Stop us if you\u2019ve heard this bellyache before: Canada excels at coming up with great ideas but sucks at commercializing them at any scale.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a new one. Canadian businesses have a long-held tendency to let brilliant inventions and concepts die on the vine, or cede them to foreign interests, before their full economic benefit is captured at home. \u201cWe have an incredible educational system in Canada. We have a lot of great talent. We have the most sophisticated AI research hubs in the world, and we\u2019re seeing a growing interest among Canadians in building and growing startups, across the board,\u201d says Abdullah Snobar, executive director of Toronto Metropolitan University\u2019s DMZ and CEO of DMZ Ventures. \u201cBut when it comes to translating from idea to minimum viable product to scalable company, a lot of issues tend to get looped in.\u201d <\/p>\n
This problem has come to wear a few names\u2014the innovation gap, the commercialization gap, the scale-up gap\u2014and it\u2019s a perennial bugbear for economists, politicians and business leaders alike, many of whom have long advocated for investment, policy and procurement reforms to advance a more commercializable entrepreneurial ecosystem. But the economic headwinds of the Trump 2.0 era have sharpened the urgency of building more big, bold, globally competitive companies at home: \u201cIt\u2019s been a big awakening moment for Canadians,\u201d says Patrick Searle, who, as CEO of the Council of Canadian Innovators, represents 175 high-growth businesses from across the country. \u201cWe\u2019re figuring out the capabilities the world needs that we can sell, and the companies we can get behind and support.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ranking Canada\u2019s Top Growing Companies of 2026<\/a><\/p>\n Which brings us to the 375 businesses on the 2026 ranking of Canada\u2019s Top Growing Companies. Among their ranks, you\u2019ll find great ideas aplenty, from mapping drones (Rosor Exploration, No. 19) to medical lasers (LumIR Lasers Inc., No. 34) to more AI applications than you could cram into a data centre. But you\u2019ll also find the entrepreneurial elbow(\u2019s up?) grease that secures customers, capital and talent\u2014and creates scalable ventures capable of sustainably and materially strengthening Canada\u2019s economic sovereignty.<\/p>\n Read on for real-life examples of what it takes to turn great Canadian ideas into great Canadian businesses.<\/p>\n As wildfires burn and rivers dry up, there\u2019s an unassuming form of climate action taking hold in oilfields across North America, as thousands of wells begin to burp a lot cleaner.<\/p>\n This is the work of six-year-old Calgary upstart Kathairos Solutions, which has found a beautifully uncomplicated solution to a big problem and is riding an astonishing growth curve\u2014as in, revenue up 16,379% in three years\u2014on its ability to implement that solution at scale.<\/p>\n Kathairos is in the decarbonization business (its name means \u201cclean air\u201d in Greek), using cryogenics to activate pneumatic devices at oil well sites as a means of methane abatement. <\/p>\n Quick background: A century and a half ago, when the oil and gas industry took hold in North America, drilled wells had a tendency to gush out of control. To manage the situation, engineers began routing oil into separator tanks, with flow dictated by valves. Those valves opened using natural gas, which then vented into the air. That pneumatic system stuck around, resulting in a modern situation in which hundreds of thousands of wells belch methane\u2014an extremely potent anthropogenic greenhouse gas\u2014into an atmosphere that, increasingly, doesn\u2019t need it. <\/p>\n Kathairos co-founder and CEO Dick Brown has known about the problem for some time. An energy veteran with experience in pretty much every corner of the industry, from working on drilling rigs in the 1970s to, more recently, founding and scaling a cryogenics supplier for energy services called Ferus. So when Jason Clarke, an engineer and one-time Ferus employee, came to him with an idea to replace methane in pneumatic venting, his interest was piqued. \u201cWe recognized that there was a way to use liquid nitrogen\u2014basically air\u2014to do the work methane had been doing for the past 150 years,\u201d Brown says. The pair joined up with fellow Calgarian Amanda Hehr (Kathairos\u2019s president), an entrepreneurial go-getter with a shrewd eye for strategy, and decided to test whether this technical solution could be a viable company. \u201cThe big question, for me, was how to make it work across thousands of locations,\u201d Brown says. \u201cIt\u2019s only a business if you can make it work at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Six-year-old Calgary upstart Kathairos Solutions has found a beautifully uncomplicated solution to a big problem and is riding an astonishing growth curve.MATT HORSEMAN\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n After some hands-on R&D in Nisku, Alta., that had Brown brushing off his old pipefitting skills, and a successful pilot at a small oil company whose owner was keen to try it, the team landed on an effective\u2014and scalable\u2014system to take to market. It\u2019s simple by design: Installation usually involves little more than replacing the centralized natural gas repository at a well site with a biogenic tank. Operators generally don\u2019t notice any change at all. But the difference is immediate: What\u2019s emitted from valves is no longer the greenhouse gas responsible for 30% of modern global warming, but rather an inert vapour. \u201cWhen we first introduced it, the most common comment we\u2019d hear was, \u2018Why did no one think of this before?