December 7, 2023: Streamlining your startups success

What is finta?

finta is accounting software for startups. Your financial metrics, bookkeeping, and taxes in one delightful app.

What was the insight and inspiration behind this idea?

I managed accounting and taxes in-house, where I paid the best bookkeepers using Quickbooks a ton of money, but the results we got were error-prone and often delayed.

How has it been received?

Our users find Finta to be a modern solution of what should have been automated for years. It's been received well because it's an under-served segment that bookkeepers and Quickbooks don't care about

What has been the hardest part of your journey so far?

Making something people want. You really have to focus, talk to customers with empathy, have domain expertise, while ignoring a million other distractions.

What are you trying to achieve over the next 12 months?

Get 100 users to voluntarily tell their friends about the product.

Who are the Canadian startups you admire most in your market?

Float - better business spending for Canadian finance teams

Neo - smart accounts and tools to make life easier

Humi - payroll, HR, benefits, time-off and more

What advice do you wish you had received when starting out?

Don't listen to too much advice.

For today’s edition, Alex Norman, Co-Founder of TechTO and Partner at N49P shared his honest rationale behind N49P’s recent investment in EZee Assist

EZee Assist is improving franchise operations by using artificial intelligence to better support franchisees by surfacing the right information in the right format at the right time.

Why bother improving franchise operations?

When most people think of franchises they think of large Quick Service Restaurant like McDonald's but the franchise model is used extensively across much of the service sectors (e.g. Remax),retail sectors (e.g. Orange Theory Fitness), and many other industries.

1 in 7 multi-unit businesses globally are franchises, with 1 million franchises in North America employing 11m people and accounting for over $1 trillion in GDP.

Franchisees purchase into a franchise system which comprises a brand, a territory to serve, and operational process and knowledge. Over time the operational knowledge gets spread across multiple platforms. This fragmentation of knowledge leads to increased support costs for the franchisors, less time on improving the overall system, and frustration for franchisees who have to spend time searching for the answer to their questions. 

EZee Assist's vision

EZee Assist’s long-term vision is to provide the right information at the right time to franchisees. Moving from franchisees pulling information to pro-actively receiving information that provides insight on what actions they can take to improve their businesses operational or strategic results. They may also move beyond franchise locations as early indication is that hub-and-spoke businesses experience the same difficulties in obtaining timely information.

EZee Assist has the right experience to build and sale the product

The founding team of Rapheal Rajan, Shray Mehra, Gabriel Cadamuro, and Jason Kealey came together over several months and are uniquely positioned to solve this problem.

Raphael and Shray are long-time friends with a history of solving business problems and helping start-ups. Raphael is an Industrial Engineer who has worked extensively with global organizations as a management consultant. Shray had previously spent 8 years helping start-ups at Creative Destruction Labs and Antler. They met Gabriel at Antler and started building the solution to the problem together. Gabriel is a machine learning researcher and programmer who has spent his career finding ways for data to provide the right information at the right time. The final piece of the co-founding team was Jason who EZee Assist met while doing customer development. Jason brings industry expertise as he has built and exited his own franchise technology company, FranchiseBlast. In that time he supported tens of thousands of locations across over 100+ franchise brands.

What’s next?

Read the entire take on N49P’s blog here

The Most Useful Engineering Conversation You’ll Hear Each Week

Dev Interrupted is the No. 1 source for what the smartest minds in development are thinking about, investing in & working on. Hear career-changing wisdom by leaders from companies like Slack, Stripe, and Shopify delivered to your inbox every week. These are insights you can’t Google.

*this is sponsored content

Platform shifts and AI

Why consumer subscription is so hard

Big news for KOHO

Back in time: Check out our conversation the last time KOHO raised BIG 

KOHO is hiring a Director of Product Marketing - apply here

Want to showcase your company, events, and opportunities to 60,000+ subscribers across the Canadian Tech Eco-system? Reach out to [email protected] to learn more