Count the terminal tabs open on your Mac right now. If you’ve gone full tokenmaxxer, running one agent per feature, spinning up subagents, keeping a Codex task alive next to 2 Claude Code sessions and a Gemini CLI job, the number is embarrassing. Every one of those windows is a separate place a request can appear.

A plan wants approval. A command wants a yes. A question is sitting there, blocking everything downstream, and you won’t know until you alt-tab into it. The agents are fast. The bottleneck is the human doing traffic control.

That’s the quiet cost of running agents in bulk, and almost nobody prices it in. You optimized the model and you optimized the prompt. But you never optimized the 40 times an hour you go hunting for which session stopped and why.

The tokenmaxxer’s real problem isn’t tokens

Running a crew is now a documented workflow, not a hack. Claude Code alone ships 5 different ways to work on several tasks at once: subagents, agent view, agent teams, dynamic workflows, and projects. The point of all of them is to stop working one task at a time. The catch is written into Anthropic’s own docs: running several sessions or subagents at once multiplies token usage. 3 agents burn roughly 3 times the fuel of one.

So the tokenmaxxer lives with 2 problems at once, and they pull against each other.

The first is attention.

The more agents you run, the more moments there are where one of them stops and waits for you, and the harder it is to see which one.

The second is fuel.

Anthropic meters Claude Code on both a 5-hour rolling window and a weekly cap, and Codex runs its own limits. Push a fleet hard and you can wall yourself off mid-sprint, with no warning until the session refuses to move.

Tools like lazycodex, an agent harness built for aggressive parallel execution and pushing 3,400 GitHub stars, exist precisely because people want to run more agents harder.

The harness makes the crew bigger. It does nothing for the coder who now has to steer it.

CrewTower is the part that steers.

What the CrewTower notch actually does for your AI agents

CrewTower keeps Claude Code, Codex, and your other agents in view at the top of the screen, and lets you answer them without opening a single app.

1. Approve or deny without leaving what you’re doing.

When an agent needs a yes, the request appears in the notch and your answer goes straight back to the session, while your current window stays in focus. Destructive commands get a visible warning first, so a rm -rf build/ shows you what it deletes before you wave it through.

You choose how long the approval lasts: once, for this session, or always where the agent supports it.

2. Read the plan, then have your say.

When an agent hands you a plan, you open the full thing in the notch, approve it, or send feedback for a revision before any code gets written. Same for open questions: the agent asks which queue the worker should use, you pick an option and the work keeps moving.

Plan review is where tokens get saved or wasted at scale, because a bad plan approved on autopilot is a whole session burned.

3. Jump straight to the session that needs you.

When you do need to be inside the work, Jump takes you to the exact place: the right terminal tab or tmux pane for a CLI session, or the Claude Code task in the Claude app and the Codex task in the ChatGPT app.

So no more reading 4 identically named claude tabs to find the live one. It works across iTerm2, Ghostty, Kitty, Alacritty, WezTerm, Warp, and plain Terminal.

4. Watch context and usage before either runs out.

A small ring on each session shows how full its context is, with warnings as it fills. Underneath, CrewTower shows your Claude and Codex usage windows, so the weekly cap stops being a surprise and starts being a gauge.

For a tokenmaxxer, this is the fuel light. You can see the wall coming and downshift, instead of finding it at 2pm on a Thursday with half a feature done.

5. Swap companions, and keep it quiet when you have to.

You can put a small pixel companion in the bar that reacts as your crew works, waits, and finishes. Yes, it’s adorable. And yes, you can turn it off and run character-free if that’s not your thing

Privacy mode holds the panel closed and silences alerts for a screen share, while your agents keep working in their own apps.

6. Keep the whole thing on your machine.

CrewTower doesn’t upload your prompts, code, or transcripts, and there’s no account and no app analytics.

For founders shipping anything sensitive, that’s what lets you actually use it. Your crew stays local, the control panel just sits at the edge of the screen.

Why turning the Apple notch into mission control is the smartest move

The founder lesson here is worth pulling out, because it’s a positioning move more than a feature. CrewTower claimed a piece of real estate that every MacBook has and nothing else uses.

The notch is dead space most people just work around. Turning it into mission control for your agents is the kind of wedge that looks obvious only after someone builds it, the same way Loom made “the video is the message” and Superhuman made the keyboard-only inbox.

It also runs everywhere, not just on notched machines. On an external display it shows up as a small pill at the top of the screen with the same controls, on macOS 15 or later.

The bet is that a persistent, always-visible strip beats another window you have to dig for, and for a workflow where the whole problem is too many windows, that bet is right.

CrewTower pays for itself the first time it saves you from a bad plan

CrewTower is a one-time $9.99, early-bird down from $14.99, for one Mac. No subscription, updates included.

Set that next to what a tokenmaxxer already spends: a Claude Max plan runs $100 to $200 a month, and most serious fleet-runners are stacking Max with a Codex plan on top.

Against a few hundred dollars a month in agent subscriptions, a $10 control panel that saves you from burning a weekly cap on a plan you would have rejected isn’t a purchase you model in a spreadsheet. It pays for itself the first time it stops you approving one bad plan.

The one honest catch: this Mac app has no free trial. What the site gives you instead is a full live demo that replicates the app right in the browser, so you can click through real approvals, questions, plans, and companions before you spend anything. Run the demo, decide in 3 minutes, and you’ve lost nothing if it isn’t for you.

Why CrewTower is a must-have for tokenmaxxers

The whole tokenmaxxer race has been about throughput. More agents, bigger harnesses, more parallel runs, more tokens burned per hour. And somewhere in there the bottleneck stopped being the machine and became you: the one who still has to approve the plans, answer the questions, and catch it when the tank runs dry. Whoever keeps the crew moving ships fastest now, and honestly that comes down to how much you can see at once.

CrewTower’s whole pitch is that the fix costs $10 and sits in the one strip of your Mac you’d been ignoring anyway. So run your 5 agents from somewhere you can actually see them, or keep alt-tabbing around and calling it productivity.

Running the agents was never the problem. Keeping five of them pointed in the right direction is, and that’s the job CrewTower actually does.

About the Author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post CrewTower: Tokenmaxxers, Your Agents Now Live in the Notch appeared first on BYVI.

My father-in-law has migraines. Bad ones, and unfortunately quite often.

He also doesn’t speak English very well. So when he sits in front of a doctor and tries to explain what’s happening inside his head, the words come out hopelessly vague: “headache… sometimes… strong.” The doctor, in return, offers equally vague recommendations (proper sleep, a good diet, less stress) and sends him home.

Since “sometimes, strong, headache” doesn’t sound like a serious case, they don’t run any diagnostics or refer him to a specialist.

A doctor can’t diagnose from a 10-minute appointment and a patient’s fuzzy memory, especially through a language barrier. But if that same doctor received 30 days of clean data (attack frequency, pain intensity, duration, and the meds he took), the case would be taken much more seriously.

So I built him a migraine diary app in a few hours. To be completely transparent, I’m a marketer who happened to co-found two software companies in the past, but I’m not an engineer. I understand how software works, UI, backend logic, data architecture, but I don’t write code. And I built the entire thing in one afternoon, with one latte and a $25 plan upgrade, using an AI app builder called Hercules.

Here’s exactly how I did it, start to finish.

Research first, prompts second

Even though I had a specific use case and a specific user in mind, I didn’t start by building. I started by checking whether apps like this already existed, and what people loved and hated about them.

The category already has a clear leader, so the idea was obviously validated. But its users complained about the same 3 things over and over.

• a bright, cluttered interface
• a locked-down free tier
• and subscription fatigue

The most valuable thing I found was a peer-reviewed study that analyzed 945 reviews of headache apps to understand what users actually want:

• fast, simple logging of symptoms, triggers, and treatments
• personalization and simple trends in their own data over time
• easy way to export data to show their doctor

And the most requested feature in the entire category was exactly my father-in-law’s problem. In my case, the doctor report was the whole point of the app all along.

The study pulled 945 reviews from these 15 apps.

So my vibe coding plan wrote itself:

Your first prompt is your product brief

Hercules works like this: you describe what you want in plain language, it builds the app, you look at the preview, you give feedback, and it revises. No code anywhere. If you ever briefed an agency or a freelancer, you already have the core skill.

I spent more time on my first prompt than on anything else that day, and I believe this is what made the difference. 3 things I did that I would recommend to anyone:

The prompt was solid. But my workflow, not so much.

Hercules has a Plan mode that interviews you and creates a roadmap before building, and their docs clearly recommend it for exactly this kind of big first feature. I completely forgot to turn it on and sent my prompt in the default ‘Build mode’.

I switched mid-build, expecting to have broken something.

But Hercules recovered on its own and produced a clean four-milestone roadmap: theme and home screen, the log attack flow, attack details and editing, and the doctor report.

5 credits bought the entire interface

The first version of the app cost me about 5 AI credits. I’m careful not to call it a working app, because it wasn’t one yet. My prompt explicitly asked for the front end only, with realistic mock data, no auth, no backend. I wanted to nail the user experience first and wire the logic after.

So Hercules delivered exactly what I asked: a fully interactive front end running on mock data, a dark, calm migraine diary with a color-coded calendar and a doctor report screen.

The logging flow was split in two on purpose.

Mid-attack, the app asks only two questions, how bad and where, and you’re done in seconds. Later, when you feel human again, you can open the entry and answer the rest: what you felt, what happened before it, what medicine you took and whether it helped, plus a free note for anything unusual.

You could tap through everything, but nothing saved and the PDF button was just a button. The real logic came later, and as you’ll see, that is exactly where the money went.

Still. A complete, polished interface for 5 credits, and I had 30. I was genuinely blown away.

What vibe coding actually is: a review loop

The building takes minutes. The reviewing is the actual job. The loop itself is simple. The AI ships a version, you walk through it the way your user would, you send back specific feedback, and it revises. And then you do it all over again.

The quality of the product depends entirely on the quality of what you feed the AI: your prompts, your reviews, and your feedback.

So I went through every screen the way my father-in-law would use it, one thumb, low light, zero patience, and sent back a list of revisions.

Hercules came back with an itemized changelog, ran its own error check, and took its own screenshots to verify the work before showing it to me. Watching an AI QA its own output was one of those moments where I sat back and thought: I’ve had human contractors who did less checking than this.

The real skill in vibe coding: knowing your user

Remember the red line from my first prompt? Strictly a diary, no interpretation, ever. And I want to be clear upfront: nothing here is Hercules getting it wrong. Hercules did exactly what a great AI app builder should do. It built what I asked for, it flagged what was broken, and it suggested what works for everyone else in the category. The one thing AI cannot do is know my user the way I do.

The first test came from my own product copy: “What might have caused it?”

It looks completely innocent. But my rule said the app never interprets, and “caused” quietly invites the user to build theories. And we all know that patient trigger theories are famously unreliable, people blame chocolate for their migraines when craving chocolate is often an early symptom of an attack that has already started.

