Ask HN: What are some cool or underrated tech companies based in Canada?
I'm based in Canada and curious to learn more about interesting or up-and-coming tech companies here — not just the usual big names like Shopify or Lightspeed, but also smaller startups, bootstrapped companies, or niche players doing great work in software, hardware, AI, sustainability, fintech, etc.
Heres a few:
https://layerzero.network/
https://1password.com/
https://www.wealthsimple.com/
https://floatcard.com
https://www.postgrid.com
https://www.dapperlabs.com
https://www.wattpad.com
https://gusto.com
https://cohere.com
https://clear.co/ https://www.clio.com/
Clio is a gem. I know a few great people who Shopify chewed through that ended up there and are happy.
Gusto is not canadian.
HTTPS://transit.app is amazing for public transport routing. Gives you a lot more information than the stock mapping apps. Some of the things they do are pure black magic.
Their 2016 post on how they render their lines is really nice and full of cool images: https://blog.transitapp.com/how-we-built-the-worlds-pretties...
I work at https://spare.com/
We make tools for transit agencies to manage paratransit and microtransit services, mainly for people with disabilities but also for campuses and low-density areas. Managing these types of services is a real, hard problem with billions spent every year.
Our customers include Winnipeg, Oakville, St John, Saskatoon, and Powell River (also Dallas, LA, Austin, more in Japan and Europe), with more coming soon - including driverless vehicles with routing and scheduling powered by us.
We're Vancouver-based, and we're hiring :)
SideFX, makers of VFX software Houdini https://www.sidefx.com/
And Derivative, makers of video & interactive software Touch Designer https://derivative.ca/
(Both packages have a shared origin I believe)
I think we’re pretty cool! https://www.trykeep.com
Urbanlogiq: https://urbanlogiq.com/
Saw their big announcement at Web Summit which stood out: https://urbanlogiq.com/global-foundation-model/
D-wave also had a presence at Web Summit and also seem to be doing well: https://www.dwavequantum.com/
We are building some exciting cloud deployment tools at https://defang.io.
We are making it super easy to manage your deployments through the compose.yaml file you probably already have. The idea is to have a single definition of your application, that you can use locally, and project it into any cloud.
We're a small team based in Vancouver. If you're in town, reach out and come visit: jordan.stephens@defang.io
https://sabotagestudio.com/ near Quebec City, they made the amazing 2D JRPG Sea of Stars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Stars
Very excellent takeoff of Chrono Trigger or Lufia 2 type SNES games. Truly exceptional.
https://www.geotab.com
Jobber ( https://www.getjobber.com )
I make https://voicecast.app/ and I’m based in Toronto :P
I also work at https://www.getjobber.com/ which is based in Edmonton.
Voicecast looks awesome. Are you considering a video version?
Thanks for commenting, would’ve never found your product otherwise.
As in sending video messages? That would be intriguing! I’d never considered it.
No problem! Are you a podcaster?
Content creator/artist of sorts, interested in engaging with folks in new ways. Your comment was a bit of an aha moment.
Well, I will be definitely building a video feature, it’s a great suggestion. Let me know if you end up using Voicecast, or have any ideas on how to get the word out!
Safety (previously PyUp) - https://getsafety.com - software supply chain security. Offices in Vancouver but team is all over Canada. Raised a large seed round from First Round and others.
https://getmysa.com/ - their bread and butter are line voltage “smart” thermostats.
I have a few in my home, they say they’re based in St. John’s.
Sparx - they make a great high tech home skate sharpener. Me and just about every serious player I know own one:
https://sparxhockey.com/
These are insanely popular in the US too. And I can verify that most of the guys I play with own one. They say their kids teams travel with four or five so the kids get their skates tuned before every game.
That product was an absolute game changer.
Self-serving mention of https://sphyrnasecurity.com/ - we're a bootstrapped cybersecurity company with two main product lines: cross-domain hardware and GRC/IRM software.
Here are some worthy ones I know of in Vancouver:
AbCellera (biotech)
General Fusion (fusion energy)
Rapidia (metal 3D printing)
Human in Motion Robotics (exoskeletons)
Grin Technologies (ebike components)
Arca climate technologies (atmospheric CO2 removal via mine tailings)
https://enurgen.com/
They work on modeling solar energy projects, great group.
https://aloe.inc Check out Aloe - the founding team left the Bay Area to found the company in Vancouver to have better access to top international talent. Here's a peek at what we're building: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6M5wSv6pyU
https://www.magicboard.ai -
We are building MagicBoard which is a smart board that helps kids learn and develop structure in a way that’s interactive, age appropriate and fosters independence.
It comes to life through a dedicated device for kids with no passive content and a parent app that has an AI based assistant for the parent.
https://www.landr.com/ has been around for a while with its automated audio mastering service and it's now a one-stop-shop for everything related to music production. There's also really cool stuff coming up in a few months:)
https://flare.io is a cybersecurity platform based in Montréal.
https://www.helcim.com/ and https://www.koho.ca/ come to mind as ell but didn’t see anyone mention them.
Plugging ourselves, Lumen5 based out of Vancouver. I was one of the first hires found trough the HN hiring thread many moons ago. https://lumen5.com/
Aylo, based in Montreal, operate some of the most popular social media and online video sharing platforms. It also own many renowned movie studios. Probably among the top five users of internet bandwidth in the world
Aylo is a Canadian multinational pornographic conglomerate owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners.
Ethical Capital Partners is a Canadian private equity firm best known for its acquisition of Aylo, the owner of Pornhub. The company is chaired by businessman Rocco Meliambro
formerly Manwin
I am customer of Coveo enterprise search. https://www.coveo.com/en/company/about-us
Ruchi (Sr Dir of Eng at Dropbox) and Ashwin (Employee #1 at Rippling) at https://maplebilling.com/ are top notch!
SanctuaryAI https://www.sanctuary.ai/
Making humanoid robots for a while
CentML was pretty interesting but just got bought by nvidia.
Tailscale regularly pops up.
Oh wow, congrats to Gena!
One of the coolest ones in my opinion is Xiphos Systems. Lots of cool space hardware!
https://xiphos.com/
Im building https://cardog.app out of Toronto
Trying to make car research, buying and ownership easy
My Twiddler comes from Winnipeg -- https://www.mytwiddler.com/
https://shakepay.com/ - Nice easy to use crypto Fintech
I interviewed at Wrapbook a few years ago and really liked them. They're worth a look! Based out of Toronto, IIRC.
sourcebot https://www.sourcebot.dev/
Plotly
https://plotly.com/about-us/
So many great companies, thanks for starting this & people for sharing
check out Lunch Money: https://lunchmoney.app/ - they've grown from a solopreneur story to now a small team
https://vention.io :
1. Design some machinery online with their 3d modeling tool
2. Order the parts
3. Assemble your machine and deploy it
Taiv is a Ycombinator backed company hailing from Winnipeg
https:\\soti.net
Enterprise Mobile Management
I did come to enjoy Arctic Wolf's approach to Cybersecurity training.
SideFX
One to stay away from is Mattermost
Why is that? I feel like every other go security vulnerability was reported by a security researcher there, so I assumed they have a decent engineering culture.
You're right they are one of the largest Go-based applications and get asked to test go releases.
My opinion is they have a poor engineering culture though and worse leadership that is abandoning open-source roots, chasing "mission critical" government/enterprise business.
Opentext
Tigera - K8 security - Vancouver
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