over time. Additionally, AI facilitates predictive analytics, enabling the system to forecast periods of potential focus loss based on historical data and preemptively offer strategies to maintain concentration. The integration of AI enhances the user interface and interaction, ensuring a seamless and intuitive experience by displaying data in a user-friendly dashborad and simplifying complex data into understandable patterns, insights, and recommendations. Such comprehensive incorporation of AI technologies ensures that our product stands out in supporting individuals in high-intensity environments, such as graduate students and white-collar workers, in maintaining their focus and enhancing productivity.

What’s next? We are currently raising a seed round to fund our manufacturing and shipping pipelines to bring our product to users. We have opened our waitlist to gauge traction and collect early user feedback before a full launch. Additionally, we will be working with industry experts in signal processing and machine learning to further the development of our product and its integration into the Niura app, creating a seamless experience to help users better understand their study habits and maintain focus when they most need it.

33. Vetster 

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

Elevator Pitch: Vetster is the world’s fastest growing veterinary telehealth platform connecting pet owners with top-rated licensed veterinary professionals. Pet owners can speak to a veterinary professional from the comfort of their own home by video or online chat – 24/7.

Growth to date:
– Vetster closed an oversubscribed Series A at $12.5M CAD in May, 2021.
– In August 2021, the company expanded its marketplace to include prescription fulfillment and direct-to-home delivery with its Online Pharmacy VetsterRx
– Vetster raised an additional $30M CAD Series B in April, 2022
– In February 2023, Vetster expanded its global presence to become the first pet telehealth marketplace available anywhere in the world making it easier for pet owners worldwide to access virtual veterinary care.
– In June 2023 Vetster launched Vetster Plus, a subscription service that gives pet parents on-demand access to the companies telehealth services for under a $1/day
– In August 2023 Vetster expanded its VetsterRx platform offering to include veterinary approved nutrition products from leading pet brands including Purina, Blue Buffalo and X further supporting a total pet health and wellness offering
– In 2023, Vetster launched Vetster Pet Perks, a new program to enable employers to offer inclusive, innovative benefits for pet parents as a part of their benefits packages. The program has been met with incredible enthusiasm attracting notable companies including Samsung, Hyundai, RBC, Indigo, Sobeys and Tribalscale.

What’s next? Vetster is on a mission to make pet health more accessible and affordable. The company is revolutionizing how veterinary care is provided – prioritizing transparency and accessibility for pet parents, while also providing veterinarians the opportunity to practice in new ways and from the comfort of their homes. This grants pet parents around-the-clock support and care, and empowers veterinarians to set their own availability, rates and more.

Vetster will continue to expand its platform to help empower pet parents to take better control of their pets’ health. The company will continue to expand its product and service offerings and establish new partnerships that promise to drive deeper value for pet parents and veterinarians alike.

32. Matchday Health 

Founders: Rami Wehbi D.O.
Website: https://www.matchday.health/

Elevator Pitch: We’re represent doctors in the jobs market.

Growth to date: 500+ doctors, 20 + job matches, on track to reach $1M+ in revenue in first year.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? We’re using AI to advance the careers of doctors and make hiring more efficient.
-More data, more informed decision making
-More insights into job trends
-Better matching and targeting based on candidates desires
-GPT-Recruiter – Our GPT-Recruiters, governed by human oversight are scaling the personal touch that makes MatchDay a 10x better experience for physicians.

What’s next?
– We’re raising our next funding round
– Growing Texas footprint with hospital & clinic partnerships
– More jobs that doctors love ( advisory, consulting, paid gigs)
– Helping more residents find their dream jobs.

31. Karla Rewards 

Founders: Robin Gray
Website: https://www.karlarewards.com/

Elevator Pitch: Karla Rewards is North America’s fastest growing cash-back app. Our mission is to empower Canadians to embrace their lifestyles, ensuring every user enjoys the perks of unapologetic living. From weekly groceries to dining out, coffee breaks, date nights, gym memberships, weekend escapades, and travel plans, Karla effortlessly puts money back in your pocket – no receipt scanning required. Every month, like clockwork, funds are e-transferred on Rent Day or Mortgage Day.

Growth to date: Since 2023, we’ve been fortunate enough to collaborate with notable organizations such as Sobeys Voila and some of Toronto’s favorite local gems to create the world’s most simple rewards system that not only benefits the local consumer, but supercharges our local business community!

In what way AI is shaping your industry? We leverage AI to redefine spending habits. Users will soon receive tailored insights, empowering smart choices that support local businesses, amplifying savings. On contrary, our merchants leverage AI-analyzed transaction data for strategic growth, ensuring optimal operations and enhanced offerings. Together, AI transforms spending dynamics, promoting local support, and guiding businesses toward expansion which otherwise would not be available to them in comparison to large enterprises

What’s next? We’ll keep building Canada’s standout reward partner network! Get ready for major Toronto, Quebec, and Vancouver brands joining our program, and even earning rewards on travel bookings. Our team working hard to secure more logos to elevate the experience for Canadians. Stay tuned for exciting partnerships!

30. Biiibo 

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

Elevator Pitch: 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.

Growth to date: Since our founding in March 2020, our team has grown to more than 100 people. We’ve been fully self-funded and have expanded our operations within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), serving thousands of customers.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is becoming increasingly prevalent in the construction industry; enhancing various aspects from inventory management, last mile optimizations to new customer facing products and features. From an operational perspective, AI allows us to automate many mundane tasks. It makes our team more efficient and allows us to focus more time on projects that drive value for our customers. Our team is experimenting with various customer facing products and features that leverage generative AI to enhance the customer experience.

What’s next? Our team is focusing on continued growth within the GTA. This year, we’ll be adding dozens of new partnerships across many product categories; significantly increasing our product offering for our customers. We’ll also be launching new features that will help contractors become more efficient in both material procurement and project management. From a people perspective, we’re always looking to grow our team and have plans to hire in sales, engineering and operations.

29. Blanka  

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

Elevator Pitch: Blanka is a platform that helps anyone start their own branded beauty line. With high quality products manufactured in North America and with no minimums, Blanka takes care of product procurement, branding and fulfillment all through technology. In less than two years, Blanka became one of the top performing apps in the Shopify App Store, won BC Tech’s Startup of the Year, and has helped thousands of entrepreneurs start their businesses.

Growth to date: Since launching in early 2021, Blanka has helped thousands of people start their brands.

