The Category Challengers

BetaKit Most Ambitious

Get competitive

Vasiliki Bednar on challenging our nation’s comfort zones.

Canada’s economy isn’t just facing a productivity problem, it’s facing a competition problem.

Across multiple sectors, market concentration is rising and new firms are struggling to scale.

A report from Statistics Canada and the Competition Bureau of Canada found that Canadian industries have become more concentrated over the past 20 years, and the number of highly concentrated industries has actually increased.

At a time when competition is key, fewer small competitors are challenging Canada’s largest firms, and fewer companies are entering industries overall. The data confirms what many Canadians experience intuitively: our markets aren’t dynamic, they’re dormant.

The stagnation comes with a cost. Canada’s banking sector remains highly concentrated, with the “Big Five” controlling most of the market and preventing competitive pricing. In the insurance sector, three companies dominate property coverage, driving up premiums for small businesses. In healthcare, Canadians struggle for access to their electronic medical records because of regional vendor lock-in, and are limited in their choices and access to medication at pharmacies because of the companies that control those options behind the scenes. Airlines are similarly consolidated: two carriers control about 80 percent of domestic flights. In telecom, three providers collectively hold nearly 90 percent of the wireless market. Even retail, often assumed to be more competitive, is dominated by a few powerful players like Walmart and Amazon.

If we want better outcomes for consumers, workers, and entrepreneurs, we need new entrants ready and able to shake things up. This isn’t just about market share; it’s about a lack of pressure to improve. When incumbents are pushed, they innovate or get displaced.

Canada needs more companies that break open markets as category challengers, making plays in clubby spaces dominated by legacy players.

Challengers not only offer alternatives, but they make it harder for incumbents to coast. They inject energy, urgency, and experimentation into the landscape.

They can’t do it alone. Market dynamism will require Canada to dismantle closed and anti-competitive systems, open doors, end gatekeeping, and ensure that new players have a real shot.

If we want to build from Canada, and not just in Canada, the country must reject the status quo and bring ambition to spaces that have been “spoken for” for far too long. The time is now to challenge monopolies, boost competition, and reshape calcified Canadian markets.

Making it easy to sell

Shopify (Ottawa, ON)

The Cha-Ching Button retails for $15 USD on the Shopify Supply store.

Billed as a serotonin boost, the toy replicates the sound that merchants hear when they make a sale via Canada’s most successful retail platform.

With 2025 revenues tracking towards $10.5 billion, Shopify is Canada’s noisiest tech company, and has recently been pushing a lot of people’s buttons. CEO Tobi Lütke and other execs were vocal in the lead-up to the federal election, and the company declared AI usage as “a baseline expectation” for employees.

But if Amazon defined itself by making it easy for the world to shop, Shopify is undoubtedly making it easier for the world to sell. The global commerce platform reduces the barrier to entry for aspiring entrepreneurs and ensures that anyone who wants to start something can sell something.

As Canadian tech’s highest profile success story, Shopify has defined a market for enabling other people’s success.

Shopify’s continued growth relies on a global army of individual merchants deciding that they can succeed, too. To reinforce this brand, the company describes its mission as “arming the rebels” of global commerce, and sponsors a Canadian esports team called Shopify Rebellion.

In a world where Big Tech companies like Amazon look to control online commerce, helping entrepreneurs sell on their own terms is an act of defiance.

Cha-ching.

Fill your script

MedEssist (Toronto, ON)

In a national health care system that’s undoubtedly overwhelmed, neighbourhood pharmacies can do more.

Right now, 6.5 million Canadians lack access to a family doctor or primary care provider, and emergency rooms are overwhelmed with patients who just need a prescription, a shot, or a pill.

“MedEssist’s ultimate goal is to turn pharmacies into a layer of the health-care system that is incredibly accessible and way more connected, which improves capacity for the primary care our health-care system desperately needs,” said Joella Almeida, who founded the company with pharmacist Michael Do.

MedEssist’s platform helps pharmacies digitize the management of prescription refills, vaccines, medication inventory, payments, reservations, and even deliveries through a recent Uber partnership.