\u2019\u201d Brown says. \u201cThat usually tells you you\u2019ve got the start of something that\u2019s going to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n The team wasted no time in building the scaffolding for expansion. They locked in manufacturing capacity via a partnership with Georgia-headquartered Chart Industries. They booked meeting after meeting with executives, industry association leaders and government representatives. They secured a capital stack that would allow them to move quickly (including, in time, equity partnerships with the economic arms of Doig River First Nation and Halfway River First Nation). They applied for, and won, a Clean Resource Innovation Network award, which opened doors with Cenovus and Ovintiv. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made an introduction to ExxonMobil, whose chief environmental scientist told them, \u201cI think you guys have found what everybody\u2019s been looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n As a result, in less time than it takes for some heavy-industry outfits to land on a minimum viable product, Kathairos has deployed more than 3,000 units for 70-odd oil and gas producers on sites in Canada and the U.S.<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing flukish about any of it, in Hehr\u2019s view. \u201cScaling innovation requires more than just proving the technology works,\u201d she says. \u201cIt requires building trust in customers that you can deliver a repeatable and trustworthy product, that your operating model works and scales, and that you can also demonstrate a positive return for them. You have to be able to deliver on all those value propositions.\u201d So the team concentrated its energies against those three imperatives. To prove the system worked, they adopted what Hehr describes as an \u201cobsessive focus on delivering excellence at any cost,\u201d stress-testing every element in the product to leave no detail overlooked. To demonstrate operational capacity, they set up bases in every major basin in North America and hired the most experienced technical experts they could find. And to show dollars-and-cents value, they developed a robust data and software arm that gives customers a transparent window into exactly what\u2019s happening at installations and exactly how it\u2019s affecting their businesses. <\/p>\n It all made for an expensive runway, but it supported a sharp takeoff. \u201cI attribute a lot of the success to very good early planning about what exponential or hyperscale growth would look like,\u201d Hehr says. \u201cIt was like our hair was on fire for two years, and because we had those success scenarios planned, we were able to not only survive, but I would say thrive.\u201d Brown is quick to credit his business partner for this approach: \u201cIt takes a different mind to get the technology up and running than it does to drive it to scale.\u201d<\/p>\n As Hehr and Brown look ahead\u2014Clarke left Kathairos in 2024\u2014they see plenty of upside: There\u2019s interest in adapting the company\u2019s system to other oilfield applications, and there\u2019s huge potential in pairing AI against its dataset to, for instance, predict well behaviour. Kathairos is also exploring licensing opportunities for its system, as well as expansion into both Latin America and Australia.<\/p>\n For Brown, a guy who built a career in oilpatches, it all feels vital. \u201cI see things a little bit differently now,\u201d he reflects. \u201cClimate change is real. We\u2019re seeing it and experiencing it in real time.\u201d Kathairos\u2019s efficacy in addressing a significant contributor to the problem\u2014in June, the company passed one million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent eliminated as a result of its installations\u2014has him leaning in. \u201cWe have been entrusted with a technology that has proven to make a global difference,\u201d he says. \u201cI feel we have an obligation to move this company forward as fast as we can. This is something we can do to make an actual impact. And I believe there is nothing more urgent.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cGotta try it.\u201d \u201cWhoa.\u201d \u201cJust got mine! So excited!\u201d<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the buzz surrounding a viral food trend or a rare sneaker drop. Rather, it\u2019s a sample of the effusive comments on a recent Instagram post by content creator Emmanuel Uddenberg about\u2026laundry detergent. Specifically, a limited-edition collaboration between Brooklyn perfumery D.S. & Durga and Toronto\u2019s Guests on Earth, which Uddenberg lauded as \u201csuch a simple way to elevate laundry day.\u201d<\/p>\n If you want to understand what\u2019s behind Guests on Earth\u2019s dizzying growth curve, social media activity like this is a good place to start. As a growing cadre of evangelical customers regularly attest, the company has made chores like washing your gitches not only pleasant but aspirational.<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Guests on Earth began as a pandemic project of founder and veteran marketer Jackie Prince.steph martyniuk\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n Guests on Earth is in the business of concentrated cleaning products\u2014just-add-water hand soaps, dish soaps, all-purpose home cleansers and detergents\u2014made from plant and mineral ingredients. Its formulations are meant to invoke a more elevated sensorial experience than what you\u2019d normally get from scrubbing the sink: They smell terrific and, when decanted into matte aluminum spray bottles, look chic on a countertop. <\/p>\n The company\u2019s origins trace to a pandemic project of founder Jackie Prince, a veteran marketer with agency and brand-side experience in consumer packaged goods, social impact and tech. Stuck at home with her young children during lockdown, Prince began to notice some things: the indecipherable ingredient list on the disinfectant she was using to scrub down groceries, the blue bins overflowing with single-use plastics, the sheer unpleasant drag of cleaning. Her professional brain began to light up. \u201cI thought, Surely there\u2019s a better way of engaging with this category,\u201d she recalls. <\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n