What’s next? This year, the team is focused on working with larger brands, such as apparel companies and existing beauty brands to help them expand their product lines.

28. Boast

Founders: Alex Popa, Lloyed Lobo
Website: https://boast.ai/

Elevator Pitch: Boast is democratizing access to billions of dollars in innovation funding so companies can fuel their growth while preserving equity and avoiding red tape. With operations across Canada and the US, more than 1,500 innovative companies have leveraged Boast to get more money ($400M+) faster with less time and risk.

Growth to date: Boast has provided 1,000+ companies in Canada and the US with $400M+ in innovation funding.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? By combining unmatched technical and tax expertise with an AI-driven platform that seamlessly integrates with the project, payroll and finance systems your teams use today, Boast streamlines the process for claiming SR&ED while delivering on average 20 percent higher claims for customers.

What’s next? The Boast team will be providing the gift of insights for founders to better understand how their R&D investment is working for them, and what they can do to optimize it.

The Boast Time Evidence Engine (BTEE) is a recent enhancement that enables founders to track, document and validate the time spent by all stakeholders contributing to their R&D. This gives them the ability to visualize and optimize their entire product roadmap from a single system of intelligence. Armed with a comprehensive view of their entire R&D, teams can not only optimize their workflows but maximize their access to innovation capital to stretch their product runways further. From there, Boast’s R&D tax credit experts streamline the claim process, connecting cutting-edge businesses with the non-dilutive funding they need to see their innovations take flight. 

Learn more: https://partnerreferral.boast.ai/FoundersBeta

27. Clinify

Founders: Michael Omide
Website: https://www.myclinify.com/

Elevator Pitch: Clinify is Africa’s only interoperable centralized healthcare systems aggregator for healthcare insurance companies and healthcare providers, as well as a processor of out-of-pocket patient payments.

Growth to date: We have raised about 2 Million CAD till date in our seed round, and currently have a customer base of 1 Million patients.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? We are leaving Generative AI to make healthcare more accessible, efficient and effective for both patients and healthcare providers.

What’s next? We are working towards expanding our provider network of hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, labs, radiology centers and health insurance companies/agencies and to expand our product offerings across the African continent.

26. Whistle Technologies 

Founders: Anil Sedha
Website: https://whistle.tech/

Elevator Pitch: Business users and consumers struggle in today’s world with a range of communications apps on their mobile and work devices. Each person on average uses five social apps for communication, creating business efficiency issues and security challenges. Whistle.tech is a next-gen Unified Communications platform, that consolidates multiple social and communications apps in one place. Users don’t require to search for messages across multiple apps, IT Security compliance gets a boost, and social media communications for business are better managed. Whistle.tech competes with established players such as RingCentral, Vonage, Dialpad and on the enterprise side with Cisco, Avaya etc. Their path to success is unique due to the value proposition leading to clients across US, Canada, Mexico, and India.

Current telecom frameworks and technologies are archaic. High Costs, Lack of Innovation, and Lack of Agility hinder business growth. Whistle was developed on the concept that business communications experience is priority #1 – the product needs to work around it. This approach provided success and traction in achieving revenue milestones. Whistle’s vision is to transform the telecom industry by challenging status quo.

Growth to date: One of Whistle’s customers is a remote community without cellular coverage or internet for about 300km from the next major city. The incumbent telecom provider was not offering any assistance or value. Local government had no unified communications and in case of an emergency, they could not even reach critical services. They adopted Whistle over Starlink Internet backbone and instantly received full capabilities through the Cloud platform and mobile app. The smiles they received and the difference they made were worth every effort. The community now uses calling and messaging capabilities for administrative functions.

What’s next? Whistle.tech is just getting started – let’s whistle while you work!

25. Pathcore 

Founders: Dan Hosseinzadeh, Dr. Anne Martel
Website: https://pathcore.com/

Elevator Pitch: Pathcore® provides a comprehensive B2B SaaS platform with a suite of products that allow pathologists to work digitally. Our flagship offering, PathcoreFlow™, is engineered to streamline the drug discovery process by optimizing pathology workflows. By bridging disparate systems in the pathology ecosystem, PathcoreFlow integrates multiple data sources, and allows pathologists and researchers to focus on the science.

Coupled with PathcoreScholar™ and the Sedeen Viewer™, Pathcore serves multiple verticals in the pathology market—from industry-leading pharmaceutical companies and biotech pioneers to educational institutions and hospitals.

Growth to date: For over 13 years, Pathcore has enabled organizations worldwide to transition seamlessly into digital pathology. Our presence across 68 countries with a network of over 2000 institutions reflects our commitment to innovation.

Central to our growth is PathcoreFlow, our premier product for optimizing efficiency in drug safety and efficacy, and immuno-oncology studies. Esteemed by top-tier CROs, laboratories, and research institutions, PathcoreFlow has been instrumental in driving forward the adoption of digital pathology in the pre-clinical life science industry.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI’s role in digital pathology doesn’t just incrementally improve existing processes—it launches them into a new realm of potential. AI is unlocking new frontiers in drug discovery and diagnostic accuracy by enabling the analysis of vast datasets and complex patterns beyond human capability.

In embracing AI, Pathcore serves as the bridge between cutting-edge AI applications and everyday digital pathology practice, ensuring that our clients are always at the forefront of the industry.

What’s next? Continuing to lead market segments at the forefront of digital pathology, Pathcore remains steadfast in its commitment to the rapidly progressing fields of toxicopathology and immunofluorescence imaging. Our focus on cutting-edge imaging technologies for spatial biology promises to unlock deeper insights into disease mechanisms, driving forward our mission to innovate within digital pathology.

Pathcore is poised to announce a series of strategic initiatives, including innovative product releases and key partnerships, reaffirming our dedication to advancing the digital pathology sector. These forthcoming developments reflect our ongoing commitment to deliver solutions that address the evolving needs of healthcare and research.

24. Huex Labs

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

Elevator Pitch: 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.

Growth to date: We have a huge interest from both VCs, device manufacturers, and some notable names in the Toronto area. We are already running paid pilots programs across several locations. We are planning to launch a pilot with another US-based Food chain.

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

23. Edgecom Energy

Founders: Behdad Bahrami
Website: https://edgecom.ai/

Elevator Pitch: At Edgecom Energy, we empower large energy consumers to take control of their energy costs and reduce emissions by harnessing the power of IoT and AI solutions. Our innovative technology helps you optimize energy usage, save money, and contribute to a greener, more sustainable future.