My common sense says: collect facts ONLY, let the doctor draw conclusions. So I sent Hercules one small prompt, and it changed the question to “Did any of these happen before it?” and updated the matching section of the doctor report in a single pass, a few-line edit, nothing rebuilt, nothing broken.

Now the app records what happened, and the doctor decides what it means. More honest, and funny enough, more credible to the person reading the report.

Hercules audits its own work (and it’s seriously impressive)

The second test came from my favorite feature of the whole platform. Hercules has a built-in Audits feature: it takes screenshots of your app, reads through the actual page code, and reviews everything across product, design, engineering, and security, then reports its findings.

I ran the product audit and the results genuinely impressed me: 8 findings, including “nothing actually saves” (fair, I had only asked for the front end at that point) and “the PDF button doesn’t work.”

But finding #8 suggested adding “personal insights” to the home screen. The exact feature my rule banned. The audit wasn’t wrong by industry standards. Every health app does insights. And that’s the point: the AI recommends the industry default, but your principles are your job.

The compromise ending was my favorite part. Instead of “insights,” the home screen got a snapshot with nothing but raw numbers (no analysis, no judgment). Hercules turned that constraint into a design better than the insights would have been, and I loved it.

The simple question I used: can the user verify it by counting? If yes, it’s a fact, and facts are allowed. “You’re doing better this month” is a conclusion, and conclusions belong to the doctor.

How much does it cost to build an app with AI (my honest breakdown)

I ran out of credits at 0.19 with two features left, so I upgraded to the $50 a month plan. Not just to finish this app, I’m already vibe coding my next one and knew I would need more credits.

How I saved credits on design decisions

One credit-saving trick I’m proud of: I didn’t burn Hercules credits exploring color palettes. I used Claude Design to generate a visual palette board instead: 5 warm accent options (clay, terracotta, ochre, brick rose, caramel) mocked up on real app screens. I picked my favorite and handed Hercules the final decision as a simple instruction. Old bootstrap habits die hard.

From Publish to iPhone home screen in 2 minutes, no App Store needed

I expected publishing to be the complicated part. It was the easiest step of the entire build.

Apps you build with Hercules can ship as PWAs (Progressive Web Apps). If you have not met the term before, a PWA is a web app that your phone treats like a real app: it gets its own icon, launches full screen, works offline, and can even send push notifications.

The biggest difference from a native app is that a PWA installs from a link instead of an app store. Here is the entire flow:

Two minutes after clicking Publish, the app was on my father-in-law’s home screen. And because it stores everything on the device, it works in a dark bedroom with no signal, exactly where migraines happen.

His appointment is coming up. For years he has walked into that office with “headache, sometimes, very strong.” This time he will walk in with evidence: every attack, how bad and how long, which medicines helped and which didn’t, and his own notes. All on one printed page.

What makes a good vibe coder

I speak with so many founders who have spent years waiting to find a technical co-founder before they build anything. And I want to say this as directly as I can: you are not the bottleneck you think you are. Writing the code was never the hard part, and with tools like Hercules it isn’t even a step anymore. What the AI actually needed from me was everything else.

It needed me to know exactly who the user is. Not “users” in general, but a light-sensitive senior in the middle of an attack who can barely look at his phone. It needed me to have taste and hold onto it. It needed me to understand how the app should behave, where the data lives, what happens offline, what a broken state looks like. And it needed me to defend one principle while every default quietly pushed against it.

None of that is coding. That is just running a product the way you would run any business.

So if you ask me what actually makes someone good at vibe coding, my answer is none of the things you would expect. If you know what good looks like, have common sense, and deeply care about your end user, you will be great at it. Everything else, the AI already knows.

About the author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post How I Vibe Coded a Health App with Hercules in One Afternoon appeared first on BYVI.

If you’re debating whether to book that flight to Vancouver next spring, here are some numbers that might help. Web Summit Vancouver 2025 drew over 15,000 attendees, 600 investors, and 750 startups to the waterfront Convention Centre. And those aren’t just networking statistics – projections show the event will generate CA $172M in direct spending and CA $279M in total economic impact across BC over the next 3 years.

I know that you can find plenty of conferences promising inspiration, deal flow, and great coffee. But, in my experience, when a region already leads North America in high-tech job growth and then invites the Web Summit brand to throw its first full-scale North-American event there, you get a mash-up of ambition and opportunity that’s hard to replicate.

British Columbia also maintains a 30-year track record of commercializing world-class technologies. Put simply, if you care about product-market fit and global distribution, Vancouver offers you a living laboratory where climate tech collides with fintech, healthtech rubs shoulders with gaming, and new immigrant founders stand a realistic chance of acceleration without sacrificing identity.

Agriprix : Where Farm Meets Algorithm

Do farmers dislike software dashboards? Apparently not! Agriprix allows growers to provide inventory quantities and receive AI-generated price recommendations. Since margins in farming are razor thin, that few-hour head start means the difference between selling strawberries fresh or sending them to jam producers at a discount.

This vision of modernizing agriculture while respecting its traditions runs deep in Agriprix’s leadership DNA. CEO Enes Kaan Ozturk’s emphasis on “bridging traditional farming with modern solutions” isn’t just corporate speak – it reflects a nuanced understanding that farmers aren’t looking to abandon centuries of agricultural wisdom, but rather to augment it with smart technology. The platform doesn’t replace a grower’s intuition about market timing, instead it enhances it with data-driven insights that can make the difference between profit and loss.

The financial reality behind this technology-meets-tradition approach is what CFO Altug Ozaslan calls “financial sustainability and innovation going hand in hand.” In an industry where a single weather event can wipe out months of investment, Agriprix’s model of providing immediate, actionable pricing intelligence represents a fundamentally different approach to agricultural risk management. Rather than selling farmers expensive software licenses they might not fully utilize, the platform creates value that directly translates to revenue optimization – making the technology pay for itself through better market decisions.

Perhaps most intriguingly, CTO Samet Genc’s promise to provide “data from the future” hints at Agriprix’s predictive capabilities extending beyond simple price recommendations. By analyzing market trends, weather patterns, and consumer demand signals, the platform doesn’t just tell farmers what their strawberries are worth today- it helps them understand what they might be worth tomorrow, next week, or next season. This forward-looking approach transforms farming from a reactive business into a strategic one, where growers can make planting and harvesting decisions based on anticipated market conditions rather than historical guesswork.

TheAfterEve: Relationship Transition Guidance

Divorce and separation are universal human experiences, yet navigating them often feels isolating and overwhelming—even for those with significant resources and support systems. TheAfterEve was born from this exact realization when founder and CEO Dana Buckley, despite having a successful career at Indeed.com, excellent legal representation, and a PhD in political science, found herself crying over boiling pasta water during her own difficult divorce in 2021. That moment of feeling “utterly overwhelmed” and “deeply alone” crystallized a market gap: there was no single, comprehensive resource to help people navigate relationship transitions with both practical guidance and emotional support.

What makes TheAfterEve unique is its foundation in lived experience rather than theoretical expertise. Buckley’s journey from that overwhelming March evening to bootstrapping the company with her own post-divorce savings reflects the platform’s core philosophy—that people should be “the captain of their own ship and the architect of their own life.” The company doesn’t just offer expert-backed resources for emotional wellbeing and financial decisions; it provides the kind of comprehensive, compassionate guidance that Buckley wished she’d had access to during her darkest moments.

TheAfterEve’s approach recognizes that relationship transitions aren’t just legal or financial events—they’re deeply personal transformations that require both practical tools and emotional support. By combining content, tools, and services specifically designed for people navigating romantic relationship changes, the platform serves as both roadmap and companion for one of life’s most challenging journeys, helping users remember that “brighter days lie ahead.”

IcePanel: Collaborative Architecture Diagrams

IcePanel is a modeling and diagramming tool that helps software dev teams communicate and plan technical changes. You can create interactive maps of your software systems, zoom in and out of different detail levels, and link your diagrams directly to your code. It’s basically turning those static docs we all hate updating into something that actually feels alive and useful.

The tool uses the C4 model, so you can zoom from big-picture system context all the way down to detailed component views. What’s really helpful is that as your code changes, IcePanel automatically updates the diagrams for you. No more outdated architecture docs that everyone ignores because they’re three months behind reality.

With Y Combinator backing them, IcePanel’s got some early street cred in the dev tools space. They’ve nailed the balance between letting teams collaborate and keeping things from turning into a complete mess with their granular access controls. Users are calling it “Figma for backend blueprints,” which honestly captures the vibe pretty well – it makes complex system architecture feel way more approachable and less intimidating. They’re currently looking for software developers to join their team, which makes sense given how much traction they’re getting.

3DentAI: Dental Diagnostics from Your Smartphone

3DentAI is shaking up preventive dental care with AI-powered at-home diagnostics that actually make sense. Based in Vancouver, they’ve built a platform that lets you monitor your oral health using a compact smart camera and real-time AI analysis, basically bringing the dentist’s expertise to your bathroom mirror.

The idea is simple but powerful: catch problems earlier, get better outcomes, and make dental care way smarter than the current “wait until it hurts” approach. Their AI can instantly pre-screen dental images, and what’s really impressive is that their model was developed directly with experienced dental professionals, so it’s not just some generic AI trying to figure out teeth.

The platform goes beyond just taking pictures though. They’ve built intuitive annotation tools specifically for dentists to help train and continuously improve their diagnostic models, plus a full telemedicine module that makes it easy for patients and dentists to connect.

The team behind it is a solid mix of engineers, dentists, and AI researchers who are all focused on the same goal: making dental health more accessible, proactive, and data-driven instead of reactive and expensive.

Abili-Tech Systems:  AI That Listens With Its Eyes

Abili-Tech tackles a barrier that, in my experience, still stumps a surprising number of public service providers: seamless communication between sign-language users and hearing communities. Their flagship mobile app translates sign language to speech or text – and back again – while running mostly on-device.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Abili-Tech (@abili_techsystem)

Their multi-dialect support can recognize regional ASL variations and adjust pronunciation for the voice output. The startup also aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goals 4 (quality education) and 10 (reduced inequalities), making it attractive to impact investors increasingly required to report ESG metrics.

Prompta AI: Making Change Manageable

Change management has always been more art than science – until Prompta AI brought data-driven precision to one of business’s most human challenges. Since 2020, the company has been proving that AI-enabled change management reduces costs by an average of 25% while delivering better outcomes. Their approach recognizes that successful organizational change requires both cutting-edge technology and deep human understanding.

What sets Prompta AI apart is making the invisible visible. While traditional change management relies on intuition and periodic surveys, Prompta AI provides real-time insights into workforce sentiment and organizational dynamics. This allows change leaders to spot resistance before it becomes rebellion and identify adoption opportunities before they’re missed—shifting from reactive to predictive change management.

The platform excels in the most challenging scenarios: digital transformations, M&A integrations, and culture shifts. Through user-friendly readiness assessments and progress tracking, Prompta AI enables leaders to maximize productivity while ensuring widespread adoption, mitigate resistance before it derails progress, and minimize the chaos that typically accompanies major organizational change.