After much research and testing, Prince and her team landed on the messaging that has resonated with customers: turning routine into ritual.Steph martyniuk\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n Prince had been observing a few trends: First, surging demand for \u201cclean\u201d and transparent ingredients in several consumer categories, including makeup and skincare. Second, growing interest in the environmental benefits of using highly concentrated and dilutable liquid cleansers, as upstart brands like Blueland captured material market share in the U.S. Third, flourishing brand affinity for products with strong aesthetic and sensory appeal\u2014things that are, in simplest terms, a pleasure to use. It all pointed to an opportunity for a new kind of natural cleaner. \u201cFor any brand I\u2019ve worked on, the goal is to come in with a unique, competitive point of differentiation,\u201d she says. \u201cI really felt there was a white space at the intersection of wellness, sustainability and design.\u201d<\/p>\n Prince hunkered down in market research, shipping in dozens of brands from all over North America to test. She found a Canadian manufacturing partner (after cold-calling more than 50), developed samples, threw up a website, and pored over the brand identity and packaging. By 2022, the formulas for two products\u2014the all-purpose cleaner and the hand soap\u2014were locked in. She made them available for sale online, put up a few performance ads on Meta platforms and started pitching every media contact she could think of. The nascent brand got some good press and was picked up by its first retailer, Toronto\u2019s Coco Market, but it was far from an immediate smash. <\/p>\n Part of the challenge was communicating a single unique selling proposition for products that were different from what consumers were used to buying in multiple ways: in ingredients, in format, and in what it looks, feels and smells like to use. After a lot of testing\u2014and re-testing\u2014Prince and her team landed on the messaging that continues to cut through today: \u201cWe\u2019ve consistently seen that the experience is what resonates,\u201d she says. \u201cWe turn a routine into a ritual. It\u2019s an experience that smells great, that looks great and\u2014by the way\u2014works really well, and is more sustainable than anything else in your house.\u201d<\/p>\n By early 2025, with more repeat customers and more products to sell\u2014including dish soap and laundry detergent\u2014Guests on Earth\u2019s ads started converting with greater consistency, and the retail roster began to expand. And when the first round of U.S. tariffs hit, the ensuing wave of buy-Canadian sentiment sparked a spike in sales that hasn\u2019t abated. \u201cWe kept thinking, Is this just a boom? Will it go away? But it hasn\u2019t,\u201d Prince says. \u201cWe\u2019ve hit product-market fit, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n All signs point to continued growth: A new scent is launching this fall\u2014big news for a brand that typically only offers three\u2014and new fabric-care products are on the docket for 2027. And while Prince is the first to stress that changing established consumer behaviour isn\u2019t the easiest entrepreneurial path, she\u2019s bolstered by what she hears from Guests on Earth converts every day: \u201cWe\u2019ve created something people seem to love and keep coming back to.\u201d<\/p>\n Keep levelling up<\/p>\n How Brodie Rec League\u2019s relentless focus on improving user experience is redefining adult recreational sports<\/p>\n Rank: 21 <\/p>\n Three-year growth: 1,669%<\/p>\n Picture this: You\u2019ve got a basketball game after work. You pull up to the gym in your uniform, have a laugh with your teammates, maybe do a little in-app recon on your rivals. You then hit the court for four quarters of ball with a cohort of players exactly as competitive as you are. By the time you\u2019ve showered, there\u2019s a full report of your stats and a slick highlight reel of your best shots waiting in your phone, ready for you to share (and obsess over) to your heart\u2019s content.<\/p>\n This is what thousands of recreational ballers experience on the regular via Brodie Rec League, a Toronto startup that\u2019s taking off like a jumpshot. There isn\u2019t a whiff of beer-league scrappiness about it. And that\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n Brodie is the brainchild of founder and CEO Connor Renton, who\u2019s applying a lifelong entrepreneurial bent\u2014he peddled lemonade and Pok\u00e9mon cards as a young kid, and sold ads against a one-million-strong audience for his Vine channel at 15\u2014to fix an issue close to his heart. Renton grew up playing hockey and rugby, and was good enough at both to make the varsity teams at Western University, where he studied business. He loved the trappings of playing at a high level: the coaching, the stats, the team track suits. But when he graduated, all that went away. \u201cIf you don\u2019t go on to be a pro, your options to continue to play the sport that shaped who you are, and where you met your best friends, are limited,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard.\u201d <\/p>\n As Renton filled his days with a bank job, he began to fixate on the idea of creating an avenue for non-professional athletes to keep enjoying the sports that once defined their lives. Perhaps a rec league that offered an elevated experience, with leaderboards and photographs and real uniforms. Perhaps in basketball: He wasn\u2019t much of a hooper himself (yet), but the Toronto Raptors had just won the NBA Championship, and local interest was at an all-time high. Armed with little more than a clipboard, Renton cobbled together an eight-team league in Burlington, Ont., in the fall of 2019.<\/p>\n Initial experiments were promising, but the pandemic brought early momentum to a halt. Renton busied himself with an ad-hoc Covid-related PPE venture, but a year later, he decided to give the league another shot\u2014and found that scores of lockdown-fatigued players were champing at the bit. \u201cIt took off like wildfire,\u201d he says. Today, Brodie leagues run in more than 20 cities in Canada and the U.S., with 50,000 registered players.