Growth to date: We’ve deployed our systems in 112 facilities across North America

In what way AI is shaping your industry? Our AI Energy CoPilot is the future of energy management. It acts as a personal energy assistant, providing quick insights into energy usage and machine health. This AI technology speeds up decision-making and promotes proactive actions, making it an indispensable tool for facility operations. By connecting to facility data via our IoT Hardware or to your existing systems via API, the AI Energy CoPilot seamlessly integrates with your infrastructure, offering a comprehensive and real-time overview of energy consumption patterns, equipment performance, and operational efficiency.

What’s next? Continued development and deployment of our AI Energy CoPilot highlighted above!

22. Tenomix

Founders: Dr. Saumik Biswas, Dr. Sherif Abdou, Michael Lavdas, Dr. Eveline Pasman
Website: https://tenomix.com/

Elevator Pitch: Tenomix is revolutionizing the way cancer tissues are processed in pathology laboratories using robotics, ultrasound imaging and AI/ML. With their patent-pending platform technology, they are currently automating a tedious, unreliable, and expensive problem in the colon cancer staging pathway: the manual lymph node search process. Tenomix’s flagship device autonomously searches for lymph nodes in surgically removed cancer tissues and marks their locations for efficient extraction by pathology staff, which will subsequently improve the speed and reliability of the cancer staging process. This technology will enable clinicians to make better-informed treatment decisions, potentially reducing patient complications and ensuring that hospitals continuously meet their quality standards.

Growth to date: In the 2.5 years since its inception, Tenomix has made significant strides, driven by an interdisciplinary team of engineers, physicians, and clinical scientists. The company has forged strong collaborations with major US and Canadian hospitals, secured over $1.27M in grants, and conducted more than 40 human tissue experiments with their MVP. Additionally, Tenomix has developed a comprehensive proprietary image dataset for algorithm training and testing, filed national patent applications in >10 countries, and recently closed an all-Canadian, oversubscribed Seed round exceeding $2M, amid challenging market conditions.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is rapidly transforming the medical industry. Historically, medicine has depended on structured processes developed over decades. Many of these processes are manual, labour-intensive, costly, and inefficient for hospital staff, particularly when faced with significant staff shortages, budget constraints, and increasing patient numbers. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the imperfections in our healthcare infrastructure, revealing systemic cracks and highlighting the extraordinary efforts of medical staff to provide the best possible care under constrained resources and technological limitations. In this context, the emergence of AI and AI-embedded tools, validated for medical use and integrated into clinical workflows, represents a paradigm shift. These tools are not merely enhancing existing workflows; they are revolutionizing the level of patient care, enabling medical staff to deliver more precise, efficient, and impactful treatments. As AI technologies gain validation and become woven into the fabric of clinical practices, their ability to analyze multiple data points and accurately screen for critical events enhances the precision of care, promising significant health benefits for the future through a more targeted and efficient approach to patient treatment.

What’s next? Following the successful closure of their oversubscribed Seed round, the Tenomix team is energetically pursuing their next set of objectives. The focus is now on expanding their technical team by recruiting senior software engineers with a proven track record in developing and deploying commercial-grade AI/ML algorithms for medical applications. In parallel to growing their team, Tenomix aims to refine their technology, proceed with the filing of regulatory applications, and forge additional partnerships with US and Canadian hospitals to advance their clinical validation studies. Additionally, Tenomix is actively seeking to engage with potential Series A investors interested in exploring their innovative technology. Anyone interested in these opportunities or seeking more information is encouraged to reach out to Tenomix’s CEO, Dr. Saumik Biswas, at saumik.biswas@tenomix.com

21. MedMe Health

Founders: Purya Sarmadi (Chief Executive Officer), Nicholas Hui (Chief Product Officer)
Website: www.medmehealth.com

Elevator Pitch: At MedMe, we’re passionate about empowering pharmacists to provide services beyond just prescribing for patients in the community. Our mission is to build an all-in-one cloud-based platform that empowers pharmacists to schedule, document, and manage clinical services at scale. We help pharmacies transform into community health hubs.
We’re building software for an industry that has relied on pen and paper throughout its history. This is why crafting, building, and constantly improving the end-to-end customer experience is essential. We must listen deeply to the diverse needs of our pharmacies, which could be located anywhere from dense urban jungles to small remote communities. We design and build for their needs to ultimately provide more proactive and sustainable care for the patients in their communities.

Growth to date: MedMe has the three largest pharmacy chains in Canada as clients. We’re servicing over 4,000 pharmacies, and we’ve powered over 25 million patient services. We played a critical role across the country throughout the pandemic in getting the larger population vaccinated, having supported over 2 million flu and COVID vaccinations this year alone. We have continued to expand our scope of clinical services that are supported by our platform towards our mission to transform pharmacies from today’s dispensing locations to tomorrow’s health hubs.

Today, pharmacists use MedMe to deliver travel consultations, medication reviews, chronic disease management, minor ailment consultations (35 appointment types and counting), and follow-ups. MedMe has raised over $3.7M USD from investors such as M12 (Microsoft’s Venture Fund), MaRS IAF, and Y Combinator.

In what way is AI shaping your industry? AI is playing a transformative role in the pharmacy industry by significantly enhancing the capabilities of pharmacy software to streamline and improve the delivery of clinical services. It enables automation, such as automatically documenting consultations based on transcriptions, thereby reducing administrative tasks for pharmacists and allowing them to focus more on patient care. Moreover, AI provides valuable clinical decision support by integrating the latest clinical evidence and standards, enhancing the quality of care and patient outcomes. Additionally, AI-driven continuous monitoring identifies potential opportunities for disease prevention and intervention, contributing to the advancement of overall population health and wellness.

What’s next? We’re focused on advancing our product portfolio to expand beyond appointment scheduling toward our mission to become an all-in-one cloud-based platform for pharmacies in their role as community health hubs. We’re expanding on our ability to integrate with other pharmacy and patient care assets and actively developing AI-driven enhancements for our new and existing modules to unlock the full benefits of AI for our platform users. Alongside these innovations, we’re expanding our team and capabilities while forging partnerships with innovative entities like Vigilance Santé, MAPflow, and Asepha. We’re also investing in sales and marketing to expand our Canadian market share further, strengthen our brand presence, and establish ourselves as a thought leader in the industry.