This hybrid methodology – pairing data science with human connection – has turned transformation from a high-risk gamble into a manageable, measurable process that scales to each organization’s unique needs.

BuildCheck AI: Spotting Construction Plan Errors Before They Break Ground

This California-based team emerged from Stanford’s computer-vision lab to build an intelligent plan-review platform that performs over 200 automated checks across all disciplines and design documentation—from floor-plans and elevations to details, schedules and specifications.

For Alexander Michalatos, whose background spans the construction industry from bottom to top, the comprehensive technology represents a solution to a problem he’s wrestled with throughout his career. The son of a Greek-Canadian residential contractor, he grew up on job sites from houses to hospitals before earning a mechanical engineering degree at UBC, where he graduated top of his class. His career progression took him from building design to construction management at Honeywell Building Solutions and later EllisDon as a general contractor, followed by an MBA at Stanford while working in real estate development both domestically and abroad.

This diverse experience ultimately led him to co-found BUILDCHECK, driven by a persistent question: why can’t designs be perfect?

EyecareX: Eye care – Anytime, Anywhere.

EyecareX runs eye exams with nothing but a smartphone. Their software guides users through a self-administered scan and then leverages AI to flag markers of preventable diseases such as diabetic retinopathy. Licensed optometrists review any anomalies, closing the loop between automation and professional oversight.

Many critics thought that tele-optometry would always require bulky peripherals or in-clinic imaging. EyeCareX challenges that assumption by pushing the cost of hardware down to a consumer-friendly range, creating a solution that benefits everyone in the eye care ecosystem.

For patients, the platform delivers accessible eye care directly to their homes through smartphone-guided tests—eliminating travel time, reducing barriers to screening, and making preventive care available regardless of location or mobility constraints.

For healthcare providers, EyecareX enhances clinical efficiency by handling initial screenings remotely, reducing appointment backlogs, and surfacing actionable diagnostic data—allowing practitioners to concentrate their expertise where it’s most valuable.

Trustful Clinical Budgeting: Getting Clinical Trials Off Excel

Clinical trial financial management remains surprisingly antiquated in an otherwise high-tech industry. Despite the billions invested in medical research annually, 82% of the market still relies on manual Excel tracking – an approach that leads to 20% budget overruns, project delays, and extended study timelines. Trustful Clinical Budgeting was built to solve this fundamental disconnect between the operational complexity of clinical trials and the financial precision they demand.

The platform serves as a comprehensive bridge between operations and finances through three integrated modules. The Client Module manages contracts and tracks the critical gaps between planned and actual work, ensuring milestone-based billing stays on track. The RFP Module automates budget estimation by allowing users to input key trial parameters – countries, sites, monitoring frequency – and generates accurate budgets using customizable templates. Meanwhile, the Vendor Module helps manage the complex web of contracts with vendors and freelancers across multiple countries, ensuring all costs are properly categorized and tracked.

What sets Trustful Clinical Budgeting apart is its focus on being a “simple budgeting tool for the operational team” rather than just another financial software. By providing automatic budget calculations, expenditure pattern analysis, and cost-saving opportunity identification, the platform empowers research teams to make informed financial decisions in real-time. This operational-finance integration transforms clinical trial budgeting from a reactive, Excel-based headache into a proactive, data-driven advantage that keeps studies on time and on budget.

Goose Insurance: A One Stop Shop for All Your Insurance Needs

FinTech North will buzz with plenty of neobanks and credit-builder apps, but you’ll notice Goose – or SmartBunny in the United States – because their cheerful bunny mascot bounces across the screen as if to say, “Insurance can be fun too.”

Goose now serves 750,000 customers, and churn sits dramatically below industry averages because the interface simplifies renewals into a tap rather than a dreaded email thread. The company’s strategy of rebranding for U.S. users shows a nuanced understanding of cultural positioning: Americans respond better to playful animals than to Canada’s avian metaphor. If you want a lesson in user-experience friction-slashing, study Goose’s onboarding flow end to end!

Goparity Canada: Crowdlending for Projects That Make an Impact

Goparity lets Canadians invest in sustainability projects with as little as CA $20, tracking both financial returns and environmental impact like carbon emission reductions. The platform focuses on storytelling as much as numbers, showing investors exactly what their money is funding and what kind of change it’s creating in the world.

The company has managed to get licensed as an Exempt Market Dealer across several Canadian provinces, giving it regulatory approval that many fintech startups struggle to obtain. This licensing allows Goparity to operate legally while balancing the need to tell compelling impact stories with the strict disclosure requirements that securities regulators demand.

What makes this particularly interesting is how this startup is democratizing sustainable finance – turning what used to be large-scale institutional investing into something ordinary people can participate in with small amounts of money. The platform shows how crowdfunding can drive real environmental and social change by connecting individual investors directly with projects that are making a measurable difference.

Reeltro: Video-First Professional Networking

The disconnect is obvious: while professionals spend hours scrolling through engaging video content on social platforms, they’re still stuck presenting themselves through outdated text resumes and static LinkedIn profiles. Reeltro believes this mismatch is holding back the next generation of professionals, so the platform reimagines professional networking by bringing the engaging, authentic format of TikTok to career development, allowing users to “be seen, be heard, be hired” through short-form professional videos rather than generic job descriptions and text-heavy profiles.

Reeltro’s mobile-first approach addresses a core problem in modern hiring: authentic representation. While traditional platforms rely on polished text and carefully curated achievements, Reeltro encourages users to “showcase your authentic self for the best first impression” through video resumes and customizable profiles. This format allows professionals to demonstrate the skills that “pay bills”—from technical expertise to creative prowess—in ways that static resumes simply cannot capture.

The platform’s innovation extends beyond individual profiles to reimagine the entire hiring ecosystem. Video job postings allow employers to showcase company culture and values dynamically, while giving job seekers genuine insight into potential roles and workplace environments. This two-way transparency helps create better matches and reduces hiring friction. By prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion in its design, Reeltro isn’t just disrupting professional networking—it’s working to ensure that talent recognition isn’t limited by traditional formatting constraints or unconscious bias embedded in text-based screening processes.

Curie: Shop in 3D

Curie is a startup that creates incredibly detailed 3D versions of products for online shopping, focusing on making e-commerce feel less flat and more interactive. The company addresses a fundamental problem with online shopping: you can’t really understand what you’re buying from a few photos, especially for items where texture, shape, and feel matter. Using what they call “deterministic agents” to avoid the unreliable outputs that often come from AI systems, Curie builds accurate 3D digital twins of products without requiring any physical scanning of the actual items.

The technology works particularly well for products like sneakers, where buyers want to understand the shape, texture, and construction before making a purchase. Instead of just looking at flat images, shoppers can explore every detail of a product in three dimensions, getting a much better sense of what they’re actually buying.

Beyond just the visual technology, Curie operates as an e-commerce platform that brings together buying options from various partner merchants. They provide data-driven insights, product comparisons, and detailed descriptions alongside their immersive 3D catalog. The company’s goal is to bridge the gap between online and in-store shopping experiences, giving customers the confidence to make purchases by letting them virtually handle products before they arrive. For retailers, this could mean fewer returns and more satisfied customers who know exactly what they’re getting.

ComplyPilot: Next-Gen Compliance for Financial Institutions

ComplyPilot uses AI to help banks and financial institutions handle regulatory compliance more efficiently. The company tackles a problem that costs financial institutions enormous amounts of time and money: staying compliant with complex federal regulations like Reg Z, HMDA, and BSA requires teams of experts to manually review everything from marketing materials to social media posts. What used to take days or weeks of careful analysis, ComplyPilot can now do in hours, automatically flagging potential violations and providing specific guidance on how to fix them.

The platform works on several fronts simultaneously. It can review social media posts before they go live, catching content that might violate regulations while suggesting compliant alternatives that still sound like the company’s voice. It also analyzes internal policies to identify gaps between what companies are doing and what current regulations actually require. The system includes a smart document search that can quickly find relevant regulatory information from complex financial rules, plus collaboration tools that help compliance teams stay consistent across different departments.

Instead of just helping companies react to compliance issues after they arise, ComplyPilot is designed to spot potential problems early. The platform integrates with existing workflows without disrupting how teams already work, but adds an extra layer of automated checking that catches regulatory risks before they become violations. For financial institutions, this means less time spent on manual compliance reviews, fewer regulatory violations, and better documentation when examiners come calling. The system essentially creates a single source of truth for compliance knowledge that the entire organization can use.

APIHS: Next-Gen Protective Coatings

While most coating companies focus on incremental improvements to existing products, APIHS is fundamentally reimagining what protective coatings can achieve. The research and development company pushes the boundaries of material science to create next-generation formulations that deliver superior durability, efficiency, and environmental sustainability. Their approach goes beyond traditional coating applications—they’re developing ecological liquid solutions that are simultaneously thermal, waterproof, fireproof, and environmentally protective.

What sets APIHS apart is their strategic focus on solving real-world challenges through advanced material science. Their liquid thermal insulation solutions directly address CO2 reduction goals by providing energy gains for buildings and industrial equipment, while their optimized formulations enhance both material efficiency and application processes. This isn’t just about better coatings—it’s about creating environmental solutions that help companies reduce their carbon footprint while improving operational performance.

APIHS thrives on strategic collaboration with industry experts and research institutions, recognizing that breakthrough innovations require collective expertise. Their rigorous approach combines advanced research into novel compounds with performance optimization and sustainable alternatives, ensuring each product undergoes extensive testing and refinement. By balancing cutting-edge technology with competitive pricing through reduced raw material and transport costs, APIHS is positioning itself to meet evolving market demands while making advanced coating solutions accessible to a broader range of industries.

Econsciousness: Transform Waste Into Resources

A Mexican startup Econsciousness has found a clever way to tackle environmental problems while making money: they literally turn waste into valuable resources. The company creates practical solutions like portable dry toilets, natural fertilizers made from waste, and clean energy systems for everyone from government offices to music festivals.

Econsciousness goes beyond just selling environmental products. The founders realized that many businesses want to go green but don’t know how to do it profitably, so they created a programs to help.

Their “Prisma Method” helps entrepreneurs build businesses that actually make money while helping the planet. Instead of generic business advice, they work with each startup to create custom strategies that balance profit with purpose. Think of it as business consulting with a conscience.

Unlike many startups that just talk about sustainability, this company is actually showing other businesses how to make it work financially. In a country where many startups struggle to balance doing good with staying profitable, they seem to have figured out a formula that works for both.

Airble: Private Aviation, Unlocked

Private aviation has long been synonymous with exclusivity and opaque pricing – until Airble decided to change the game. Their platform transforms what was once a convoluted process of broker calls and unclear costs into something as straightforward as booking a commercial flight. By providing transparent pricing and real-time availability, Airble eliminates the anxiety that comes with traditional charter bookings, where hidden fees can turn a $10,000 quote into a $15,000 surprise.

