Business transformations are happening more rapidly today than at any other time in recent memory. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one leading culprit accelerating this evolution, but changing consumer tastes—ie. Shorter attention spans—along with micro- and macroeconomic conditions are fundamentally upending operations across industries.  While no one in the C-Suite is immune to the struggles that come with these transformations, the office of the CFO is especially feeling the pressure. According to a recent report from Sage, in just the past year, 89 percent of SMB-to-mid-market CFOs po ..read more

Canada’s Budget 2024 was met with what can diplomatically be described as a mixed bag of reactions when it dropped last Tuesday. While many of the spending commitments outlined were as expected—$23 billion towards housing and infrastructure, and even $2.4 billion toward boosting homegrown AI innovation—policy changes (or a lack thereof) drew ire across the tech community.  For starters, the news landed at the height of the INNOVATEwest conference in Vancouver, where many of the founders, funders and ecosystem partners on hand were baffled by both the continued delays to open banking as we ..read more

Crowdfunding plays a critical role in modern society, helping people drive creativity and innovation, support social causes and even provide healthcare to individuals and their families—including pets. But not all digital fundraising platforms are created equal. In fact, many fundraising solutions put barriers between users on both sides of the crowdfunding equation that actually limits how much control they have over funds raised—to say nothing of the capability for users to build community around their cause.  That’s where the team at ConnectionPoint comes in, providing a suite of Fede ..read more

While CFOs closed out 2023 with a conservative outlook, the latest research from Deloitte shows a significantly more positive view of both the global economy’s prospects and how CFOs expect their own businesses to fare in 2024.  Despite a general uptick in optimism, however, CFOs face growing headwinds when it comes to cost and capital management, innovation and growth, and execution and efficiency—to say nothing of how global economic pressures are impacting decisions around financing. We’ll break down what’s driving this mixed-bag of cautious optimism among global financial leaders, the ..read more

Of the many innovation funding programs on offer from the Canadian government, the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit and the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) grants are among the most popular and most generous.  Where both SR&ED and IRAP overlap is in being tools that businesses can use to finance innovative research and development: Both programs hinge on leveraging Systematic Investigation to drive Technological Advancement that ultimately addresses Technological Uncertainty.  However, while SR&ED is offered as a tax credit ..read more

Minister of Finance Eric Girard tabled his 2024 budget for Quebec last week, which called for a significant restructuring to two of the province’s banner innovation tax credit programs.  Specifically, the budget calls for rebalancing the refundable and non-refundable portions of the Electronic Business Development Tax Credit (CDAE) and the Multimedia Tax Credit (CTMM). For CDAE, the Quebec government will scale up the non-refundable share—that is, the portion of the credits where businesses must pay tax to Quebec for qualification—from 6 percent today to 10 percent by 2028. Simultaneously ..read more

It’s already been one year since Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank—two of the largest banking partners for the tech sector at the time—were abruptly shuttered. While the wound this inflicted is still fresh for many—after all, SVB had backed upwards of 40 percent of venture-backed technology and healthcare companies in the United States when they closed—it’s worth bearing in mind the broader fallout from these sudden closures: Shortly after the SVB news broke on Friday, March 10, 2023, the four largest U.S. banks alone lost roughly $50 billion dollars in market share, while more tha ..read more

If the latest warnings from Gartner are correct, CFOs are going to need all the help they can get to avoid shrinking profit margins over the next three years.  The analyst group forecasts that relative to 2022, EBITDA—earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization—margins are forecast to drop as much as 30 percent by 2027. This comes as a perfect storm of economic conditions collide over the coming months and years that are set to sink consumer demand while labor and operational costs rise.  “Most companies will be unable to deliver the profitable outcomes investors h ..read more

Getting the best return on your R&D tax credit claim calls for expertise in both deep tech and IRS legalese—two areas that rarely overlap.  That’s why when Jason Terry and the team at General Ledger Partners work with startups to maximize their potential through consultative accounting, they turn to the team at Boast to bridge this knowledge divide and maximize R&D tax credit returns.  As a Certified Public Accountant, Jason has more than 15 years in the finance and accounting space, having successfully worked for public, private, and not-for-profit entities with annual reve ..read more

One of the most important characteristics of being an entrepreneur is adaptability. While this can take many different forms over the course of your startup’s lifecycle, it’s especially important when you’re still building out your MVP or cultivating a customer base for your product. Another characteristic that goes hand-in-hand with adaptability is being a good listener. By being receptive to feedback, you can pivot your solution to truly tackle the problem that’s at the heart of your hypothesis. This is critical because no one is going to want to buy or use—let alone invest in—a flashy tech ..read more