<\/p>\n A bit of time in the Brodie-verse reveals why the league has become such a slam dunk. It\u2019s fun: Players can choose their preferred level of competitive intensity, so there are no situations in which a newbie has to tip off against a wannabe Michael Jordan. It\u2019s frictionless: Drafting, scheduling, court booking and scorekeeping are all taken care of, thanks to a proprietary back-end platform called PlayerOne. And it\u2019s addictive: The Brodie App is loaded with stats, rewards, photos, message boards and other hooks that keep players checking in again and again (and again) well after the buzzer. The whole experience sates both the primal human need for social connection and the modern human need to post about it. \u201cEveryone wants to feel great about themselves. Everyone wants to feel like a superstar or a pro, even if it\u2019s just for a minute,\u201d Renton says. \u201cWe built a product so good at providing that feeling that people are obsessed.\u201d (He counts himself among the devoted: He plays three nights a week.)<\/p>\n Many growing companies face the temptation to scale via \u201censhittification,\u201d to borrow tech activist Cory Doctorow\u2019s term for the common digital-age practice of degrading the quality of a once-compelling offering to extract as much profit as possible. Renton\u2019s going in the opposite direction. In his view, the company\u2019s success has come in lockstep with improvements to the player experience\u2014athlete satisfaction scores are currently the highest in the company\u2019s history\u2014and he sees no benefit in complacency. (It\u2019s telling that his entrepreneurial hero is Phil Knight, whose famous \u201cgrow or die\u201d ethos transformed Nike from an Oregon shoe importer to the world\u2019s most valuable athletic brand.) \u201cUntil playing a Brodie game is as accessible as calling an Uber, I don\u2019t feel like we\u2019re at the level in which we should be,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n Basketball will remain Brodie\u2019s focus for the immediate future\u2014there are still plenty of markets to enter within North America, plenty of new players to reach and plenty of ways to perfect the platform\u2014but Renton has big long-term ambitions: \u201cUltimately, the goal is to operate in all sports and to be global,\u201d he says. \u201cWe want to create pathways for people to play sports forever. I want this to be my life\u2019s work.\u201d <\/p>\n When you ask Joshua Pope to explain the Trajekt Arc, the hero product behind his company\u2019s propulsive recent growth, his response is almost comically casual: \u201cWe built a baseball pitching robot that can emulate and replicate the exact pitches as thrown in a game.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s funny because what he and co-founder Rowan Ferrabee pulled off is the kind of biomechanical feat that, to the layperson, seems like wizardry. Technically, the Arc system integrates 14 motors, closed-loop control, AI and pitch data from computer vision systems used in real-life games to factor for nearly a dozen interrelated velocity, orientation, position and vector variables. Practically, the robot mirrors the precise trajectory of even the wackiest hucked ball. <\/p>\n Pope and Ferrabee got the initial idea for the Arc in a University of Waterloo classroom. At least one professor thought the concept was technically impossible, for reasons to do with rifle spin and ball-seam durability, but the pair had other ideas. \u201cWe thought, if a human can do it, then we can do it, too,\u201d Pope says. So they started a journey of technical validation (hashing out the physical and engineering possibilities), market research (analyzing the flaws in the systems that players and coaches were currently using, and talking to pro pitching co-ordinators about pain points) and, over time, intense product development. <\/p>\n As they refined the prototype, they started building out a business plan around an audacious go-to-market strategy: They wanted the first customers for their robots to be pros. Major League Baseball teams, specifically. It wasn\u2019t at all a safe bet: Deep-tech hardware is a tough business at the best of times, and targeting a small pool of highly visible, difficult-to-access customers was, in Pope\u2019s admission, \u201csuper high-risk.\u201d But Pope and Ferrabee were inspired by the approach of Tesla, which first built its core IP around the hardest and fastest kind of car possible\u2014what became the Roadster\u2014and then went on to pare things down for more accessible models. If Trajekt\u2019s technology was good enough to stand up to the best batters in the world, they reasoned, it would be relatively straightforward to adapt it to suit teams with less sophisticated requirements and smaller budgets down the line. \u201cIt was counterintuitive to almost all the business advice I got, which was to start with youth leagues and work our way up, so any failures would not be at the highest stakes,\u201d recalls Pope. \u201cBut we kind of stuck to our guns and saw some early product-market fit.\u201d<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n This season, Trajekt worked with 28 out of 30 MLB clubs, and the Arc has become an indispensable training tool.SHLOMI AMIGA\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n How does a pair of engineering undergrads get the attention of pro-baseball decision makers? With a healthy dose of \u201cdon\u2019t ask, don\u2019t get\u201d chutzpah. In 2019, before the pair even had a prototype, they flew to San Diego to work the rooms at the annual MLB winter meetings. \u201cWhen you\u2019re young, you can make a fool of yourself, and people will give you the benefit of the doubt,\u201d Pope says. A handful of club reps agreed to meet, many of whom asked the pair to follow up once the prototype was ready. Following that, every time the duo reached a technical milestone, they\u2019d send videos or email updates to their new big-league contacts. One video demo caught the attention of a head of player development with the Chicago Cubs. He liked what he saw and agreed to lease a machine for a year.