Perhaps most cleverly, Airble has turned the industry’s inefficiency into customer value through their “Empty Leg Deals” feature. These discounted one-way flights, aircraft returning to base or repositioning for another customer, have always existed but were largely inaccessible to most travelers. By making these flights easily discoverable and bookable, Airble opens up private aviation to a broader audience while helping operators fill otherwise empty seats.

The platform’s concierge services and real-time communication features complete the vision of what modern private aviation should look like: not just luxury travel, but complete control and confidence throughout the entire journey. From aircraft selection to catering preferences, Airble ensures that personalization extends to every aspect of the travel experience.

LitLife: AI Co-Pilot for Personal Trainers

LitLife is a startup that created Chiron, an AI Co-Pilot specifically built for personal trainers and gyms struggling to keep up with growing client lists. The problem is simple: as trainers get more popular, they spend less time actually training and more time doing paperwork, scheduling, and other administrative tasks. LitLife’s software handles much of that busywork automatically.

The main feature is Chiron’s ability to watch clients work out through computer vision and spot when they’re doing exercises incorrectly. It can correct their form in real-time and adjust workout plans based on how well someone is progressing. The platform also creates personalized workout and nutrition plans for each client and handles things like payment processing and new client setup without the trainer having to step in.

Instead of spending hours each week on administrative work, trainers can use LitLife to automate most of the behind-the-scenes operations. The software tracks each client’s progress, modifies their programs as needed, and keeps everything organized so trainers can focus on the actual coaching. For gym owners and independent trainers, this means they can take on more clients without burning out or losing the personal touch that clients expect.

Eagle Eyes: AI That Spots What Search Teams Miss

Eagle Eyes is a startup that builds software to help search and rescue teams find missing people faster using drones and artificial intelligence. The company’s technology tackles a fundamental problem in search operations: even with drones providing aerial views, human spotters can easily miss important details when scanning hours of footage or trying to process live video feeds. Eagle Eyes’ computer vision system automatically flags unusual colors and movements that rescue teams might otherwise overlook.

The company offers two main products that work together. Eagle Eyes Pilot is a mobile app that runs directly on drone controllers or Android devices, letting operators see potential anomalies in real-time while the drone is still flying. Eagle Eyes Scan is a desktop application that allows teams to analyze footage more thoroughly on larger screens, whether they’re reviewing recorded video after a flight or examining live feeds as they come in. Both apps can instantly share findings with the entire search team through CalTopo, a popular mapping platform used by rescue organizations.

The software works with commonly used DJI drones and can process imagery from other sources as well. Instead of relying solely on human eyes to spot a lost hiker’s bright jacket or unusual movement in dense forest, the AI flags anything that stands out from the surrounding environment. Search teams can filter these alerts by how unique the colours are or how close they are to the search area, helping them focus on the most promising leads while the drone is still in the air and can investigate further.

CircularPlace: A Platform for Professional Reuse

CircularPlace is an all-in-one platform that helps businesses make money from equipment and products they no longer need. This startup addresses a common problem: most businesses accumulate unused inventory, old equipment, and surplus materials that cost money to store but could actually generate revenue if handled properly. Their platform connects companies with buyers, charities, and other businesses that can use these items.

The platform offers several options depending on what businesses want to do with their surplus items. Companies can sell equipment they’re no longer using to get the best possible price, donate items to charities for tax benefits, or share resources between different locations within the same organization. The service also helps businesses manage renovations and office moves by finding new homes for furniture and equipment that would otherwise end up in landfills. Additionally, they offer a marketplace where companies can sell refurbished products to their own customers.

Instead of businesses having to figure out what to do with unused assets on their own, the platform centralizes everything in one place. Companies can reduce storage costs, generate revenue from items they thought were worthless, and even train their teams on corporate social responsibility through the platform’s educational content. The system includes over 5,000 training materials like quizzes, videos, and articles to help employees understand sustainability practices while the company turns its waste into profit.

Conscious Collective: Meaningful Corporate Gifting

Conscious Collective is a startup that helps businesses give better corporate gifts by focusing on storytelling and relationship building rather than generic branded items. The company addresses a problem many businesses face: corporate gifting often feels impersonal and wasteful, with recipients receiving items they don’t actually want or need. Instead of the typical approach of slapping a logo on random products, Conscious Collective creates gift experiences that are supposed to strengthen genuine connections between companies and their employees, clients, or partners.

The platform offers several ways for companies to handle their gifting needs. Businesses can use the “Build-a-Box” feature to create completely custom gift boxes for specific occasions and budgets, or they can choose from pre-curated gift boxes organized by price range or event type. For companies that want to give recipients more control, Conscious Collective can set up custom online shops where employees or clients can pick their own gifts from a selection the company has approved. They also offer bulk ordering for businesses that want to buy products directly without packaging them in boxes.

The service is designed to work for various business scenarios, from welcoming new employees and showing appreciation to existing staff, to thanking clients and creating branded items for events. As a B2B marketplace, they require minimum orders of 12 units per product, but companies can mix and match different items as long as they meet that threshold. This approach lets businesses move away from one-size-fits-all corporate gifts and instead create more thoughtful experiences that actually resonate with the recipients.

Hydram Research: Turning Industrial Waste Heat Into Usable Energy

Hydram Research, a startup based in Reykjavik, Iceland, is developing industrial heat pumps that can transform waste heat into high-temperature steam that companies can actually use. The company is tackling a massive inefficiency problem: industries like data centers, chemical plants, and oil refineries generate enormous amounts of waste heat through their normal operations, but most of that energy just gets thrown away instead of being captured and reused. Hydram’s technology claims to be significantly more efficient than traditional boilers and heat pumps, potentially reducing energy costs for heavy industrial operations.

Instead of using the typical condenser-evaporator systems found in most heat pumps, Hydram’s equipment works more like a gravity-powered engine that creates steam through rapid volume expansion, then compresses it back using what they call a “liquid piston.” The technical details are complex, but the basic idea is that their system can take low-grade waste heat—like cooling water or exhaust gases—and convert it into high-temperature steam that companies can use for their manufacturing processes. Early testing suggests their approach could be much more efficient than existing heat recovery technologies.

The company has built and tested prototypes at their facility in Reykjavik, demonstrating that the process works on a meaningful scale. They’ve also filed several patents covering different configurations of their equipment. While still in early stages, their computer simulations and laboratory tests indicate the technology could work at megawatt scale, potentially transforming how energy-intensive industries like chemical production, pulp and paper, and petroleum refining handle their waste heat. For companies in these sectors, that could mean turning one of their biggest operational inefficiencies into a source of usable energy.

Produce8: Getting Your Lost Work Hours Back

Produce8 is a work analytics platform that helps companies figure out why their employees seem busy all the time but aren’t getting much done. The startup addresses a problem most office workers know too well: people are losing about half their workday to inefficiencies like constant meetings, endless notifications, and jumping between different tasks. Instead of just telling employees to “be more productive,” Produce8 tracks how people actually spend their time and identifies the specific habits and workflows that are eating up their day.

The platform works by monitoring digital work patterns and providing personalized daily reports that show exactly where time is going. It tracks things like how much time people spend in meetings, how often they’re switching between different apps, and how various types of collaboration are affecting their focus. Teams get aggregated metrics that help managers understand broader patterns without micromanaging individual employees. The system also lets people set goals around reducing distractions and improving their work habits, then tracks progress over time.

Produce8 claims it can help organizations recover more than 90 minutes per day for each employee by making work patterns visible and actionable. The platform provides data on everything from meeting costs to team sentiment, helping companies understand not just how much time is being wasted, but what’s actually making people feel overwhelmed or unproductive. Rather than imposing top-down solutions, the system gives both individuals and teams the information they need to make better decisions about how they structure their workdays and collaborate with each other.

Goverly AI: Unlocking Government Contract 

Goverly is an AI-driven platform that helps businesses get government contracts without hiring expensive consultants. The company tackles a problem that has kept small and medium businesses out of a massive market: government contracting is notoriously complex, expensive, and usually requires specialized consultants who charge high fees. Goverly automates much of this work, creating government-ready business profiles, matching companies with relevant contracts and grants, and handling compliance checks that would normally cost thousands in consultant fees.

The platform opens up the $3 trillion global government procurement market to businesses that have traditionally been shut out by the high costs and complexity. Instead of needing a team of specialists to navigate government requirements, companies can use Goverly to streamline the entire process and focus on what they do best.

What makes Goverly particularly useful for startups is its ability to track regulatory changes in real-time. Government contract requirements change frequently, and outdated compliance language can kill deals overnight. The platform automatically updates proposals when regulations shift, ensuring businesses don’t lose out on contracts because their paperwork is using last month’s rules. For companies considering government sales, this addresses one of the biggest headaches in the entire process.

CX Hero: Human-Grade Digital Avatars in 73 Languages

As you weave through the Future of Work hall, look for a kiosk where a digital concierge greets visitors in Italian one minute and Korean the next without skipping a beat. That’s CX Hero’s flagship portal. In my experience, voice-activated avatars often flirt with the uncanny valley, but CX Hero nails an equilibrium between approachability and utility. Their secret sauce connects the portal to existing CRMs and knowledge bases so the avatar can pull context-aware data, meaning it knows your loyalty tier before you even finish the sentence: “I forgot my membership number.”

The demo feels less like sci-fi and more like a sensible evolution of self-service. If you’re building anything involving AI-driven customer engagement, ask the founders how they handle data privacy in multilingual setups – their engineering team is open and detailed when talking about GDPR and PIPEDA compliance.

Homebox: Household Bill Management for People Who Despise Hold Music

One of modern life’s most tedious chores: setting up utilities when you move. Homebox shrinks that chore to a single monthly payment. This UK-based startup handles all your utility transfers, account switches, and supplier contacts, consolidating everything into one predictable bill. Instead of spending moving day on hold with multiple companies, you can focus on actually settling into your new home.

Beyond eliminating utility hassles, Homebox offers Smart Payments that let you relax with one set monthly payment. The service also provides Homebox Perks that can save you over £1,000 per year on food, shopping, eating out, electronics and more. For students and shared households, bills are automatically split equally among residents, removing arguments about who owes what.

The financial benefits extend beyond convenience. Through CanopyGrow integration, you get free access to a service that links your rent payments to your credit score, helping enhance your credit rating simply by paying your monthly Homebox bill on time. For property professionals, the service transforms void periods and tenant transitions from administrative nightmares into automated processes, presenting landlords with consolidated billing rather than scattered utility accounts to track down.

Emerging Themes You’re Likely to Notice

Looking across all these startups, a few patterns emerge that say something bigger about where technology is headed. Here’s what stands out.

AI is Moving Beyond the Buzzword Phase

Nearly every startup in this list uses AI, but what’s interesting is how specific and practical their applications have become. Instead of generic “AI-powered” solutions, we’re seeing companies like Eagle Eyes using computer vision to spot missing hikers, ComplyPilot automatically reviewing social media posts for regulatory violations, and LitLife correcting workout form in real-time. The AI isn’t the product—it’s the engine that makes previously impossible services actually work.