20. Truly Financial 

Founders: Sandeep Todi & Kanchan Kumar
Website: https://trulyfinancial.com/

Elevator Pitch: Startups are global by design. Truly Financial supports their ambitions by giving access to local bank accounts in the U.S., Canada and other countries, international payments, and free wire transfers – so that they can receive payments locally in the U.S., Canada and Europe, get paid and pay for services and contractors in any country while saving themselves the frustration and high cost of dealing with multiple banks.

Growth to date: In approximately 2 years after launch, we’ve grown 5-10% month-on-month, with 60% of our customers in the U.S. and a healthy 40% from Canada which is a big focus market for us. On the heels of our global banking service for online businesses, we now also enable embedded banking for other fintechs and marketplaces.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? In financial services we’re seeing interesting usage of AI to help in financial planning based on historical data and also intelligent analysis of banking data to help make realtime decisions. It’s still early days and we are evaluating how we can help our customers through AI so they can accomplish more by doing less.

What’s next? We’re hiring for our sales team for new product offerings and have exciting new product announcements for Q1 ’24 which will help customers save thousands of $$$ in bank fees and cross-border payments.

19. Cove Neurosciences Inc.

Founders: Dr. Nardin Samuel (CEO), Dr. Irene Harmsen (CTO)
Website: https://www.coveneuro.com/

Elevator Pitch: Cove Neurosciences Inc. is a precision neuroscience company. There is a significant need for objective biomarkers of neurologic and psychiatric disease as no two patients’ diseases are the same, yet we treat them the same. Cove Neurosciences Inc. addresses this gap by providing data analytic and software solutions that accelerate and de-risk clinical trials in the neuroscience setting through the discovery and implementation patient-specific biomarkers of disease.

Growth to date: Cove was founded in March 2022. Since then, Cove has signed multiple contracts with clients, hardware partners and channel partners . For example, we currently serve wearable device companies and pharmaceutical clients that predict seizure activity and have active projects in the setting of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease and psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia and depression. To date, Cove has also multiple highly competitive non-dilutive funding sources and is generate profit as a fully bootstrapped company. We are currently finalizing strategic partnerships, including with a major pharmaceutical company, as well as North American software/AI firms specializing in EEG data collection and analytics.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is undoubtedly transforming medicine, digital health, and neuroscience. Cove’s core technology, CoveConnectTM, is a proprietary end-to-end analytic platform for brain imaging data designed to derive precision biomarkers to accelerate and de-risk clinical trials. CoveConnectTM is multimodal, combining AI, advanced neuroscience tools, and machine learning to efficiently process, analyze, and interpret data from MRIs, MEGs, and EEGs. This provides our clients with a streamlined and expert-derived process for brain data analytics. We are also incorporating algorithms such as recurrent neural networks to better characterize subpopulations in heterogeneous patient groups. We anticipate that AI will continue to shape our industry in similar ways as we currently have; we are excited to be at the forefront of this innovative shift in neuroscience therapeutics.

What’s next? Cove is excited about several upcoming partnership announcements. We will also be kicking off our seed round in the coming months. Stay tuned and follow Cove’s progress on our website and LinkedIn.

18. Shinydocs

Founders:  Jason W. D. Cassidy
Website: https://shinydocs.com/

Elevator Pitch: Data privacy and information governance software should be quick to set-up, easy to use, and cost effective. Now it is. Shinydocs offers all the essential tools you need to safeguard, organize, and govern your content—at a price 10x less than comparable solutions.

Growth to date: Shinydocs is getting quick traction with our all-new Shinydocs Pro product offering and has nearly doubled our customer base in recent months, with much more growth ahead.
In what way AI is shaping your industry? While many race to develop software utilizing GenAI models, there is a significant gap in preparing organizations to customize these AI solutions to cater to their unique business requirements. That’s where Shinydocs helps with AI. The content that an organization creates and stores holds tremendous value when building enterprise AI models. Shinydocs offers tools to automatically identify your valuable data to ensure the most relevant information is included in AI training datasets, and ensures the accuracy and compliance of AI results by separating and excluding PII, sensitive data, and irrelevant content.

What’s next? Shinydocs is rapidly developing our Shinydocs Pro offering to include more data connectors to popular and industry-specific content repositories, adding new ways to visualize data and content inventory results, and building more tools to take action on data results into our out-of-the-box solution.

17. OFX

Key people: Skander Malcom
Website: https://www.ofx.com/en-ca/

Elevator Pitch: 
Founded in 1998, OFX is an international money services provider based in Sydney, Australia with a presence in eight countries and more than 700 staff. It offers money transfers and foreign exchange services for Corporate, Consumer and Enterprise clients across 50+ currencies. Through its ‘digital + human’ business model, OFX provides 24/7 client support to complement its global digital platform.

Growth to date: OFX’s net operating income grew 42.4% (FY23 vs FY22).  OFX is publicly traded on the ASX under the ticker OFX and has an AUD$370 million market cap

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is enhancing trading strategies, risk management and efficiency. The algorithms are analyzing vast amounts of data to identify patterns and optimize trading decisions. While its aiding in our routine tasks, the deep understanding of geo-political events, central bank decisions, and other factors require real intelligence.

What’s next? OFX has made a few key acquisitions over the last few years to improve its offerings. It’s recently integrated Firma into its ecosystem and enhances its digital offerings to help clients manage their global payments and currency needs. OFX recently acquired Paytron, a company forging new ways of spend management and accounts payable automation. The acquisition will allow OFX to offer a ran

16. Fortay

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

Elevator Pitch: Fortay.ai is the world’s first inclusion-centered, Employee Experience platform that helps business leaders build diverse, healthy, high-performance cultures for business success. With a revolutionary, holistic, human-centered approach, Fortay empowers leaders with expert & science-backed surveys, critical people insights, AI-driven recommendations, and action plans, competency-based performance reviews and development plans, leadership effectiveness development, and culture and values-alignment hiring. Our robust suite of impact-driven products to designed to improve the employee experience, diversity, equity, inclusion, & belonging progress and business outcomes. Learn more about how we can help you and your company at fortay.ai.