<\/p>\n As the Arc was whipping balls in the Windy City, Pope invited six more teams he\u2019d met with in California to Toronto to test the system. After a few swinging sessions, all six of them committed to purchase. That particular win created new logistical and financial challenges\u2014the then-skeleton team found itself having to quickly manufacture six highly technical machines\u2014but with some help from some patient capital from friends and family, they rallied and delivered.<\/p>\n Once a few teams were using the Arc\u2014and the benefits to their batter performance started to manifest\u2014FOMO kicked in, and the phone started ringing. This season, Trajekt worked with 28 out of 30 MLB clubs. In short order, the Arc has become an indispensable tool for many of the best sluggers in the business. \u201cIt\u2019s very, very popular now,\u201d star Blue Jays infielder Ernie Clement told Sports Illustrated in July. \u201cI miss it on the road.\u201d <\/p>\n As a result, Trajekt\u2019s head office in Mississauga is a pretty busy place these days\u2014and not only because it tends to attract a lot of would-be Vladdys curious about how they\u2019d handle a pro pitch. (\u201cIt can be a distraction,\u201d says Pope, with a rueful smile. \u201cEvery time someone stops in, they want to try it.\u201d) As the founders hoped, interest has heated up in the broader baseball ecosystem: Pro teams in Japan and Korea have installed Trajekt systems, as have five U.S. Division 1 colleges, and Pope says there\u2019s a \u201cdeep funnel\u201d of others expected to convert in the year ahead. The 50-person team is working on hardware and software refinements to create more accessible models, as well as a vision system that tracks actions and outcomes to trend player performance. Pope and Ferrabee\u2019s big swing appears to be connecting. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have aspirations to own the hitting lane, to dominate the experience of player development and training,\u201d Pope says. \u201cThe growth that we\u2019ve had in the pro market and the college market will enable us to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n It was Ben and Jerry\u2019s that did it.<\/p>\n After downloading a 2017 episode of the popular NPR podcast \u201cHow I Built This\u201d featuring Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (the principle-led impresarios behind the Vermont ice cream giant), Fatima Zaidi came to be a fan of a brand about which she\u2019d previously held a neutral opinion. Moreover, she found herself reaching for the company\u2019s cloud-spackled pints in the freezer aisle. As a sales leader working for a marketing agency, she just couldn\u2019t shake the sudden change in both her perception and behaviour. \u201cThat was when it hit me that audio was the most intimate brand-building tool out there,\u201d she recalls. \u201cAnd almost no company was using it on purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n That insight into the business potential of branded podcasts was the spark that kicked off Zaidi\u2019s entrepreneurial journey. Her foundational idea\u2014that companies needed help reaching the earbuds of potential customers\u2014has proven prescient: Over the past seven years, she\u2019s built Quill Inc. into a growing and profitable company that delivers award-winning work for some of the world\u2019s biggest brands.<\/p>\n Never mind that the company today barely resembles the one she started in 2019.<\/p>\n Zaidi\u2019s original business plan was for a marketplace that connected podcasters with freelancers that could help them make their programs. \u201cI wanted to launch a product,\u201d she says. The marketplace didn\u2019t last long\u2014Zaidi soon realized she\u2019d need serious capital to scale it and, following a few frustrating pitches, she had little desire to spend her time selling investors on a concept they were unlikely to back. But it did guide the fledgling business towards a lucrative niche: giving the corporations who\u2019d been scouring the site for assistance a one-stop shop for everything from recording to marketing. <\/p>\n As a full-service production agency, Quill hit its stride, buoyed in part by a pandemic-era shift in marketing dollars from experiential events into audio content. Building a podcast product was still the goal, but a service-based business with healthy margins seemed a clever on-ramp that could generate both valuable intel about what the market really needed and, importantly, a stream of income to fund development. \u201cI knew I could grow it incrementally,\u201d Zaidi says. \u201cAnd I knew it was where key learnings were going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n That immersive incubation led to the development of CoHost, a software platform that consolidates data about listeners and their behaviours to give podcasters (and the brands that commission them) an enriched view into who, exactly, is pressing \u201cplay.\u201d It\u2019s a world removed from the industry-standard download tally that marketers had come to expect and makes it much easier for everyone to assess the true ROI of a show. CoHost\u2019s rapid traction since its launch in 2022\u2014it\u2019s now used by most Quill clients and many of its competitors\u2014is no accident: \u201cWe built a product to solve the pain points experienced by both ourselves and our customers,\u201d Zaidi says. \u201cIt\u2019s been successful because we first spent years in the trenches building podcasts.