Democratizing Previously Exclusive Markets

Several startups are taking services that used to require significant resources or expertise and making them accessible to ordinary people or smaller businesses. Goparity lets you invest in sustainability projects with just $20, Airble brings transparency to private aviation pricing, and Goverly AI opens up the $3 trillion government contracting market to small businesses. This isn’t just about lowering prices – it’s about removing the gatekeepers entirely.

The Great De-Excelification of Business

From Trustful Clinical Budgeting getting clinical trials off spreadsheets to Produce8 showing companies where their workday actually goes, there’s a clear trend toward replacing manual, error-prone processes with automated systems. These aren’t just digital versions of the same old workflows—they’re fundamentally reimagining how work gets done in industries that have been surprisingly resistant to change.

Sustainability as a Business Model, Not a Nice-to-Have

The sustainability startups here aren’t asking companies to sacrifice profits for the planet. Hydram Research turns waste heat into revenue, CircularPlace makes money from unused equipment, and Econsciousness shows other businesses how to be profitable while being green. Environmental benefits are the outcome, but financial benefits are the driver.

Physical-Digital Bridges Getting Stronger

The most compelling solutions aren’t purely digital—they’re using technology to enhance physical experiences. Curie lets you virtually handle products before buying them, 3DentAI brings dental diagnostics to your bathroom, and CX Hero creates digital avatars that feel natural to interact with. These companies understand that the future isn’t about replacing physical interactions, but making them better through technology.

What This All Means

What ties all these startups together isn’t just clever technology – it’s a fundamental shift toward making complex systems actually work for people instead of against them. Whether it’s turning waste into profit, catching problems before they become disasters, or opening up markets that used to be closed off, these companies are solving real problems that have been frustrating people for years. The technology is finally catching up to what we’ve always wanted it to do: make life easier, not more complicated.

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post Web Summit 2025 Vancouver: Startup Spotlight appeared first on BYVI.

If you live in Toronto, work remotely, and love delicious food, you gotta check out Worksimply! They’re an amazing new startup that’s shaking things up in downtown Toronto by offering a completely new approach to coworking spaces. What’s so unique about them is that they’ve transformed several restaurants into vibrant Worksimply Hubs where you can work alongside other remote professionals in a dynamic and collaborative environment. It’s a great way to work, network, and enjoy delicious food all at the same time!

Their mission is to create a space where remote workers can come together and forge lasting relationships beyond the confines of work. They believe that their hubs help promote creativity, productivity, and a sense of community that is vital for remote workers who may feel isolated and disconnected from their colleagues and peers.

Worksimply Hubs take place 3 to 4 times a week with each one hosted at a different restaurant. This means you get to experience different spaces and enjoy delicious food while you work. Last month, I visited one of their coworking hubs on Peter Street, where I had the pleasure of meeting other members over a huge long table. We sat across from each other and enjoyed great conversations about go-to market strategies, growth, and startup life in general.

But Worksimply is more than just a hub to work. They also host regular events and workshops, providing opportunities for members to connect and learn new skills.

How Does Worksimply Coworking in Toronto Works

Are you in search of a comfortable workspace near your location? The Worksimply app can help you find the perfect spot at a Worksimply Hub that suits your preferences and schedule.

1. Find a coworking space near you

Once you download the app, you can easily search for upcoming Worksimply Hubs based on your location, date, and time, ensuring that you always have a convenient and productive workspace available when you need it.

2. Book your work spot

To reserve a spot to co-work, simply make a booking through the Worksimply app. All Worksimply spaces offer high-speed internet, with a minimum speed of 50 Mbps+, and outlets available for your convenience. Each booking guarantees you a comfortable and spacious work area and a minimum of four hours of uninterrupted productivity time.

3. Order coffee and get to work

Kickstart your day by ordering a fresh cup of coffee and immersing yourself in your work. Whether you’re a fellow entrepreneur, a creative freelancer, or a busy executive, Worksimply provides an ideal workspace for you to get things done. And while you’re at it, why not bond with other members over delicious meals? With Worksimply’s user-friendly app, you can easily browse the menu, place your order, and pay for your meal without having to leave your table or wait for a waiter.

Worksimply Coworking Membership

The membership fee is $19.99 per month with a 14-Day free trial. Unlike traditional coworking hubs that charge for space usage, at Worksimply, you only need to make a minimum spend of $10 at the restaurant, and the space is free for you to work.

In traditional coworking spaces, you could spend up to $300-$500 a month just for a desk, but at Worksimply, you can save half of that money while enjoying meeting new people over great food, and having a great place to work.

Who you will meet in the Worksimply Toronto Coworking Hub

At Worksimply Hubs, you’ll have the opportunity to meet and co-work alongside a diverse group of remote individuals. Whether you’re a freelancer, entrepreneur, or industry expert working remotely, you’ll find yourself surrounded by like-minded professionals who share your enthusiasm for collaboration and are eager to work together, exchange ideas, and help each other grow. Here are some of the members who you might share a table with during your next coworking session at one of the Worksimply Hubs.

Gabrielle Guizzo, Compliance Officer

Gabrielle is a professional who gets results. She knows the ins and outs of regulatory law in various industries. Gabrielle is the person you want by your side when dealing with complex compliance issues. She’s great at analyzing tricky legal stuff and finding ways to reduce the risks. Gabrielle is also skilled at helping clients during investigations and working with lawyers during hearings and legal cases. She’s good at building strong relationships with clients, coworkers, and regulators. She keeps an eye on changing rules and laws.

Andre Oliviera, Software Engineer at Webflow 

Andre has been a Software Engineer at Webflow for almost 3 years. He recently moved to Toronto in March and has been a Worksimply member for more than 3 months now. His coding adventures span across Full-Stack Development, Backend Engineering, iOS App Development, and even Growth Hacking. When he’s not crafting amazing software solutions, Andre can be found cruising on his electric skateboard. He’s also the ultimate Brazilian BBQ master – bringing the flavours of Brazil to the tech world!

Sarah Rennick, Co-Founder and CEO at Alli.io

Sarah is the Co-Founder and CEO of Alli. Alli is on a mission to ensure every person has equal access to high-quality therapy. This is therapy when you need it – not just when your finances allow it. Alli is a therapy platform composed of a diverse team of highly qualified therapists who support individuals and couples through all stages of life. Sarah has been a Worksimply member since its inception and sometimes even takes her team out for lunch at one of the Worksimply locations.

Lorraine Feliciano, Product Designer (Growth) at Rocket Homes

Lorraine is a Product Designer at Rocket Homes. She’s a strategic product growth designer passionate about being data-driven to inform design decisions while providing a great user experience and helping achieve measurable business impact. When Raine is not working on product, she organizes Dinner Socials for Worksimply members at different restaurants across Toronto.

Dimity Galamiyev, Freelance Product Design Lead (UX/UI) Solo Money

Dimitry is a Freelance Product Design Lead with 8 years of experience creating innovative digital products at various creative agencies, startups, and enterprise companies such as IBM, Google, and EY. Working with such a diverse set of clients had allowed him to design for a veriety of industries such as fintech, crypto, travel, education, and the blockchain. One of his most notable project was leading a team of designers at Huge while designing the Mobile and iPad apps for Four Seasons which are used by 1.5M people worldwide each year. At Worksimply, Dimitry teaches design and business finance workshops from time to time.

About the Author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post Worksimply: A Michelin Rated Coworking Space in Toronto appeared first on BYVI.

Balancing life in today’s fast-paced world can often feel like an impossible task. I have always been passionate about health and well-being, but like many of you, I have found these priorities taking a back seat to the never-ending demands of daily life. However, I firmly believe in working smarter rather than harder, and I have discovered the secret to achieving this: Health Apps for Women!

Over the years, I have downloaded and subscribed to countless number of apps to help me better manage my schedule and stay on top of my to-do list. Unfortunately, most of them did not live up to my expectations. But after much trial and error, I finally stumbled upon a few apps that have truly transformed my life. These apps have given me the tools I need to make positive changes and achieve my goals. From tracking my daily activity and nutrition to providing helpful reminders and scheduling assistance, these apps have become an indispensable part of my daily routine.

Aspect Health – Your Digital Health-Coach

Aspect Health App was instrumental in helping me transform my health and incorporate healthy eating habits into my lifestyle. The program taught me how to regain control of my health by utilizing advanced testing and tracking to provide real-time data on how my body responded to food, exercise, and stress. My favorite aspect of the program was working with a health coach who empowered me by helping me better understand my body. Together, we created a plan that I can sustain and enjoy.

Aspect Health specializes in women’s health and hormonal issues. So, whether you’re looking to shed excess weight, combat the challenges of PCOS, alleviate troublesome hormonal symptoms, or regain your energy levels, Aspect Health is your ultimate ally. health and hormonal issues so whether you’re striving to shed excess weight, combat the challenges of PCOS, alleviate troublesome hormonal symptoms, or regain your energy levels, Aspect Health is your ultimate ally.

Nike Training Club – The Go-To Fitness App for Women

Nike Training Club is the fitness app that I always turn to for inspiration and workouts. It provides access to over 185 on-demand workout sessions, led by Nike’s Master Trainers and famous athletes such as Serena Williams. The range of workouts available is vast, covering everything from cardio and HIIT (High-intensity interval training) to strength training and yoga. The workouts cater to everyone, from beginners to advanced users, and have varying durations from 15 to 90 minutes. Additionally, you can specify your equipment for each session, though many workouts require none. They keep the workouts fun and engaging, making me look forward to my weekly sessions!

Headspace App – Best Meditation App for Stress Relief and Mindfulness

Meditation has been an answer for me in terms of maintaining a calm mind and staying sharp throughout the day. I have discovered that Headspace is an outstanding meditation app that offers a vast collection of guided meditation courses and individual segments that cater to specific situations like stress or anger.

What I love about Headspace is the sheer variety of meditation options it offers. These options come in varying lengths, ranging from just a few minutes to ten minutes. I can always find a meditation segment that fits my schedule and mood. Additionally, I appreciate the app’s beautifully designed interface, with color-coordinated features that make navigation a breeze.

Another great feature of Headspace is the section designed specifically for kids. This makes it easy to introduce the whole family to the benefits of meditation. Overall, I would highly recommend Headspace to anyone looking to incorporate meditation into their daily routine.

Clue – The Queen of Fertility and Period Tracking Apps

With 1 million monthly active users, Clue is a popular women’s health app to track period dates and pregnancy. This period tracking app is a data-logging tool for your menstrual cycle, where you can store as much information as you wish. It reminds you when your period is due, when you are at peak fertility, and suggests a good time for a breast exam during your cycle.

The data that Clue tracks is diverse and varies from person to person. You can input basic information like the start and end of your menstrual cycle, but you can also track additional data such as sexual health activity, moods, and changes to your skin or hair. Clue gives you the flexibility to choose what you want to track and share with clinical researchers who study women’s health. The app also offers a wealth of educational information on reproductive health that is easy to understand and clearly presented.