Growth to date: Fortay.ai is in high growth mode with plans for team expansion and new partnerships to help more organizations build inclusive, high-performing cultures and teams! With over 1.5 million employee and candidate data points, and being trusted by the most innovative organizations, Fortay continues to bring the company the most progressive, human-centered, AI-powered Employee Experience platform to the market.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is revolutionizing HR Tech, but especially Employee Experience platforms. At Fortay, we have patented and native AI built into our platform, and more recent advancements offer higher-quality thematic analysis, summarization capabilities, and predictive analytics. Fortay is leveraging Gen AI to provide personalized, robust recommendations delivered in a coaching style format in your engagement pulse, DEI surveys, or performance reviews. We’re reducing HR burnout and improving efficiency, organizational culture, team performance, and overall business results.

What’s next? We recently launched Perform & Grow, structured, fair, and effective 360 performance reviews that employees actually love. Every employee receives a personalized AI-driven development plan to help them grow after feedback is in. Companies love it because it helps to boost employee engagement and productivity and drives high team performance! We will continue to develop accompanying features and add more AI-driven features to further empower and enable people leaders to improve the employee experience.

15. Synctera 

Founders: CEO Peter Hazlehurst, CTO Kris Hansen , CPO Dominik Weisserth
Website: https://synctera.com/

Elevator Pitch: Synctera is powering the future of FinTech for companies that want to create new revenue streams and enhance their value proposition by offering FinTech apps and embedded banking products. With APIs, compliance support, and bank partners in one end-to-end Banking as a Service platform, Synctera is the fastest and easiest way to build, launch, and scale bank accounts, debit cards, charge cards, lending, and more.

Synctera Growth to date: Since forming in December 2020, Synctera has launched new products and features at a steady pace, built industry-leading risk & compliance capabilities and a best-in-class developer experience, formed partnerships with a diverse range of sponsor banks, and launched many FinTech clients into production. Synctera now has over 100 employees across the United States and Canada.

What’s next:
Adding support for additional credit and lending use cases
Adding support for international markets and cross-border use cases
Continuing to refine the Synctera Console to help FinTechs and sponsor banks manage risk, compliance, and operations together
Adding more sponsor banks to our platform so that FinTechs and Banks can find compatible partners
Expanding our professional services team so that FinTechs can build even more efficiently

14. FutureVault

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

Elevator Pitch: Transform your enterprise, advisor, and client value propositions by significantly improving the way documents, data, and information are managed within a centralized and secure single source of truth.

Growth to date: $600B+ AUA of Partner Firms 
2,000+ Partner Professionals 
125,000+ Client Vaults

In what way AI is shaping your industry?
AI is shaping the Wealth Management and WealthTech space in several ways, from portfolio management and predictive analysis to personalized planning, onboarding, and even advisor marketing. Here at FutureVault, we’re always looking for ways to embed new technologies, like AI, into our platform to augment and enhance the value for the home office, advisors, and clients. In addition to our granted patent on AI document auto-filing (which happens to be one of three successfully granted patents) we’re utilizing AI and ML to extract structured and unstructured data from documents to connect bi-directionally to existing tools and systems and to drive actionable insight.

What’s next? We have a VERY exciting road ahead of us that is jam packed with new product innovations and enhancements, several key partnerships and integrations which will be going live in Q1 and Q2 of 2024, and a few upcoming big announcements that we’re looking forward to!

13. Part3

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

Elevator Pitch: Part3 is a category-defining platform that brings Architects, Engineers, Owners and Contractors together to administer construction with speed, accuracy, and intelligence.

Growth to date: Having raised a $2m USD Seed round earlier in 2023 Part3 has grown to a team of 16 and has seen incredible traction with Architecture firms in North America. The platform is becoming the leading choice for design professionals and is now used on 1,000+ active construction projects across North America, representing almost $15bn CAD worth of construction!

In what way AI is shaping your industry? AI is really changing the game in architecture and construction. Design processes are getting a boost with AI tools, making it easier for architects to come up with creative and efficient plans. Plus, these smart simulations and analyses not only save time but also help in creating more sustainable and cost-effective buildings. It’s like having a high-tech partner in design, reshaping the way architects work. Part3 are on the cutting edge of creating practical AI-powered tools that change the way Architects work.

What’s next? More growth! Part3 will be hiring in Software Development, Sales, Customer Success, and Operations and will have new partnerships and product updates to share in the coming weeks – stay tuned!

12. Railz 

Founder: Sohaib Zahid (CEO) and Derek Manuge (CTO)
Website: https://www.railz.ai/

Elevator Pitch: Railz continues to revolutionize the fintech sector by enhancing its Accounting Data-as-a-Service API. The company focuses on empowering financial institutions, fintechs, and developers to create advanced financial services through easy integration with top accounting service providers. This facilitates access to normalized financial data for small- and medium-sized businesses, aiding in decision-making and financial service provision.

Growth to Date: Since its inception, Railz has demonstrated significant growth, particularly in the past year. The company has expanded its product offerings, integrated new features into its API, and formed strategic partnerships, all contributing to its evolution in the fintech ecosystem. Key highlights include the launch of Railz API V2 with enhanced features, the introduction of Railz Connect:tm: for improved user experience, and the integration with Zoho Books. Railz’s efforts have been globally recognized, earning prestigious awards like the Best Open Banking API at the 2023 FinTech Breakthrough Awards.

AI’s Role in Finance Industry? AI plays a pivotal role in Railz’s industry, particularly in the areas of data normalization and analysis. By leveraging AI, Railz offers more accurate, efficient, and comprehensive financial data analysis. This technology enables Railz to provide its users with valuable insights and historical data trends, which are crucial for financial decision-making and trend analysis.

What’s Next? Looking forward, Railz has an exciting roadmap for 2024. Plans include expanding the Visualization SDK to offer more dynamic charts and data embedding options, enhancing data sync options for greater control and efficiency, and continuously evolving products based on user feedback. These advancements aim to provide a more seamless user experience and deeper financial insights.

Railz’s commitment to collaboration and innovation is evident in its strategic partnerships with industry giants like FIS, M&T, and Mastercard in their Start Path Open Banking Program. These partnerships underscore Railz’s influence and understanding of the financial sector’s needs.

11. Crux OCM

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

Elevator Pitch: Just as planes have autopilot to assist—but not replace—pilots, CruxOCM enables the autonomous control rooms of tomorrow, working alongside control room operators within the safety constraints of today. Our revolutionary technology leverages machine learning and advanced physics-based methodologies to uncover unforeseen efficiencies in heavy industrial control rooms such as energy, utilities, renewables and beyond to maximize ROI, without ever compromising safety.