\u201d <\/p>\n The result is a fast-growing enterprise with far more durability than the sum of its parts, with two highly complementary lines that feed one another: Quill\u2019s production work keeps the company close to the needs of CoHost users, while CoHost delivers audience insights that makes Quill\u2019s content smarter\u2014and its services stickier for brands. (Not for nothing, it also delivers recurring revenue.) \u201cEach side keeps sharpening the other, and that advantage compounds on its own,\u201d explains Zaidi. <\/p>\n And none of it would have happened had Zaidi held fast to her initial approach. \u201cOne of the best pieces of advice I\u2019ve received is not to have rose-coloured lenses,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I had to distill what makes an entrepreneur successful\u2014outside of opportunity and luck, which is a huge factor\u2014it\u2019s the ability to recognize and pivot fast when something isn\u2019t working. Because eventually you\u2019ll find product-market fit, and you\u2019ll just keep getting better and faster and smarter.\u201d <\/p>\n Vibn began in 2019 as a vintage clothing resale business run out of a Waterloo, Ont., dorm room. Today, the company is selling mystery boxes of curated thrift-store finds into more than 40 countries, thanks to a clutch decision to shift from high-touch, high-overhead delivery into a much more scalable model. Founder and creative director Mehul Adlakha walks us through the glow-up behind his company\u2019s 1,205% growth:<\/p>\n \u201cI started the business because I noticed how many of my fellow students were walking around wearing vintage pieces from the 1980s, 1990s and Y2K, mostly sportswear. I was not specifically into thrifting or vintage myself, but I was very much into fashion, and I saw an opportunity to buy inventory wholesale and resell items individually.<\/p>\n When everything shut down during Covid, retail therapy became a big thing for a lot of people. That worked well for us, and we started to grow. We opened physical stores. We had 3,000 or 4,000 pieces of clothing online at any given time. Every one of those items had to be washed, sorted, tagged, steamed, photographed, measured, uploaded to our Shopify store and promoted. It was very labour intensive. I started to realize it wasn\u2019t sustainable or scalable. <\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Adlakha created vintage clothing resale business Vibn in 2019, running it out of a Waterloo, Ont., dorm room. The company started to see big growth during the pandemic, when people turned to retail therapy en mass.JONAH ATKINS\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n At the end of 2024, I had two stores in two different malls, paying extremely high rent, plus a warehouse and about 20 employees. We had no margin. We had no money and well over 30 grand that was supposed to leave the next day. I remember sitting in front of a whiteboard that was full of ideas, and there was just no solution. The business was going to die if we didn\u2019t make a change. <\/p>\n I knew there wasn\u2019t an issue with the product itself. The problem was with the process: There were just too many steps involved in selling it. So I decided to try getting it to customers in a different way, via mystery boxes. <\/p>\n I wasted months running through the pros and cons, the risks and rewards. But in February 2025, we put up our first mystery boxes. We honed the relationships with suppliers to get more product for a better price. We stopped posting individual items, cut back staff and closed our retail stores. Mystery boxes have proven to be a very scalable model. The decision to pivot has driven the majority of our growth. <\/p>\n When you realize something\u2019s not working, don\u2019t just sit and hope that it magically changes. Most of the time, it will not. If you look at the numbers and what you see doesn\u2019t make sense, it\u2019s time to pivot. Understand what you need to do, and then act on it as fast as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n CultureAlly<\/p>\n Rank: 41<\/p>\n Pivot Point: Stay close to your customer<\/p>\n When CultureAlly started in 2021, its core product\u2014accessible workplace diversity, equity and inclusion training\u2014was in hot demand. But as customer needs started to shift, the company had to decide whether and how to evolve. (Spoiler alert: With 719% growth over the past three years, it made the right call.) Founder and CEO Ashley Kelly shares the story: <\/p>\n \u201cI was working in the DEI space. Across many organizations and industries, I kept hearing the same thing: People didn\u2019t just want information; they also wanted learning that was practical and helpful. I wasn\u2019t seeing a lot of that in the market. I thought, There\u2019s got to be a way to do this that makes it fun and engaging. That\u2019s what led me to start CultureAlly.<\/p>\n It took a year to get traction. Then we began doubling and doubling and doubling. We provided DEI consulting, training, workshops and e-learning, and there was a lot of demand for all of it. Our content was accessible, and it was actionable, and that led to longer-term client relationships and partnerships. We validated our product-market fit.<\/p>\n Things started to change in 2025. We began to notice conversations shifting. Clients were still committed to building inclusive workplaces, but they were asking for help with a broader set of challenges: things like emotional intelligence, leadership, communication, psychological safety and navigating difficult conversations. We saw that there was so much more that we could do. I started to see a risk in not expanding. <\/p>\n It\u2019s so key to listen to the market\u2014like, really listen. I still sell our services, and I\u2019m still on calls. It allows me to hear what\u2019s changing. Our clients tell us every day what they need, where they\u2019re going and where they need support, and I think it\u2019s our responsibility as a company to meet them there.