Nowy App – Best Travel App for Women Prioritizing Health on The Road

Nowy’s personalized recommendations, streamlined itinerary building, and social features make it an ideal business travel app for women prioritizing health on the road. With the help of AI and the Google Maps integration, Nowy populates healthy dining and fitness options tailored just for you in each destination. It also allows you to efficiently schedule workouts and relaxation time between activities right within your custom itinerary.

What I really like about this app is the community. Connecting with other female travelers on the app provides a support network to find healthy restaurants, share wellness tips, and keep each other motivated to stick to your routine while traveling. With Nowy, maintaining your health and wellness routine has never been easier, even when on the go. The app empowers women to consistently make healthy choices while still enjoying unique travel experiences.

SleepScore – An effective Sleep Tracking App

Getting a good night’s sleep is crucial for maintaining good health, and a sleep-tracking app can help you achieve just that. SleepScore is a highly effective app that significantly improved the quality of my sleep. What’s more, you won’t need any wearables to use it. This app utilizes your phone’s in-built microphone and speakers to record your sleep movements and generate a detailed analysis of your sleep patterns.

With SleepScore, you can set a personalized sleep goal and receive actionable tips on how to achieve it. The free version of the app allows you to record sleep data for up to seven days, while the premium version offers long-term tracking and advanced analysis of your sleep patterns.

Ovia Health – The Most Trusted App for Reproductive Health Support

With personalized insights, expert health coaching, and community support, Ovia Health is one of the best apps for women’s reproductive health. Ovia helps women better understand their bodies through accurate menstrual cycle tracking and fertility guidance. During pregnancy, it monitors fetal development milestones and provides evidence-based answers to pressing questions. After birth, the app tracks the baby’s growth patterns and key moments.

Ovia also connects women to on-demand health experts for individualized coaching on everything from conception to child sleep training. And it integrates with health insurance plans to maximize covered reproductive benefits. With holistic support spanning family planning, pregnancy, and parenthood, Ovia Health delivers comprehensive digital care for women’s health during the most important life transitions.

Alo Moves – Best Women’s Health App for Yoga

Alo Moves is a fantastic women’s health app that provides unlimited access to a vast collection of yoga, fitness, and meditation practices. With new workout sessions added daily, the app offers over 3,000+ classes and goal-based series suitable for all levels and backgrounds. Users can enjoy a diverse range of activities, including yoga, HIIT, Pilates, strength training, and meditation.

The app brings together over 70 world-class instructors, allowing users to take classes with some of the most sought-after instructors worldwide. Additionally, users can enjoy offline downloads, allowing them to take their workouts anywhere, whether at home or on the beach, with no Wi-Fi needed.

Lifesum – Healthy Eating Simplified

Proper nutrition is vital for maintaining a healthy weight, good mood, sound sleep, and longevity. Lifesum is a convenient women’s health app that simplifies the process of achieving a healthy diet.

Trusted by over 60+ million users, this app offers guidance on what to eat at every step of the way. Whether you are looking to lose weight or improve your fitness performance, their meal plans and diets can be tailored to suit any lifestyle. You can choose from a variety of options, including Protein Weight Loss, Mediterranean, Fasting, Keto, and more.

With just a single tap, users can track their daily intake of water, fruits, and vegetables, making it simpler to increase the amount they consume. Users can also receive a detailed breakdown of their protein, carb, and fat intake, including sugars, fiber, and saturated fats, so they can adjust their nutrient intake according to their personal preferences. Moreover, users can effortlessly track their progress by syncing their wearables such as the Apple Watch or Android Watch to the app.

Todoist App – A Task Manager to Become Focused, Organized, and Calm.

For a long time, I used to carry a paper journal and scheduler with me everywhere I went. I tried to write down all my to-dos, work agenda, meeting preps, and introductions that I needed to make, but I could never keep up. Todoist, an app that has been around for a long time in the productivity space, continues to evolve by adding features to its core “to-do list” functionality. Recently, the app introduced boards, a feature similar to Trello, which offers a new way to organize and visualize projects. With Todoist, you can effortlessly keep track of your daily and future tasks while also creating wishlists and idea logs. Imagine boards for meal planning, holiday gifts, or bucket-list trips.

Navigating the Landscape of Women’s Health Apps

And there you have it, ladies! We’ve journeyed through the world of women’s health apps, exploring how they can help us improve our fitness, nutrition, sleep, mental health, and overall well-being. These women’s health apps are more than just digital tools; they’re our companions in our wellness journey, empowering us to take control of our health and make informed decisions about our bodies. No matter what your wellness goals may be – keep track of your fitness progress, manage your nutrition, or improve your mental well-being, there’s an app out there for you.

FAQs

About the author

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post Top Health Apps for Women to Master a Wellness Journey appeared first on BYVI.

Tech innovation in Africa is booming, with startups raising over $6.5 billion in venture capital in 2022 alone. Yet, there’s a lot more the global startup community can do to support African entrepreneurship.

This week, I was delighted to attend the “African Tech Founders Night” as a tech journalist. The event was hosted by Techstars Toronto and provided a platform for Africa’s most innovative tech founders to present their disruptive solutions to a room full of eager investors, mentors, and industry influencers. The energy in the room was electrifying as the African entrepreneurs took center stage, unveiling innovative solutions that are set to uplift and disrupt industries across Africa and beyond.

In this article, I’ll share highlights from the pitches I witnessed and key insights from my one-on-one discussions with the founders.

CutStruct: Digital Marketplace that Streamlines Construction in Africa

CutStruct is a Nigerian proptech startup aiming to transform the construction industry across Africa through technology. I had the opportunity to meet with John Oamen, Co-founder and CEO at CutStruct.

During the showcase, John explained how CutStruct streamlines the procurement of construction materials through the online marketplace.

What is CutStruct?

CutStruct essentially serves as a one-stop shop for handling all supply chain needs, from issuing RFQs to tracking budgets and payments. Their robust vendor management tools help construction firms improve efficiency and cost savings. On this digital platform, customers can easily source and purchase supplies from verified vendors who can deliver orders directly to project sites.

How CutStruct Works

For buyers, the platform reduces the time and effort spent on sourcing affordable materials from reliable suppliers. They get access to real-time price comparisons, bulk order discounts, and seamless delivery coordination. CutStruct’s dashboard also enables project owners to closely track budgets and material costs.

On the vendor side, CutStruct generates targeted leads by promoting suppliers to ideal buyers in the industry. Instead of going door-to-door, vendors can grow their business more efficiently on the platform. Useful sales metrics and streamlined order fulfillment make resource management easier.

CutStruct’s escrow system facilitates secure transactions between both parties and establishes trust. Payments are only released to vendors upon the customer receiving their order.

The Benefits of CutStruct

CutStruct delivers tangible improvements in the construction process to all stakeholders involved:

• Buyers get lower costs through competitive bidding, along with reduced headaches and delays during procurement. Projects stay on time and budget.
• Vendors gain increased visibility to high-intent customers in the industry. They see a notable uptick in sales volume and revenue growth.
• For Nigeria’s construction sector, optimizing operations unlocks economic potential. Easing the housing deficit will spur infrastructure development.

I have been thoroughly impressed by their remarkable traction and sustainable business model. And I am confident that CutStruct will thrive as part of Techstars Toronto’s accelerator program. Their innovative solution has enormous potential to transform the construction industry across the entire African continent.

Chimoney: A Trailblazer in Global Payout Solutions

After meeting with CEO and Founder Uchi Nick Uchibeke, it became apparent that Chimoney is trailblazing the global payout solutions space. As someone who regularly struggles with cumbersome international wire transfers, I was fascinated by Chimoney’s value proposition.

What is Chimoney?

Chimoney aims to make cross-border bulk payments easier for businesses paying out to large, distributed groups – think affiliates, contractors, and community members.

How Chimoney Works

At its core, Chimoney aims to simplify cross-border bulk payments. As Uchi explained, many businesses struggle with the complexities of paying contributors, affiliates, and collaborators across geographical borders. Legacy options like wire transfers or checks are slow, expensive, and require collecting sensitive account details.

Chimoney alleviates these pain points through its seamless global payout platform. Users can instantly pay out sums both big and small to over 100 countries. The recipient just needs an email or phone number – no lengthy bank forms are required.

Chimoney provides a faster, lower-cost alternative that also enhances payee privacy.

Chimoney is Empowering Users with Multi-Currency Wallets

Another cool aspect is Chimoney’s multi-currency digital wallets. The startup enables businesses to create branded wallets for users that support funds in different currencies. Wallets can be funded easily via cards, bank transfers, mobile money, and even crypto.

Once loaded, users have flexibility in storing value, sending payments, or spending balances. One nifty feature lets wallet holders directly shop on sites like Amazon using their funds, thanks to a Unispend integration.

The Benefits of Chimoney

Simpler and Faster Payments: Chimoney allows near instant payouts to global recipients without lengthy forms or manual bank details. This makes payroll, affiliate payouts, and collaboration rewards much smoother.

Lower Fees: Sending funds through Chimoney costs significantly less than traditional wire transfers or forex fees. This helps users save money.

Enhanced Security: Recipients don’t need to provide sensitive bank account information to receive payments. This improves privacy and security.

Multi-Currency Utility: The ability to hold funds in different currencies and spend globally provides unique financial flexibility.

As someone who regularly faces the headache of cross-border payments, I can see a huge value in Chimoney as it provides a frictionless experience both for sending and receiving money globally.

The multi-currency wallet also adds some unique benefits I haven’t seen elsewhere. Overall, I was very impressed with Chimoney’s product and can see it providing major value for businesses paying out to large, distributed groups.

For any business looking to optimize global payouts, streamline financial workflows, or explore embedded finance – Chimoney seems like a top-notch solution worth exploring.

Seso Global: Simplifying Real Estate Transactions in Africa

During African Tech Founders Night, I witnessed an engaging presentation by Seso Global. Kweku Essein, who is Seso’s CCO, provided everyone with an overview of the company. Seso Global has a mission to become “Africa’s trusted property marketplace.” The platform’s primary objective is to instill confidence in buyers by ensuring proper due diligence and title verification.

To revolutionize real estate transactions in Nigeria and beyond, Seso Global aims to bring property listings, service providers, and land registries together in one unified blockchain-based marketplace. By doing so, Seso Global makes the process more efficient and trustworthy for all involved.

How Seso Global Works

Here’s a quick rundown of how Seso Global works:

Search for Properties: Seso partners with verified developers to list properties on their platform. As a buyer, you can search for homes and even take virtual 3D tours.

Book Viewings: See a home you like. Seso’s agents can schedule in-person viewings and accompany you on visits.

Access Service Providers: Once you’ve found your dream home, Seso connects you with lawyers, insurers, etc. to finalize the purchase.

Seso’s innovative approach has left a lasting impression on me. The seamless integration of digital listings, in-person support, and blockchain technology culminates in a streamlined real estate transaction experience – a solution that is much needed in the African market.

