Like most workplaces last week, the soccer-obsessed founding team of Venford Technologies was consumed by the final matchup between Spain and Argentina of the FIFA World Cup. Unlike most workplaces, Venford felt it had the means to predict the outcome.
The Toronto-based startup is developing digital twin software for policy planning. The platform helps policymakers simulate and “stress test” the outcome of a theoretical budget on critical industries like healthcare before they’re implemented. Of course, what’s more critical than international soccer?
“Everyone was talking about it,” Nadeen Al-Aubadi, a founding team member of Venford, told BetaKit in an interview. “Like, my whole feed is World Cup, World Cup, World Cup … everyone had strong opinions.”
Just for fun, the four-person team decided to plug the available data of the Spanish and Argentinian teams into its proprietary platform. Lo and behold, its system gave Spain a 56 percent chance of beating Argentina and burying international superstar Lionel Messi’s likely final chance to be a World Cup champion; a prediction that turned out correct on the pitch.
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The Venford team contemplated holding on to the prediction and only sharing after the game was decided, but, as Al-Aubadi said, “nobody would believe you.” So the startup put its model where its mouth is and shared its prediction on LinkedIn ahead of the first whistle. Following Spain’s 1-0 victory in extra time on Sunday, Venford is now taking its deserved victory lap.
“It’s a fun thing because we talked about it at the office, but … even though it’s fun, it can be predictable,” Al-Aubadi said.
Venford was founded in late 2025 and launched its digital twin product earlier this year. Al-Aubadi said the young startup is bootstrapped with some backing from angel investors and has a few customers in the pipeline. While giving Spain a 56 percent chance may be extremely close to just sitting on the fence, she still sees value in the slight edge Venford’s technology gave to Spain as the company courts a seed investment.
“I think that’s the whole point of the technology is that small little percentage that could make all the difference,” Al-Aubadi said. “They [Spain] did not win so easily; it was extra time, and a lot of things [were] riding on it.”
Feature image courtesy FIFA.