<\/p>\n Our reset didn\u2019t happen overnight. We wanted to be intentional, especially with our positioning and marketing. We had a lot of conversations, which have led to expanded partnerships. We doubled down on what we do best, which is corporate training, and moved away from models that are less scalable, like consulting. <\/p>\n We have served more than 1,000 clients, and we\u2019re continuing to expand our partnerships to even bigger and larger brands on a global basis. Our pivot really helped with that. Looking at our growth trajectory into 2027, I think it was fundamental for us to make that expansion.<\/p>\n You can\u2019t fall in love with your idea. It can cloud your judgment. Your clients might be telling you that there\u2019s a problem they want you to solve\u2014they might be telling you for months\u2014but if you\u2019re too attached to your initial idea, you\u2019ll miss those opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n H2 Analytics started out in 2018 as a services company, with Canadian Forces veterans and national security experts delivering defence and intelligence training to a clientele primarily composed of government agencies. In 2022, it introduced Ease, a sovereign training and simulation platform for defence and emergency preparedness, wildly expanding its market and driving sales up 552%. But as CEO Hugo Hodgett describes, it hasn\u2019t been an all-or-nothing transition:<\/p>\n \u201cI spent more than 15 years working in intelligence and defence. The reality was that when it came time to do the job for real, the training was nowhere near what it needed to be to actually get people ready for high-risk and dangerous environments. My thesis was that there was a gap in the market for intelligence training that generated the kind of complexity, velocity and quantity of information needed to better prepare people. <\/p>\n We started providing it the old-fashioned way: using Word documents, PowerPoints and Excel spreadsheets. We realized pretty quickly that in order to get to a level of scale, we needed to bring in some automation solutions. That was the inception of a transition to a software platform. <\/p>\n We are a bootstrapped company. We have no institutional capital; at the time, no investor wanted to touch defence. So we used our services business\u2014which is still here to this day\u2014to fund our software development. It was not easy. There was a lot of belt-tightening. We had our whole executive team out in the field delivering programs.<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Over more than 15 years working in intelligence and defence, Hodgett saw a gap in the market for the kind of quality intelligence training required to better prepare people for the reality of high-risk and dangerous environments.BRENDAN GEORGE KO\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n Ease came out four years ago, as an AI-native product, and it\u2019s been a bit of a rocket ship ever since. Last year, software became the primary revenue driver for us. That\u2019s increasing this year, and we expect it to continue increasing into the future.<\/p>\n The biggest thing it has unlocked is our international opportunities. In our world, there are certain rooms you\u2019ll never get into if you\u2019re Canadian. But we can now provide the IP externally, and clients can use it to their hearts\u2019 content, and we never need to see it. It\u2019s allowed us to crack open the ability to export more efficiently and effectively, and be a more profitable company. <\/p>\n Certainly the tides are changing with defence and intelligence investment in Canada\u2014more people are finally taking this problem seriously. But none of that is changing our DNA. We stay lean and mean. We\u2019ve set the conditions over eight years to be a good business and, luckily, we are coming into a time where we are able to to exploit the opportunities that are in front of us.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been able to build a hybrid business model that is much more effective than either component would be in isolation. Don\u2019t give up things that are working for moonshots if it means you can fight another day.\u201d<\/p>\n Just Vertical<\/p>\n Rank: 79<\/p>\n Pivot Point: Go where the growth is<\/p>\n The founders of Just Vertical started with a bold vision: to equip homes across North America with small, stylish vertical farming rigs capable of producing fresh fruit and veggies year round. About two years ago, the company pivoted to the more fertile ground of outfitting commercial indoor agriculture operations, a savvy, if complicated, decision that has fed 358% revenue growth. Co-founder and CEO Conner Tidd delves into the change:<\/p>\n \u201cKevin Jakiela and I started the company in 2017, started selling in earnest in 2019 and had it all off the ground when Covid hit, and a lot of people suddenly became concerned about where their food was coming from. <\/p>\n We built a great million-dollar-a-year business. But our investors wanted us to get to $10 million. We couldn\u2019t see a way to get there without raising and burning through a lot more cash. <\/p>\n One option was to keep rolling out consumer models, and get very price-competitive to compete with stuff coming in from overseas. That didn\u2019t align with our core values around food security and sustainability. Then we thought about pivoting to commercial. That resonated. It was a route to growth and a way to make a real impact by building right into communities.<\/p>\n We did get some pushback from our board and some of our investors, who\u2019d bought into the vision of everyone growing food in their kitchens. But it was clear the move made sense.<\/p>\n We actually didn\u2019t have to change the product much: We just adapted it to grow 12,000 plants at once instead of 12. We did have to totally shift our customer acquisition processes. We went from buying Google ads and making trendy Instagram snippets to communicating to a business audience used to detailed proposals. We had to build a proper sales pipeline. You can\u2019t really sell commercial clients on an email drip.<\/p>\n The pivot to commercial has allowed us to develop more intentionally. The sales cycles are a lot longer but more predictable. We have the room to innovate and make quicker iterative gains between projects. And we still do have a consumer line of business: It\u2019s smaller but completely profitable, and hums along on its own.