The Benefits of Seso Global

Verified Properties: By partnering with developers directly, Seso ensures all listings are legitimate. No more worrying about scams or fake titles!

Convenience: The ability to search, view, and buy homes completely online makes the process far more convenient.

Trust and Security: Seso’s blockchain ledger provides immutable records of land titles, so buyers can trust properties are owned by sellers.

Guidance: Throughout the buying journey, Seso’s agents are there to provide support and expertise.

Cost Savings: By streamlining transactions, Seso reduces fees paid to middlemen and lawyers.

By integrating digital convenience with physical support, Seso Global aspires to make real estate transactions simple and secure across Africa. The company’s rapid growth since 2017 highlights the immense opportunities in proptech and blockchain-based innovations.

Oval: Bringing Breezy Simplicity to Business Finances

Running a business these days means juggling countless financial admin tasks. Between accounting, payroll, global clients, and vendors, it’s easy for things to become complicated fast. Many entrepreneurs find themselves wasting precious time managing finances when they could be building their companies.

But what if there was a way to simplify all that complexity?

What is Oval?

Oval offers an all-in-one finance operating system designed specifically for businesses. No matter the size or stage, Oval can adapt to meet a company’s needs.

The platform allows businesses to easily manage global payments, issue multi-currency accounts, provide virtual cards, and conduct secure global payouts to over 80 countries.

What sets Oval apart is its robust fraud detection and prevention system. This ensures complete security for all financial transactions and operations.

How Oval Works

While Oval’s technology sounds advanced, the company stresses that simplicity and ease of use are key. The platform is designed to be accessible to non-finance experts. For businesses focused on growth, Oval handles the financial heavy lifting in the background.

Getting started with the platform is straightforward:

1. Create a free account
2. Complete Oval’s Know Your Business (KYB) onboarding
3. Access the Oval dashboard to manage finances

Users can connect bank accounts to begin sending/receiving USD payments. Behind the scenes, Oval leverages monitoring and encryption to detect potential fraud and secure accounts.

For larger businesses, Oval provides an API for custom integrations with existing accounting, ERP, and CRM systems.

The Benefits of Oval

Oval aims to provide the following key benefits:

• Consolidation of financial tasks into one platform boosts efficiency.
• Enhanced security and fraud prevention for peace of mind.
• Global payments capabilities to support international business.
• Financial insights/tracking for better cash flow control.
• Scalability to grow along with a business’s needs.
• Custom integration via API for unique requirements.

Chris Mozie and Abdul Akubo, co-founders of Oval, aim to create a finance platform that business owners will enjoy using – even looking forward to logging into Oval’s dashboard!

MPost: Turning Phone Numbers Into Postal Addresses

MPost, which is part of the current Techstars Toronto Accelerator cohort, has an elegantly simple concept: turning your phone number into your postal address. For many people across Africa, formal postal addresses are complicated or nonexistent.

What is MPost?

MPost is an innovative startup that operates in Kenya and offers a unique solution to a significant challenge faced by Africans. The company converts mobile phone numbers into postal addresses, effectively making it easier for people to receive mail and packages. The lack of formal mailing addresses has long been a challenge for many Africans, and MPost’s solution is a game-changer. By using their mobile phone numbers as postal addresses, people can receive mail and packages without having to worry about the traditional addressing system, which can be unreliable and inconsistent. MPost’s goal is to make mail delivery more accessible to everyone in Kenya and beyond, helping to bridge the gap between the digital and physical world.

How MPost Works

Here’s an overview of how MPost works:

Grab Your Mail Your Way – MPost lets you choose how you access your mail. You can either pick it up yourself from your nearest post office location or have it delivered directly to your location.

Get Notified of New Mail – Whenever you have new mail or a package waiting for you at your designated post office, MPost sends you an SMS alert. No more making unnecessary trips or waiting in long lines!

Affordable and Convenient – For just 400 Kenyan Shillings (about US$3) per year, you get a complete postal address service linked to your phone number and choice of post office location. Considering the expense and complication of renting a P.O. box in many areas, MPost provides valuable accessibility.

Reliable Nationwide Network – With 42,000 active users and 230,000 registered users across Kenya and Uganda, MPost has built an extensive network of post office partnerships to receive and hold your mail.

The Benefits of MPost

I can certainly see the appeal of having a consistent postal address that works across regions and that I can access digitally from anywhere and get live delivery tracking.

MPost also provides end-to-end delivery services for e-commerce companies through its Tap a Delivery arm. By leveraging its network of motorcycle drivers and logistics partnerships, MPost can offer reliable same-day delivery.

After learning more about MPost’s unique approach from Twahir Mohammed (Founder, and CEO at MPost) to the persistent challenges of postal addresses in Africa, I’m excited to see it continue to scale and expand the possible. By blending mobile technology with real-world infrastructure, MPost unlocks simple but powerful mail access for millions of Africans.

Reeple: Financial Services for African Immigrants

Reeple caught my attention because of my own experiences as an immigrant to Canada over two decades ago. I remember how difficult it was for my mom to access even basic financial services without having an established Canadian credit history. Everything from getting a credit card to renting an apartment was a struggle until she slowly built up her credit score from scratch.

So Reeple’s mission to help African immigrants leverage their financial histories and records from back home really resonated with me. I wish a service like this had been around when my family was going through the challenging process of settling in Canada!

What is Reeple?

Reeple is a startup fintech company founded by Oluwatomisin Kolawole, Ayokunle Adesanya, and Olarinde Olokuntoye that aims to help African immigrants access financial services in their new countries. The company is focused on immigrants moving to Canada, the US, and the UK.

How Reeple Works

Reeple is using alternative data to evaluate creditworthiness in a fuller way. The idea is to provide immigrants access to loans, credit cards, and other services based on their previous financial records, not just their blank Canadian profiles.

As an immigrant entrepreneur myself, I’m also a big believer in the positive social and economic impacts that can come from empowering newcomers and refugees with financial access. The cycle of poverty is hard to break when you’re excluded from the financial system in your new home country.

The Benefits of Reeple

Reeple offers several key benefits:

• Credit building – Reeple helps immigrants carry their credit history from their homeland to their host country. This allows immigrants to demonstrate creditworthiness rather than starting from zero.
• Loan access – From student loans to cover tuition to rental loans for housing, Reeple expands immigrants’ access to affordable financial products.
• Money transfers – Reeple facilitates cross-border payments and remittances back home. This maintains connections.
• Financial education – Reeple provides guidance on managing finances and credit unique to the immigrant experience.
• Financial inclusion – By offering customized products, Reeple aims to provide financial access and participation for underserved immigrant groups.

The immigrant community faces many unique financial challenges that most Canadians take for granted. Hopefully, Reeple’s solutions can drive greater financial inclusion, because skilled, diverse newcomers are such an asset to our country when given the chance.

Payfi: A Buy Now Pay Later Platform for Africa

During the African Tech Founders Night, I got to meet Seun Sanni, a Co-Founder, COO/CPO of Payfi. Seun’s enthusiasm towards Payfi’s mission of providing Africans with an opportunity to obtain financing for purchases, whether online or in physical stores, was very evident.

What is Payfi?

Payfi allows customers to “buy now, pay later” when shopping from affiliated merchants online or in-store. Think of it like Afterpay or Affirm in the US, but tailored specifically for African consumers and businesses.

How Payfi Works

For consumers – Payfi offers installment plans from 2-6 months at low interest rates. Customers can easily sign up via the app, verify their identity, and then start shopping at supported merchants. At checkout, whether online or in-store, they select Payfi and spread payments over time.

For merchants – Businesses can partner with Payfi to offer flexible financing options. This gives them a competitive edge and boosts sales. Payfi handles the installment plans and settlements so merchants get paid upfront.

Payfi supports payments online via plugins, in-store through POS integration, and even offline via payment links.

The Benefits of Payfi

As both a consumer platform and a B2B solution, Payfi offers compelling benefits:

For consumers – Payfi makes it easy to finance bigger purchases over time. Customers can get approved quickly and repay on flexible schedules. Given the high upfront costs of items like electronics in Africa, Payfi opens up purchasing power.

For merchants – Payfi helps businesses attract more customers, convert more sales, and build loyalty. Offering payment plans brings in buyers who otherwise couldn’t afford big-ticket items. Merchants also get valuable insights into purchase behavior.

For the economy – By expanding consumer credit, Payfi stimulates local economies and enables growth. More sales help businesses thrive, while consumers get access to life-changing products, from solar panels to smartphones.

Currently, Payfi has 60,000+ active shoppers and has enabled a 50% sales boost for partners. But they have ambitious plans to scale much further across Africa.

The team wants to develop into the continent’s top buy now, pay later platform. They plan to sign up millions more users and integrate with many leading e-commerce sites.

Judging by their traction and the massive opportunity for installment financing in Africa, I think Payfi has huge potential. The team is leveraging technology to solve a real payment pain point and unlock economic prosperity.

Alternative credit options can empower a large underserved population. And Payfi’s seamless customer experience and merchant tools set them up for success.

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post Techstars Toronto: African Tech Founders Night 2023 appeared first on BYVI.

As a software developer, have you ever felt lost in a sea of vague productivity frameworks? Or wished you could get insights tailored to your unique work style? Or had your software development process gamified? Well, Adadot aims to change that.

What is Adadot?

Adadot is a London-based startup founded by Alex Harris and Jason Spiliotopoulos aimed at revolutionizing how software developers track, analyze, and improve their work.

As someone who has struggled with cookie-cutter productivity metrics myself, I was intrigued. So I sat down with Alex to learn more about how Adadot works its magic using their proprietary AI engine.

How Adadot Works

The key to Adadot’s approach is integrating data from the various tools software developers use daily including GitHub, GitLab, JIRA, Slack, email, calendars, and more. This provides a 360-degree view of each software developer.

Adadot’s AI engine then performs causal analysis on this unified data to find links between productivity and wellbeing. It trains custom models for each software developer to account for the fact that each person works differently.

“Our AI models are trained on each developer’s own data to provide recommendations unique to them.”

Alex harris – co-founder at adadot

Instead of imposing one-size-fits-all metrics, Adadot studies your personal workflow – your code, communication patterns, meetings, calendar, the whole shebang.

Gamification elements like earning badges and climbing rankings incentivize software developers to adopt healthy work habits. Adadot also provides training and mentoring customized to each software developer’s needs.

Software developers get personalized dashboards highlighting trends, benchmarks, and recommendations based on their specific goals. The AI engine continuously analyzes new data to provide updated dynamic insights.

The Perks of Adadot

I had the opportunity to meet Adadot CEO Alex Harris who explained some of the key benefits of Adadot for software developers:

• Truly personalized insights instead of imposing standardized metrics: “We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach. Models are trained on each developer’s own data.”
• Focus beyond just code to also understand communication patterns, meetings, and more. The goal is improving both productivity and wellbeing.
• Autonomous improvement driven by each developer instead of top-down mandates. Software developers get control over their own data and insights.
• Smooth adoption thanks to the personalized approach and gamification. Software developers are intrinsically motivated to use Adadot.
• Aggregated anonymized data helps managers lead conversations with data instead of opinions. They can quantify the impact of changes to staff or tools.