The platform also supports new shifts in what pharmacists are allowed to do. Ontario recently joined other Canadian provinces in allowing pharmacists to address approximately 30 conditions without physician involvement.

The results of providing pharmacists the right tools to provide more care can be dramatic. When pharmacists in British Columbia started prescribing birth control, the province was able to divert more than 300,000 visits away from walk-in clinics and emergency rooms.

Let it rip

Katherine Homuth (Montréal, QC)

It wasn’t just about indestructible tights.

That’s where Katherine Homuth started, when she set out to create a pair of nylons that wouldn’t rip and disrupt a market of disposable products worn by millions of women every day.

The founder of SRTX created a product made of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene, which is strong enough to be used in bulletproof vests.

But materials and labour are expensive, and SRTX needed a way to bring the product’s price down. So she decided to overhaul Western textile production as well.

Homuth insourced her company’s material science, manufacturing technology and software, with a plan to vertically integrate her supply chain.

She did this in Canada, not China, taking advantage of Montréal’s textile manufacturing facilities and expertise to stand up her 300,000-square foot facility. She embraced the province’s abundant clean energy to achieve SRTX’s bold sustainability goals.

“This could actually change an entire category,” she told BetaKit. “This is worth the pain of attempting to figure out how to do it.”

Canada is currently experiencing the pain of figuring out its dependence on imported goods. Homuth had a plan to reduce our dependence on cheap offshore labour, by making energy the base unit cost of manufacturing.

SRTX might still achieve these lofty goals, but it won’t be with Homuth as its leader. The founder recently secured funding to support the company through the ongoing Canada-US trade war, contingent on her stepping down as CEO.

Her willingness to follow ambition wherever it leads continues to be a source of inspiration. Homuth has already launched a new company, Oomira, to help companies capture and index their organizational memory.

Medical devices for women

Rachel Bartholomew (Waterloo, ON)

Rachel Bartholomew emerged from cervical cancer treatment with firsthand experience of the urgent need for innovation in women’s healthcare.

“I quickly learned the hard way that women have to navigate, and are often neglected by, a broken pelvic health system,” she said.

Her startup, Hyivy, is looking to end the uncomfortable reign of the vaginal dilator, a crude device developed in 1938, which remains the only clinical option to address the long-term pelvic side effects that can come from cancer treatment.

Hyivy’s digitally-enabled alternative, Floora, is among a surge of innovative new medical devices focused on women’s health, and is currently in two active Health Canada-approved clinical trials, with an alpha launch planned in 25 California clinics this year.

“I started this company because I believe women deserve better,” said Bartholomew, who also launched Femtech Canada, a network of over 120 Canadian organizations supporting women’s health needs.

Mapping the indoors

MappedIn (Waterloo, ON)

Earlier this year, Hongwei Lei asked a group of firefighters in Fredericton, New Brunswick if they have access to maps when they enter a burning building.

The group laughed and pointed to the back of the truck, where they kept a giant binder of municipal blueprints too unwieldy to be useful in a five-alarm fire.

“They’re running in blind every time,” Lei said.

His Waterloo-based company, Mappedin, is working to change this.

While Google Maps owns the globe’s outdoor terrain, Mappedin is charting its territory between four walls.

The company’s goal is to map the indoors, providing wayfinding and information for the spaces we navigate inside.

The company turns floor plans into 3D interactive maps with AI, and users of the Mappedin app can also scan their indoor surroundings to create, customize, edit, and label their own maps.

Having mapped about one percent of the world’s indoor spaces so far, the company has already reached $10 million ARR, working in more than 57 countries and 1,700 venues, including an arena map they made for Super Bowl 2024.

Indoor maps are useful for retail, hospitality, developers, school boards, and governments. But Mappedin’s biggest selling point is public safety.

Under the banner of “Maps for Good,” the company made its platform free for firefighters, police, and EMS teams. An employee of the US Department of Homeland Security called it “the most important tool of the past 50 years,” and the program, designed as a gesture of goodwill, has created a rush of interest and paid work.

In 2025, the company will complete its most ambitious and symbolic project to date: mapping the inside of every building in Manhattan for the New York Fire Department.

The Big Eight

With or without open banking, Canadian FinTech is making moves to displace Canada’s famously unflappable financial sector.