Growth to date: CruxOCM has raised $6 million USD to fuel its product development and expansion efforts and currently has a total of 30 employees.

What’s next? CruxOCM will be releasing a new public client announcement and a new client case study featuring our newest commercial technologies.

10. Wisedocs 

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

Elevator Pitch: Wisedocs is the medical record review and summaries machine learning software for insurance carriers, healthcare providers, laws firms, and TPAs making waves in the claims industry. We serve the auto, liability, disability, workers’ compensation, tort law, and similar markets. Wisedocs provides an easy-to-integrate solution for improved accuracy and speed to deliver improved outcomes in the medical claims process.

Growth to date: In 2020, Wisedocs piloted a B2B solution in Canada and gained traction, enough so that in 2021, Jenna Earnshaw joined Connor Atchison as a co-founder and Wisedocs was born. Since then, we’ve achieved 10x growth, raised $4.1M in an oversubscribed seed round, processed over 30M pages and analyzed over 10M medical data points. Firms can review medical records up to 70% faster with Wisedocs – a huge win for the insurance, legal, and healthcare teams involved as well as the claimants and their families. We are proud to have increased our team by 147% and have seen a 500% growth in customer usage and pipeline. We intend to continue growing that customer base this year and beyond by continuing to develop meaningful customer relationships and deliver our quality automated claims processing service to organizations in the insurance and legal industries.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? Artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamental to our business and to the insurtech industry broadly. At Wisedocs specifically we leverage AI to efficiently organize, index, and summarize vast medical records, turning pages of data into concise medical insights. This allows professionals involved in the insurance ecosystem to extract crucial clinical information swiftly and streamline their reviews for a faster turn-around time, benefiting all those involved. With our deep clinical knowledge and our proprietary AI’s precision, we are able to simplify and enhance the medical record review process, reshaping how claims are handled in the insurance world. At Wisedocs, AI is the cornerstone of our business, we look forward to continually pushing the boundaries of what AI can achieve in the Insurtech sector and the insurance claims process.

What’s next? Looking ahead, Wisedocs is poised for some thrilling developments. We’re excited about upcoming updates to our platform, such as the recent launch of our AI-driven Summaries Platform, that will introduce new features, aiming to further streamline the user experience and expand our service offerings. With our end goal of continuing to make the claims process accurate and efficient for all those involved, we have some innovative new features and products that are shaking up the industry.

Our company is scaling fast and making broad impacts for medical records, claims organizations, and claimants. If this mission sounds like a fit for you, we encourage you to see our Wisedocs’ careers page  to join our team today!

9. Chocolate Soup

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

Elevator Pitch: Chocolate Soup is here to help leaders build happy, caring, and respectful teams through the power of radical generosity, surprise, and delight. We’ve found that recognizing important employee personal and professional milestones with personal, curated gifts strengthens existing bonds and creates new ones within teams and across organizations. Chocolate Soup offers subscription-based employee recognition plans and remote-team gift boxes that can be customized for your culture and team.

Growth to date: We saw some slowdown in growth earlier in the year, but the last four months have seen an increase in inbound inquiries on our subscription employee recognition programs. The conversations continue to reinforce our core belief that personalized employee recognition is the secret to retaining and attracting top talent.
In what way AI is shaping your industry? We see generative AI as a powerful tool for our industry. Today, so much time is spent by HR and other people leaders on repetitive tasks that take away from dealing with the most important resource—their employees. As generative AI-powered tools help automate many of these tasks, people leaders will be able to spend more time coaching, leading, and showing appreciation.

What’s next? We’ve invested in a new marketing strategy and brand narrative that will launch with our new website in 2024. We’re excited to connect with new audiences to show the power of employee recognition and appreciation.

8. Mappedin 

Founders: Hongwei Liu
Website: https://www.mappedin.com

Elevator Pitch: We use outdoor maps daily but when you walk indoors, useful maps are missing. From offices to stadiums, people need to find things and know where to go. Mappedin builds user-friendly mapping tools that make the indoors visible — empowering businesses to create the experiences that people now expect.

Growth to date: To date, Mappedin’s products power more than 1.5 billion square feet of indoor space, across more than 100 venues in more than 57 countries and is one of the largest providers of indoor maps in the world. Mappedin has also achieved Globe & Mail’s Top Growing Companies for three years in a row (2021, 2022, 2023).

In what way is AI shaping your industry? Our latest product is built with AI in mind. Using AI, Mappedin can take a floor plan and digitize it in seconds. With more AI-powered editing tools, mapmakers can make further edits and finish a map in only a few minutes. It is making the entire mapmaking process more efficient and anyone anywhere can quickly create an indoor map.

What’s next? We’re consistently growing the Mappedin team! Visit mappedin.com/careers to learn more about our team and how we work. We continue to strategically grow by partnering with companies such as Microsoft. We are looking forward to working with more customers to provide indoor mapping and wayfinding technology to stadiums, airports, offices, and malls. Follow Mappedin on Linkedin at linkedin.com/company/mappedin and don’t forget to subscribe to Mappedin Minute, a monthly newsletter to round up interesting resources, updates, and news about indoor maps in just about a minute.

7. Contractor Compliance

Founders:Mark Bania (CEO) & Jeremy Brown (President)
Website: https://www.contractorcompliance.io/

Elevator Pitch: Contractor Compliance is a SaaS solution that simplifies the process for enterprise organizations to collect, manage and requalify third party requirements. Through automation, Contractor Compliance is able to reduce the administrative burden of managing this process by up to 70% within 2 weeks of partnering.

Growth to date: Contractor Compliance, as a fully bootstrapped organization, has seen 40% ARR growth annually over our history. We’re cashflow positive and on an amazing growth trajectory. The future is bright for Contractor Compliance.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? Through investments in AI, Contractor Compliance is looking to further distance the value they create for their customers between themselves and their services based incumbents. Through enhancements around AI Contractor Compliance plans on expediting the deliverables they provide to their users and double down on their commitment to be the most efficient solution to reduce third party risk on the job site.

What’s next? Growth! Contractor Compliance has proven their product market fit, and are now looking to scale their model both domestically within North America & internationally.

