Founder Blog & Notes

December 29, 2025

What a freaking milestone. After months in the making, we just released the first startup documentary film focused on founders in Canada. This was arguably one of the most challenging projects I’ve undertaken with our small but mighty team. The details. The coordination. The scale. This was literally countless hours to put this film together. Going from pre production to production to post production was just insane. Each phase needed its own nuances. This is why content creation is not a walk in the park by any means. It’s countless hours working on things that, most of the time, don’t work. We really need to appreciate what content creators do out there. This stuff is hard. This whole idea for the documentary came up months ago after I had a chat with a founder about storytelling for founders and the...

Blog

How did The FoundersPress end up in South Korean media?

This morning, I opened up LinkedIn, and my notifications were blowing up! I checked to see what was going on and saw The FoundersPress featured in Korean media. It turns out I had covered the Top 40+ Companies at the...

October 20, 2025

Blog

Movies for Entrepreneurs: The Dumpling Queen and More

This past weekend, I had the chance to watch a movie for entrepreneurs called Dumpling Queen. I wrote about this specifically on The Founders Press. Betting on yourself is the starting point. But what happens after you put your product...

Blog

Most Founders Communities Suck Except This One

When I started my first startup, it was an incredibly isolating experience. Coming out of school and working full-time for a while, and then suddenly shifting to building something with no guarantee it’ll succeed. The reality is, your friends and...

Opinion

One-Day Build in Canada Conference Costs Over $1,100. Say What?

The “Build in Canada” conference meant to showcase innovation, growth, and the promise of a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem is costing CA$1,124.33 for a general admission ticket. That’s not support. That’s gatekeeping. This is exactly the kind of systemic barrier that...

September 6, 2025

Blog

Distribution Is King for Startups

You have an idea for an app or a product? You can instantly make it now with AI. With the rise of AI coding platforms like Replit, users are spinning up MVPs in just a few hours. There's an insane...

Blog

Zero PR Coverage for Bootstrapping Companies Till Now

If you attend any tech event in Toronto, you’ll notice something striking: not a single bootstrapping founder on stage as a speaker. It highlights just how underrepresented bootstrapping founders are in the ecosystem — despite the fact that we have...

Blog

Bootstrapping a Startup in Canada: The Reality No One Talks About

My recent post on LinkedIn about bootstrapping a startup in Canada went viral and for good reason. Because here’s the truth: bootstrapping and scaling a startup in Canada is absolute hell. Here’s what most founders deal with: Zero Press Coverage...

Blog

The Complete Startup Competitions Guide 2025

Startup competitions can be a great way to gain exposure and funding for your startup. While every founder should primarily focus on getting customers, competitions can help build momentum and credibility. I remember one of the first competitions I participated...

April 20, 2025

Blog

Highlights of FoundersBeta Top 100 Companies to Watch in 2025

Every year, we feature some of the most innovative companies in a special coverage called Top 100 Companies to Watch. This year we partnered up with monday dev to bring you this epic list. This year's batch highlights several incredible...

April 18, 2025

VENTURES

Ventures

Five-Star Experience! FoundersRating is Product Reviews for Startups & Scaleups

You’ve built that MVP you spent months on, now it’s time for some customer testimonials. But where should you showcase your product or service? On the big product review sites, your reviews often get lost. FoundersRating is the place for...

November 30, 2025

Press Release Distribution & Wire for Startups

Ventures

Founders Sigma: The Press Release Wire for Startups & Growing Companies

When it comes to press release distribution, there's often little engagement or meaningful reach. Most announcements get lost in a sea of pitches, buried under noise, or ignored entirely. The current press release ecosystem is broken—it's expensive, outdated, and rarely...

by ericrafat.com

November 15, 2025

Ventures

Founders Press turns two!

As I wrote on my Linkedin, today marks a very special day. The FoundersPress turns two! "A Rare Publication" they call us. It was around 2 years ago we started this little publication as main stream channels were only focusing...

June 9, 2025

Ventures

Founders Press: Media Platform for Founders

Founders Press is a media platform that spun out of the FoundersBeta community. Let’s face it, current press coverage for early-stage startups is far from ideal. It's 99.9% focused on startup fundraising or layoffs! Any innovative startup doesn’t get covered...

November 15, 2025

Ventures

Building a Global Founders Community

The best business ideas come from solving your own problems! They call this scratch your own back problems. Looking into solving your own problems first. FoundersBeta started as a little group for founders initially in Canada to get support and...

STARTUP STORIES

Dating as a Startup Founder is Another Ball Game

June 9, 2025

No one often wants to talk about this, but dating as a founder is another ball game. If dating is challenging, for founders and people in tech, it’s a thousand times harder. This is because entrepreneurship is a lifestyle. There’s no “it’s five, I’m off,” no Christmas, no holidays, and certainly no weekends in the traditional sense. Founders often need...

I recently had the great opportunity to attend this year's Elevate Conference. There were plenty of talks, workshops, and programs for both startups and corporates. One story that gained significant media attention was the notion of a 'lack of ambition in Canadian tech and startups.' While mainstream channels fueled this narrative by focusing on the perceived shortcomings rather than encouraging...

If you're thinking about building a product, consider building an audience first. Previously, I wrote about how, whenever we have an idea, we tend to dive in and start coding immediately. I vividly remember this from our first startup, where we focused on building "yet another killer feature," which led us nowhere. We had to shift our mentality. The best...

Times on the internet have changed. Getting a website up and running in the 1990s used to cost thousands of dollars, and you needed a large team to make anything functional. Fast forward to today—with the advancement of CMS and popular platforms like WordPress—getting a website up has become incredibly cheap. There are also no-code platforms that are extremely useful...

Getting press for an early-stage startup is an absolute must, but as many founders will tell you, the chances of getting covered are slim unless you’ve raised a big round. Press plays a key role in the growth of a startup, whether it's for gaining more exposure, helping with recruitment, or providing a boost to SEO. Unfortunately, the current press...