In 2021 we started publishing a list of Canadian companies we would tell a friend to quit their job for. The ones where you get handed real responsibility years before you'd earn it anywhere else, work beside people who are good and going somewhere, and end up holding equity that turns out to matter. 

It was inspired by Eric Schmidt's (former CEO of Google) quote: "If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat. Just get on."

The entire list is sourced via the ecosystem. Investors, founders and the operators one step ahead nominate the companies they're watching, and then we do the research.

115 companies have been named since. Here is what four years of that turned up.

The usual read is that Canadian companies wait to get bought. Six companies on our 2025 list did the opposite in the nine months after last nomination.

Three of those six targets were Canadian.

This is a pattern in this cohort, not a proven national shift. Nobody publishes a time series on Canadian acquirers. And recently, the Council of Canadian Innovators studied 30 Canadian companies that scaled and sold, found every one went to a foreign buyer, and found decision-making moved abroad in 93% of cases (BetaKit). Both things are true at once.

Seven companies have made the list three times: Ada, Clio, Clutch, Cohere, Wealthsimple, Xanadu and 1Password.

Where they are now:

Getting named once means an investor is excited. Getting named three times means the growth held through a funding winter, an AI reset, and a market that stopped paying for stories.

Ten companies have made the list twice: BioRender, BorderPass, CoBrand, CoLab, EvenUp, Gumloop, Mantle, Planned, Spellbook and Stay22.

34 companies. The shape of it:

17 of 34 are based outside Toronto. Montreal six, Ottawa four, then Vancouver, Burnaby, Kitchener, Edmonton and St. John's. Jobber in Edmonton passed 100,000 customers in May.

14 of 34 describe themselves as AI-native. In 2021 and 2022 this list skewed fintech and marketplace. Now it is drug discovery, video models, vector databases and contract review.

Five are profitable or were bootstrapped. Fullscript passed $1B in revenue, profitable since 2018 on roughly $27M raised (BetaKit). Jane App serves 240,000+ practitioners on under $10M raised. Turbopuffer is profitable with 22 people and grew revenue 10x last year (BetaKit).

16 of 34 held their spot from 2024. Making the list is one thing. Holding it is the harder trick.

The list was never a ranking. It is the companies we would send a friend to. And if we missed one, nominate them for the 2026 cohort.

1Password has made the Rocketships list three times. This month Jeff Shiner sat on our stage and got asked whether he would do it all over again. He ran 1Password as CEO for 13 years and is now its executive chair of the board.

He answered with a jigsaw puzzle.

His wife bought him one for Christmas. A thousand pieces. He doesn't do puzzles. He did it anyway, found he enjoyed it, then went online and bought a 42,000-piece puzzle he is still working on.

"I'm a zero or one. Everything I do, I do not at all, or I do a lot."

He also gave the real answer, and he borrowed it. Years ago he saw Don Melton, who started the Safari and WebKit projects at Apple speak. His argument was that the best things get built on a combination of ignorance and hubris.

Ignorance, because if you knew how tough and painful it would be, you would never have done it.

Hubris, because you need the belief that you can.

Jeff's experience adds that it takes almost everything you have. There will be sacrifices. In his words: "it is rewarding, but it does come at a cost."

He didn't say it as a warning or a flex. He said it so the room could decide for itself. His line was that it doesn't have to be for everyone.

That is worth sitting with in a year when the loudest story in tech is that AI lets three people build a company. Jeff took that on in the same hour. You can build a product that way. You cannot build a company that way. You will need people, and they will cost you something.

He joined 1Password in 2012, when it was 20 people. The company stayed bootstrapped and profitable for its first 14 years, took a $200M Series A from Accel in 2019, and is past 1,400 people today. He also said, later in the same talk, that maybe it should have taken three years instead of 14.

Both of those are true at once. → 🎥 Watch the full talk here.

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