Wealthsimple (Toronto, ON)

With three million users and over $70 billion in assets under administration, Wealthsimple is focused on becoming its clients’ primary financial relationship. It wants to be something “better than a bank,” collapsing the financial stack—investing, saving, crypto, mortgages and more—into one super slick platform. The company has set a goal to reach $100 billion under management by 2028. By that time, Wealthsimple might already be a public company.

Aquanow (Vancouver, BC)

Crypto markets need more than coins to function. They need pipes. Aquanow provides the behind-the-scenes infrastructure to move digital assets for more than 300 global companies, from startups to established financial players. The Vancouver-based firm acts as the backend engine that is being used to onboard the next 100 million users onto crypto.

Manzil (Toronto, ON)

Launched in 2020 as a Halal mortgage platform, Manzil has significantly expanded its range of Sharia-compliant FinTech offerings. Today, the startup offers a range of financial services tailored to the Muslim community, which prioritizes ethical and interest-free banking solutions in line with Islamic law. Canada has a Muslim population of 1.7 million, with collective assets estimated at $100 billion.

Koho (Toronto, ON)

Koho is the only Canadian startup looking to secure a Schedule 1 banking licence, and aims to build a fully regulated, digital-first institution that makes everyday banking faster, cheaper, and fairer for the next generation. The company recently launched a suite of internal AI tools to automate and expedite fraud detection, protecting Koho’s primary demographic of paycheque-to-paycheque households.

Float, Venn, and Loop Financial (Toronto, ON)

Canadian businesses waste time and money every day wrestling with clunky financial systems built for another era. Float is modernizing corporate cards and expense management. Venn is automating payables to give companies back their focus. Loop is helping businesses move money globally without hidden fees or delays. Each gives Canadian companies financial infrastructure built for speed and scale.

Neo Financial (Calgary, AB)

Founded by the team behind SkipTheDishes, the Alberta-based company’s investors include Shopify co-founder and CEO Tobi Lütke, Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield, PointClickCare co-founder and executive chair Mike Wessinger, and Roblox co-founder and CEO David Baszucki. Neo tracked 154,022 percent revenue growth between 2020 to 2023.

Flywheel as a service

Jane App (Vancouver, BC)

Clio (Vancouver, BC)

Two of the biggest success stories in Canadian tech operate a 15-minute drive from each other in the suburbs of Vancouver, BC. In the last year, Burnaby, BC, based Clio closed the largest fundraising round in Canadian software history with its platform for the legal community. Jane App, run out of North Vancouver by co-founder Ali Taylor, surpassed $100 million in revenue with its human and helpful software for independent clinics.

At BetaKit Town Hall: Vancouver in October 2024, the two founders spoke about the overlap in their ambitions, and how success begets success.

Ali Taylor, Jane

“I had a spreadsheet on my computer for a long time that showed the paths companies had taken to $100 million in revenue. It was so awesome because they were all very varied. There wasn’t one story that was the same. We just hit $100 million this year and I’m like, ‘Okay now what are we doing?’ Let’s go to a billion.

We’ve never seen any detriment to building in Canada. If anything, we’ve actually seen a lot of benefits. I always say that we have Clio in our backyard and we’re basically Clio for a different industry. Everyone who’s in town to invest in them asks if they can come by. If you have someone charting the path, you end up building an ecosystem where success follows.”

Jack Newton, Clio

“One of the things I talk about a lot at Clio is the idea of the flywheel and just how you get this virtuous cycle happening.

These virtuous flywheels exist right here in Vancouver and they exist at the Canada-wide level. We need to be thinking about what we can do to drive that innovation flywheel both locally and across the country. It’s the strength of weak connections that end up really powering community.

One of the investors that ended up leading Jane’s latest round got to know the company because they were in town for a Clio board meeting. At Clio, our first real institutional capital from the US was Bessemer Venture Partners. One of the reasons Bessemer was comfortable investing in Clio was because they had invested in Shopify. This company on the other side of the country had blazed a trail for us. It’s these small little relationships and unlocks that end up creating the next Shopify, the next Jane, the next Clio.”

Feature image courtesy Stocksy.