6. ZayZoon 

Founder: Tate Hackert, Darcy Tuer, Jamie Ha
Website: https://www.zayzoon.com/

Elevator Pitch: With ZayZoon, payday finally comes with the push of a button. Offered as a benefit through employers, employees can use ZayZoon to get paid whenever, however. The ZayZoon app also offers educational resources and tools to help workers break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, and it works. 89% of employees who use ZayZoon report less financial stress, and employers who offer ZayZoon boast a 29% reduction in turnover.

Growth to date:
– $65M CAD raised.
– 6,000+ businesses across the US have ZayZoon as a workplace benefit
– 115 ZayZooners strong – we’ll be hiring 70 more this year.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? It’s still too early to know definitively, but the two early use cases will take off are in customer service and Personal Financial Management (PFM) tooling. The ability for customers to self-service better, and discover insights from their data just by simply typing in questions.

What’s next? We’re excited to expand on our product offerings this year to better help employers engage their workforce and give employees the financial tools they require to empower their financial lives. We’re on a mission to save 10 million employees 10 billion dollars.

5. Index Exchange 

Founders: Andrew Casale
Website: https://www.indexexchange.com/

Elevator pitch: Index Exchange is a global advertising marketplace whose technology connects media owners and buyers to buy and sell advertising space, all within milliseconds. Founded in 2004 and now with over 500 employees and offices in North America, EMEA, and APAC, Index Exchange is an engineering-first organization focused on efficiency, transparency, and accelerating the evolution of ad tech. The company is led by President and CEO Andrew Casale. In Canada, the company has offices in Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Montreal, and we’re hiring. Learn more about working at Index Exchange here.

Growth to date: This year, we’ve made significant strides in enhancing efficiency and performance at Index through our continued innovations in machine learning. These innovations are curating the ever-growing scale of the exchange, now topping half a trillion transactions daily. Additionally, we are building and accelerating industry standards like OpenRTB 2.6. We’ve also upgraded our infrastructure, implementing a new hardware specification that triples throughput while halving electricity consumption. These advancements have reinforced our dedication to sustainability and efficiency, and have enabled us to achieve substantial growth in the fast-growing streaming TV market. Additionally, we introduced ‘Index Explains’, a new educational series aimed at demystifying the complexities of ad tech.

In what way is AI shaping your industry? At Index, machine learning is integral to our core operations. As an exchange that handles half a trillion transactions daily (by comparison, Google serves an estimated 8.5 billion searches daily), machine learning allows us to manage that scale with efficiency and precision. We leverage machine learning to analyze the bidding behaviors of our demand partners and use that as a proxy for what business is relevant to them. Moreover, it plays a critical role in creating greener supply paths by reducing energy consumption, minimizing waste, and optimizing processes.

What’s next? We’re excited to focus on the industry’s next challenge—the last remaining days of the third-party cookie in Chrome. Our teams, spanning engineering, architecture, and product development, are actively working on building a robust foundation to support the Privacy Sandbox. We also remain dedicated to enhancing transparency and efficiency in our industry through the development and adoption of standards, innovative product advancements, and strategic partnerships.

Additionally, we’re fully committed to advancing the collective effort to foster a more sustainable and inclusive landscape. The upcoming year offers a critical opportunity for our industry to drive real change, aligning advertising practices with societal values and contributing to a more inclusive and sustainable future.

4. Islands 

Founders: Ali El-Shayeb
Website: https://www.islandshq.xyz/

Elevator Pitch: Islands is a Fractional CTO and Technology partner, specializing in AI and B2B SaaS. We also manage a venture studio called Island X, building and commercializing innovative solutions that’ll win in the market.

Growth to date: We have scaled from 5 to 40 engineers, designers, and technology folks, 3 to 25 clients and project at least 4x YoY revenue growth in 2024.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? We operationalize AI workflows every day in all aspects of the business. We specifically support our clients in building their own AI solutions, from architecture strategy to implementation of computer vision, LLM Models and scalable Machine Learning pipelines.

What’s next? We are gearing up for multiple venture studio product launches. One of our most sought-after products is a powerful time & performance tracking application built for agencies, professional services, and remote teams. We’re also launching an AI Corporate Venture Studio to support enterprises who want to optimize their business with AI. We continue to scale our team at Islands and seek top talent, including HR Generalists, Business Development Reps, and Software Engineers who are eager to define tech for forward-thinking companies.

3. Bidmii

Founders: Jon Christensen(CEO), Phillip Stack (CTO), James Christensen(COO)
Website: https://www.bidmii.com

Elevator Pitch: Bidmii is a cutting-edge proptech platform transforming the way homeowners connect with contractors for home improvement projects. We offer a unique, automated marketplace where homeowners can describe their project needs, allowing contractors to bid competitively. Ensuring financial security and transparency, Bidmii holds funds in trust, releasing them upon project completion. Our service is free for homeowners, fostering accessibility and ease. For contractors, we provide a premium subscription model. Bidmii is not just a platform; it’s a revolution in the renovation industry, prioritizing efficiency, safety, and satisfaction for all parties involved.

Growth to Date: In 2023, Bidmii notably more than doubled its sales in a declining renovation market, highlighting our substantial market share growth, primarily fueled by word-of-mouth. Our selection by Google to participate in their accelerator program was a significant milestone. There, we developed proprietary AI models to enhance our customer service capabilities. Additionally, we launched a homeowner renovation financing feature, offering up to $30k in unsecured loans for projects. We are also excited about the impending launch of a first-of-its-kind embedded insurance product, with more details to be revealed soon. Currently, with over 8,000 users and completing over $1M in home improvement projects, Bidmii is poised for continued growth and innovation in the proptech space.

In what way is AI shaping your industry? Our new project creation flow uses a proprietary algorithm to correctly categorize a project and then ask a series of questions related to that category of project to help homeowners think and describe details that they may otherwise have not of. The even more groundbreaking use of AI at Bidmii emerged from our participation in the Google for Startups Accelerator. We’ve trained AI models that significantly reduce the operational workload by analyzing communication between homeowners and contractors. This AI determines whether the communication is constructive, allowing efficient flow for helpful interactions. If not, it provides real-time feedback to improve the communication quality, enhancing efficiency and customer experience.

What’s next? Looking ahead, we’re thrilled about the upcoming launch of our in-app calling feature, allowing homeowners and contractors to communicate directly without sharing personal contact information. This enhances privacy and convenience. Additionally, we’re exploring a mapping solution to show the proximity of contractors, providing homeowners with real-time updates on arrival times. The most exhilarating development, though, involves Whitelabelling aspects of the Bidmii platform for networks in adjacent verticals. While details are currently under wraps, these partnerships represent a significant leap forward for us, expanding our reach and capabilities in exciting new ways.