Is Adadot Free?

Adadot offers both free and paid options.

The Personal Free plan includes benchmarking, dashboards, trends, and 3 months of historical data.

Paid plans like Personal Pro ($10/month) add unlimited history, personalized goal setting, and priority support. The Team plan ($20/month) provides collaboration analytics and admin tools for managers. Custom Enterprise plans are also available.

What is Code Reactions?

Code Reactions is a fun new feature Adadot launched on Product Hunt today. Inspired by reactions on social media, software developers can now react to code snippets with emojis like  or .

Adadot takes personalization a step further by gamifying the experience. You can complete missions, collect badges, and climb ranks based on your goals.

Reactions let software developers easily provide feedback and annotate code. You can see reactions inline next to each line or in a chronological feed. Developers get notified when someone reacts to their code.

As a fan of gamification, I think this is a stroke of genius. Who doesn’t love watching their progress rocket up when tackling goals? And having a sense of autonomy is hugely motivating!

The Future

With its top-notch technical team, robust AI platform, and developer-first ethos, Adadot has huge potential.

The startup is quickly building momentum and seems poised to become a major player in revolutionizing software development. Their people-centric approach to software developer productivity is a breath of fresh air.

I’ll be following closely as Adadot aims to gamify the software development process and empower software developers worldwide with personalized data-driven insights!

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post Adadot Review: Software Development Process Gamification Tool appeared first on BYVI.

Performing user research is essential and possibly the most vital stage in creating any product. But, it can be time-consuming to perform quality user interviews. Arranging and planning focus groups or conducting one-on-one interviews and analyzing the results can be a nightmare. AskMore offers a compelling AI solution to these user research pain points by tapping the power of AI. Here’s a deeper look at how it works and the problems it aims to solve.

“We built AskMore because we were struggling to get feedback on our side projects. User interviews are great, but finding participants willing to commit to a call is hard and scheduling can often take ages. It’s much easier and faster to get answers with online surveys, but that only works for basic questions and not when you need to adapt to answers and dig deeper. That’s how we got the idea of using AI to make user interviews as easy as sharing a survey link.”

– Julien Zmiro, Designer at AskMore

The Struggles of Traditional User Research

Traditional user research usually suffers from the following drawbacks:

1. Low participation. Recruiting users willing to commit to interviews is challenging. Days or weeks of coordination may yield only a handful of participants.
2. Scheduling headaches. Finding times that work for both parties can require endless emails and calendar Tetris. This introduces delays.
3. Interviewer bias. It’s easy for personal biases to inadvertently influence the questions asked and how responses are interpreted.
4. Siloed perspectives. Due to limited sample sizes, findings may not reveal insights from diverse user segments.
5. Analyzing notes. Transcribing, coding, and finding patterns in pages of notes is time-intensive and error-prone.

AskMore Benefits

AskMore aims to eliminate these bottlenecks mentioned above by using AI to automate the heavy lifting of user interviews:

• Increased reach. By sharing links to automated interviews, participation rates can increase 10X or more.
• Streamlined scheduling. Users complete interviews whenever convenient for them, removing coordination headaches.
• Neutral questions. AI interviewers avoid human biases and ask consistent questions.
• Diverse feedback. The larger sample uncovers insights from a broad cross-section of users.
• Automated analysis. Key findings are summarized along with full transcripts to streamline synthesis.

User research is filled with friction. But by leveraging the capabilities of AI, AskMore offers a compelling way to streamline the process and unlock deeper, more diverse insights. For resource-constrained teams, it provides a powerful mechanism to punch above their weight class when it comes to understanding users.

How AskMore Works

AskMore has a user-friendly interface and a quick setup process.

1. Describe your research goals

First, you tell AskMore what key things you want to learn from your target users. This guides what types of questions will be asked.

2. AI generates customized interviews

AskMore’s AI then creates an automated questionnaire tailored to get the insights you outlined.

3. Share interview links

You receive a unique link to send to users. When they access it, the AI interviews them based on your goals.

4. Analyze findings

After interviews are complete, AskMore provides reports summarizing key findings and interview transcripts for deeper analysis.

Is AskMore free?

AskMore uses a pay-as-you-go credit system. Each credit allows you to interview one participant. There is also a “free tier” with 5 credits for new users to try the platform.

The Verdict on AskMore

AskMore offers teams an innovative and efficient method to streamline and expand their user research with the help of AI. For startups and smaller teams, it offers a relatively affordable way to gather quality user insights that would otherwise require extensive time and resources.

While AskMore won’t replace all human interaction, I believe it has the potential to be a game-changer. The value of gathering user insights from a diverse, large pool cannot be understated. The founders’ personal challenges inspired them to create a user-friendly solution, and their innovation is poised to streamline user research for product teams globally.

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post AskMore Review: AI-Powered User Interviews That Run Without You appeared first on BYVI.

As a publisher and huge proponent of content marketing and SEO, I’m always on the lookout for tools to streamline workflow for both content creation at BYVI and our PLG motion at DeckLinks. So when I saw Foudroyer launching on ProductHunt with its unified SEO data hub, I was instantly intrigued. The fragmented data sources we have to deal with daily can be a real pain, so having everything in one place to monitor keywords, rankings, and traffic seems like a dream.

While it’s still early days, I’m excited to see where Foudroyer goes and how it might become an essential asset in our SEO toolkit, as well as for other marketers and publishers who double down on SEO. The potential is definitely there!

What is Foudroyer?

In short, Foudroyer is a web application aiming to centralize key SEO data and metrics in one place. The core offering focuses on rapid indexing, consolidated reporting, and accurate keyword tracking. Foudroyer’s slick interface lets you monitor rankings, clicks, impressions, and other vital metrics across Google, Bing, and Yandex.

This unified “SEO command center” removes the need to manually compile data from multiple platforms like Search Console, SEMrush, and others. Foudroyer connects directly to engine APIs to feed real-time, precise performance data into its intuitive dashboard and reports.

How Foudroyer Works

Getting started is straightforward. Simply add your website URL and authenticate via Google Search Console. Foudroyer automatically imports existing keywords and performance data.

The dashboard neatly displays keyword positions, clicks, and other metrics in simple visualizations that you can filter by date, location, and other factors. Custom comparisons between keywords or engines help users spot opportunities.

But where Foudroyer really shines is going beyond basic reporting. The one-click indexing rapidly pushes new or updated URLs to search engines. According to Foudroyer, it takes under 24 hours in most cases to get your URL indexed, and you can index over 200 pages daily, freeing up the SEO workflow.

The Perks of Foudroyer

Is Foudroyer Free?

The core features outlined above are free to users. Foudroyer plans to offer premium paid plans at some point for those wanting additional analytics and insights. But the free offering alone packs tremendous value!

While still new, I see this tool becoming a must-have for SEO if it continues developing smart integrations and analytics. One potential addition to the platform could be a keyword research capability that will provide a monthly search volume and difficulty level.  

Overall Foudroyer has the potential to transform chaos into clarity and I highly recommend fellow SEO pros give it a try.

Lidia Vijga

Lidia Vijga is the Editor in Chief at BYVI, founder-driven media that spotlights early-stage startups at the moment most press skips, when coverage can actually open doors. She’s also a content engineer who builds in-house growth engines and trains AI agents that help companies scale content and win brand visibility across traditional and AI search. Previously, she co-founded DeckLinks, which gave her firsthand experience building and scaling tech products.

The post Foudroyer: A New Tool to Centralize SEO Data & Track Keywords appeared first on BYVI.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever shared your landing page, artwork, or other work or project only to have strangers on the internet shred it into tiny little pieces with cruel comments that crush your soul. Not very encouraging, is it? Well, good news: There’s now a platform called RevMyWork that connects creators with actual professionals to get your work reviewed.

Finally, a platform offering constructive criticism from experts who won’t roast you (too hard)! The feedback aims to be specific and kind, elevating your skills and guiding you in the right direction.

Our focus is on task-based reviews without the need for calls.

Dimitri Khlopkov, CEO and Co-founder at RevMyWork

So rather than Zoom calls, reviewers provide quick voice clips with notes or short videos. And you can always ask follow-up questions via the built-in chat if you need clarification or more guidance.

Whether you need a review of your new homepage or the UX/UI of your dashboard, help with debugging your code or anything in between, the goal here is to provide constructive feedback to help you improve and expedite your growth.

How RevMyWork works

So how does the RevMyWork review process actually work? It’s simple.

First, browse the platform and choose a reviewer with suitable expertise to critique your work. Whether it’s a founder reviewing your latest pitch deck or a designer providing feedback on your website mockup, select a professional aligned with you.

Next, submit a request detailing the specifics you want the reviewer to focus on. Provide relevant context to enable an insightful critique.

Then receive your reviewer’s constructive feedback within the designated timeframe. The experts on RevMyWork aim to provide actionable advice to spur your creative growth in a professional yet friendly manner.

If you can’t find a reviewer suited to your project, submit a request to the RevMyWork team. They will leverage their network to match you with an expert who can provide insights tailored to your needs.

The Perks of RevMyWork

Getting your work reviewed on RevMyWork has some solid perks for creators looking to advance their skills.

• Receive constructive feedback from professionals with proven expertise with actionable suggestions.
• The critiques provide personalized guidance tailored to your development goals and current abilities.
• Messaging capabilities enable back-and-forth communication with your reviewer for any follow-up questions.
• Reviewers set their own reasonable rates, making professional critiques cost-effective for creators at all budget levels.

What RevMyWork is used for?

Are you a good copywriter but your website design skills are kind of dull? A tech founder who is looking to improve your pitch deck and storytelling skills? Or a great social media marketer who is looking to better understand SEO?

We all have creative strengths and weaknesses. RevMyWork is here to fill the gaps in our skill sets, connecting us with experienced pros ready to provide kind, actionable suggestions in the form of uplifting reviews.

By making these professional-grade critiques accessible, the platform enables creators of various backgrounds to get constructive criticism that fuels their growth and takes their work to new heights.

From the reviewer’s side, RevMyWork welcomes all professional backgrounds who can provide remote feedback, including IT experts, designers, developers, and digital marketers. While technical fields are common, the startup encourages professionals from all walks of life to share their expertise – the diversity of reviewers empowers the diversity of creators.

Is RevMyWork free?

Creating an account or joining as a reviewer on RevMyWork is completely free. The platform operates on a cooperative business model, collecting just a small 10% commission on review earnings. This means RevMyWork succeeds when users succeed. By fostering a win-win environment built on fair principles, the platform empowers reviewers to profit from their knowledge while helping creators achieve their dreams.

If you feel stuck with a project or simply want insider tips to unlock your potential, create an account here and give RevMyWork a try.

The post RevMyWork: Connecting Creators and Experts for Feedback that Fuels Growth appeared first on BYVI.