<\/p>\n The advantage of being an entrepreneur is that you can be nimble. Just because you started doing something one way doesn\u2019t mean you have to do it that way forever.\u201d<\/p>\n Gotcare started in 2018 as a tool to help individuals co-ordinate home healthcare services. The B Corp\u2013certified company\u2014which grew 146% in the past three years\u2014has since evolved into a tech platform meant to give patients agency over all aspects of their care. Co-founder and CEO Chenny Xia explains the evolution:<\/p>\n \u201cWe built Gotcare around a simple idea: that home care could work better. We wanted individuals and their families to find support without feeling like they\u2019re navigating a maze. We wanted to provide more meaningful and sustainable careers for care workers. And we wanted payers of care\u2014governments, insurers and health systems\u2014to be able to see whether care is working so they could adapt services before people fall through the cracks. We brought those three perspectives together to create a new approach to orchestrating, organizing and co-ordinating care, built around responsiveness. It was about getting Mom care when something happened, as opposed to care on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. <\/p>\n We\u2019ve now pushed it beyond scheduling and logistics. Our customers\u2014who are the funders of care\u2014asked for help giving patients the ability to make bigger decisions, as well, as part of a broader change happening across healthcare. So we evolved. What started as a tech-enabled service delivery platform is now a patient-driven care management platform. Using our app, families get to choose how they want to spend their approved care allocation, with full autonomy based on what a good life looks like for them. <\/p>\n We\u2019ve been working to enable patients to have a larger voice over their care since the beginning, but we\u2019ve now formalized that into a standalone product. Whereas before we were selling the outcome of the infrastructure that we used in our own operations, now we are also selling the infrastructure itself. It wasn\u2019t a difficult decision. For us, it came back to the mission of the company. Why do we even exist if not to lean into why we built this in the first place?<\/p>\n We\u2019re blessed in that the line of sight we have from product to impact is obvious. Because we get to fully steep ourselves in the lived experiences of the people we serve, we\u2019re less at risk of serving our own egos, as opposed to serving the problem. And when you serve the problem, your judgment becomes a lot clearer.\u201d <\/p>\n How I did itOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Sally Daub, co-CEO, BorderPass.Evan Dion<\/p>\n How to scale with… perspicacity<\/p>\n \u201cOur biggest lesson has been to rebuild a problem around what new tech makes possible, and then pair that ambition with discipline about accuracy and accountability. When we started, the reflex was to layer AI onto existing workflows. We did the opposite: We rebuilt the work around what AI does best and kept licensed lawyers on the judgment and sign-off only they can provide.\u201d <\/p>\n \u2014Sally Daub, co-CEO, BorderPass (No. 7)<\/p>\n How to scale with… speed<\/p>\n \u201cMost decisions are reversible, so speed beats perfection.\u201d <\/p>\n \u2014Wilson Cross, co-founder and CEO, Borderless AI (No. 38)<\/p>\n How to scale with… grit<\/p>\n \u201cIntense small business growth comes from equal parts trust, trauma, resilience and fear.\u201d <\/p>\n \u2014Angus Campbell, co-founder and CEO, Good Robot Brewing Co. (No. 107)<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Linda Dang, CEO of Sukoshi.Amy Sussman\/Getty Images<\/p>\n How to scale with… clarity<\/p>\n \u201cClarity beats certainty. In a fast-growing retail business, you rarely have perfect information\u2014about the market, about a new location, about a hiring decision. Waiting for certainty is a luxury operators cannot afford. The job of a leader is not to have all the answers but to give your team a clear direction, the context behind decisions and the confidence to execute even in ambiguous conditions.\u201d <\/p>\n \u2014Linda Dang, founder and CEO, Sukoshi (No. 108)<\/p>\n How to scale with… profitability<\/p>\n \u201cPropel was launched with a clear path to profitability and achieved that within five years. For us, it\u2019s a mindset: It meant staying frugal and mindful, watching every hire, and growing at a pace that wouldn\u2019t put revenue growth ahead of profitability. We could have grown our top line much faster and still could, but we firmly believe that in the long run, the best and most successful companies always have an eye on profitability.\u201d <\/p>\n \u2014Clive Kinross, co-founder and CEO, Propel Holdings (No. 164)<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n CEO of MDA Space Mike Greenley.Christopher Katsarov\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n How to scale with… focus<\/p>\n \u201cYears ago, I learned the phrase, \u2018The smaller the niche, the bigger the market.\u2019 For us, that means focusing on being a high-growth, pure-play space company, and on new lines that further establish us as a leader in the three areas with global growth potential: space communication networks, radar-based Earth observation, and space infrastructure development and operations.\u201d <\/p>\n \u2014Mike Greenley, CEO, MDA Space (No. 169)<\/p>\n How to scale with… discipline<\/p>\n \u201cNot all growth is good growth. We\u2019ve learned to evaluate opportunities not just on revenue potential, but on alignment\u2014with our values, our team capacity and the kind of work we want to be known for. That discipline has allowed us to scale without compromising what makes the business strong.\u201d <\/p>\n \u2014Lisa Pasquin, president, Craft Public Relations (No. 347)<\/p>\n GREAT IDEASRing Rescue<\/p>\n A quick fix for stuck rings<\/p>\n