2. Wagepoint  

Founders: Shrad Rao and Ryan Dineen
Website: https://www.wagepoint.com/

Elevator Pitch: Wagepoint is a Canadian fintech company on a mission to simplify payroll – and maybe even dare to make it delightful! Our online payroll software was created just for small businesses, automating the most “ugh” parts of the process (like calculating wages and reporting on taxes), so that you can get back to doing literally anything else. With a 4.6 rating on Glassdoor, we’re also a pretty fun place to work (and throw a few bad jokes around). We’ve grown our customer base to more than 25,000 and our team to more than 150 employees but – like a 100-pound Great Dane that still thinks he’s a lap dog – we still operate with small business values at heart; caring for our people comes first.

Growth to date: A few years ago, the Wagepoint team thought to ourselves, “How can we make payroll even simpler for Canadian small businesses?”. After some time with our thinking caps on (and a wave of a magic wand or two), a whole new Wagepoint was born. At the end of 2023, we took everything our customers already loved about our payroll app and added a dash of improved efficiencies, a sprinkle of cleaner interfaces, and a whole lot of new features to make Wagepoint 2.0 a reality. We love seeing new customers using the software, and look forward to migrating our existing users this year. In addition to releasing the next great thing in Canadian payroll, our customer base grew to 25,000, and the company processed a whopping $10 billion in payroll.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? We’re huge believers that AI will transform the Canadian payroll industry, offering unprecedented efficiency and accuracy. By leveraging AI-assisted coding, complex calculations and compliance requirements can be automated, leading to error-free payroll processing. (Sounds amazing, right?) AI-driven analytics can offer valuable insights into workforce costs and trends, which means that companies can be better-informed about financial planning.
Plus, AI can improve customer support with personalized responses and user-friendly self-service portals. Its predictive abilities can also play a key role in forecasting payroll expenses, aligning with overall business strategies. In short? AI will become a strategic asset in payroll management.

What’s next? Wagepoint 2.0 released last year, but we’re just getting started. The team is busy cooking up new ways our customers can automate payroll workflows, create seamless integrations with existing accounting and time tracking services, add solutions to help manage even the most complex of payroll issues and, as always, provide customers with the world’s friendliest support.

1. Badal  

Founders/Key People: Zohaib Butt (Founder/CEO), Eugene Miretsky (Founder/Chief Data Officer), Alano Medonte (Managing Partner of Sales, Alliances, and Marketing)
Website: https://badal.io/

Elevator Pitch: In the dynamic landscape of Canada’s digital revolution, Badal.io stands tall as the largest Premier Google Cloud Platform services partner in the country. Boasting a 100% Canadian workforce and a team of over 140+ consultants, the majority being Google certified, Badal.io takes pride in spearheading digital transformation across highly regulated industries.

Growth to Date: With services ranging from DevOps solutions to Data Analytics, Security Solutions, and Data Governance & Management, Badal.io has experienced an impressive 5x year-over-year growth since its inception in 2019. One of the key indicators of Badal.io’s success is its extraordinary growth, with the team expanding by an astonishing 50% over the past year. This surge is a testament to the company’s unwavering commitment to excellence and its pivotal role in shaping the digital landscape of Canada.

In the realm of highly regulated industries such as finance, retail, and beyond, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force, unlocking unprecedented possibilities for innovation. As businesses navigate complex regulatory landscapes, AI, facilitated by enablers like Google Cloud, becomes a game-changer. Financial institutions, burdened with stringent compliance requirements, find solace in Badal.io’s AI ability to automate risk assessment, detect fraudulent activities, and enhance overall security measures. Retail giants, seeking to understand customer behaviors and streamline supply chains, leverage Badal.io’s AI-driven analytics for personalized shopping experiences and efficient inventory management.

The marriage of AI and Google Cloud offers a seamless pathway to innovation, empowering industry leaders to harness the full potential of cloud technology. Beyond compliance, AI optimizes operational efficiency, driving data-driven decision-making and predictive analytics. As industries evolve, the collaboration between AI, Google Cloud and Badal.io, not only ensures regulatory compliance but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement and technological advancement. This synergy paves the way for market leaders to stay at the forefront of innovation, navigating challenges with agility and transforming the landscape of highly regulated sectors.

In what way AI is shaping your industry? The impact of AI extends across various facets of Badal.io’s operations and solutions. Badal.io stands out with two distinctive competencies that set them apart in the competitive landscape. Firstly, their expertise in Retail Search and Recommendations AI transforms the retail customer experience. They excel in delivering custom-tailored search results and real-time recommendations, enhancing engagement and satisfaction for shoppers.
Secondly, their proficiency in Conversational AI (CCAI) elevates customer interactions across various channels, augmenting both customer and agent experiences.

By leveraging AI, they ensure seamless communication and personalized interactions, contributing to improved customer satisfaction. While these competencies are niche, offering a unique edge, their strategic approach considers industry standards such as predictive analytics, which dominates market demand. However, at Badal.io, they differentiate themselves not only in what they deliver but how they deliver it. For instance, in predictive analytics, they adopt a foundational approach that integrates DevOps, Data Engineering, and ML. This holistic methodology ensures the creation of a robust framework, providing clients with comprehensive data analysis, interpretation, and actionable insights. Their commitment lies in delivering excellence, not just in the solutions they provide, but in the innovative processes that define their work.

What’s next?  In its ongoing pursuit of innovation, Badal.io remains dedicated to advancing digital transformation across diverse industries, placing particular emphasis on its machine learning MSP practice, marketing analytics, AI for supply chain management, healthcare, and comprehensive data platform analytics. The primary focus of their marketing endeavors is centered around promoting awareness and support for these key areas of expertise.

A key aspect of Badal.io’s strategy involves the continuous recruitment of bright and talented individuals. Comprising predominantly of engineers, the company envisions a future where its workforce continues to be a driving force behind technological excellence. As the company expands its cloud solutions for clients, including deployments and custom solutions, hiring top-tier talent to contribute to Badal.io’s status as a “proudly Canadian” company, is a focus. Looking beyond recruitment efforts, Badal.io anticipates exciting developments with its expansion into the US. The company remains steadfast in its commitment to staying at the forefront of technology, delivering cutting-edge solutions to its customers with unwavering dedication.