A quartet of Canadian small businesses is tackling some of the big issues of our day, and doing so with the assistance of international prize money that rewards and honours businesses that go beyond financial success to have a real positive impact in their local communities.

Granola may not be top of mind among our pressing social issues, but if your recipe for great granola can support the local economy, help the global environment, and increase profit margins, well, that’s a winning combination.

And if your small business can expand the important services it provides – improving and increasing social housing stock while giving a job to folks who face barriers to traditional employment – well, that too is a winning combination, particularly these days.

More Granola and Building Up are two of the four Canadian winners of the first Xero Beautiful Business Fund, an international initiative from the New Zealand-based tech company whose cloud-based accounting software and related service apps are used by companies around the world.

HootReading, which seeks to improve children’s lives through increased literacy, and Scimar, whose mission is to end Type 2 diabetes, are the other two Canadian winners.

Small businesses with big missions, as one company founder said.

The four companies have each now received $15,000 CDN to boost their growth plans and drive future success, based on their already inspiring stories.

As part of its inaugural Fund, Xero selected a total of 24 global companies, four from Canada, described Xero Canada Country Manager Faye Pang.

“We’re thrilled with the results of the first year; the Beautiful Business Fund was announced in honour of our company’s founding day, July 6, and within about six weeks, we had over 5,000 worldwide applications. The community really embraced the idea, and so many incredible stories came though.”

There were hundreds of Canadian submissions, she added; applications were sent in as 90-second video pitches, with each small business founder or CEO talking about their company, its plans and how they would use the funding if selected as a winner. The Fund sought to support efforts in specific categories that celebrate not only individual company success, but overall community benefit.

“I had the honour of joining the judging here,” Pang recalled, “and I can tell you, we teared up more than a couple of times. There were some incredible stories from people about why they started up their companies, how they saw the impact of their businesses, and just how meaningful the prize money would be for them. Watching stories of how these companies do their business in Canada was so inspiring for us.”

As was winning for the competitors!

“We’re honoured to be chosen as one of the Canadian recipients of the Xero Beautiful Business Fund,” said Carly Shuler, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Hoot Reading. “With Xero’s support, Hoot Reading can continue to advance technology in education to impact the lives of young learners across North America.”

Based in Manitoba, Hoot Reading offers an online tutoring service that provides one-on-one literacy instruction, using technology to connect students with qualified teachers and evidence-based learning opportunities.

Winners in the Trailblazing with technology category, Pang said Hoot Reading impressed the judges with a strong vision of how they want to modernize and automate their platform using AI, speech recognition, and machine learning in ways that will help the company scale up efficiently in its partnerships with districts, schools, and non-profit organizations.

“As we move forward on our roadmap for lit-tech innovation, we can extend the reach and quality of our high-impact tutoring solutions, to improve equitable access to qualified teachers and literacy instruction,” Shuler added.

Another entrant said: “When the opportunity came up to put something together for this award, we got excited because it felt like Xero cares about the work that we do and our intentions behind it.” That something Marc Soberano and his team at Building Up put together was a winning entry.

Now Executive Director of the operation, Soberano said his company has been using Xero “from the very beginning, about ten years ago when I started it up, and it’s been a crucial part of our business.”

Based in Toronto, Building Up won in the Strengthening community connection category. The business is a nonprofit social contractor/building renovator service, but with an added twist: helping to boost available housing while at the same time helping people break the poverty cycle that can lead to being without a safe, suitable home.

Building Up provides an intensive pre-apprenticeship trades training program for individuals who face barriers to employment, helping them build careers in the trades while working on the 60,000-or so affordable housing units in the city that need renovation and upgrading.

With the Xero funding, Building Up will expand outreach and boost numbers at its training centre. Enrollees from all backgrounds can apply for a 16-week paid pre-apprenticeship program at Building Up that combines in-class training with work placement on contract construction sites.

Like Building Up and its trainees, Xero supports its clients by giving them the tools they need to succeed. When small businesses thrive, so too, the economy in which they operate. In Canada, small and medium-sized businesses make up 98 per cent of all businesses and almost 63 per cent of the country’s workforce, so their success is important to the economy, and to Xero.

“It’s our mission to help small business, not just survive, but thrive in their communities,” Pang underscores. The newly-launched Xero Beautiful Business Fund is a part of that mission, as are the company’s online accounting solutions. “We want to help with the day-to-day tasks – bookkeeping, time sheets, invoicing, payments and other manual tasks – so the business can be even more beautiful.”

Xero’s cloud-based accounting software, Pang describes, along with an ecosystem of thousands of other business-related apps have an added positive impact on companies by helping them better understand their financial position and make fuller use of the operational insights that such business tools provide.

Staying in touch with customers is as important as the business tools offered. “The Xero team stays really connected with our customers; we take calls from them every week,” Pang says. “Getting feedback on the platform, hearing that voice of the customer, is so important to us.”

Hearing the voice, and just maybe, tasting the product.

Toronto-based More Granola launched roughly two years ago (the pandemic just added to the many challenges that start-ups face) but now its fresh baked treats are sold in more than 260 grocery stores, including top chains across North America.

Winners in the Innovating for sustainability category, More Granola will use its winnings to change up their colourful packaging and reformulate their recipe, replacing almond flour (a water-intensive crop that must be brought up from the U.S.) with Canadian-grown sustainable oats and brown rice flour.

“I’m really excited for the changes this award will bring to More Granola,” noted company founder Sarah Aubrey-Davies, saying the anticipated change will not only taste great, but will support the Canadian economy with more ingredients purchased locally, help the environment by reducing transportation costs and related CO2 emissions, and improve sales margins for the business.

“Having Xero invest back into us means the world—it’s a testament to their commitment to businesses like ours,” Aubrey-Davies added.

The value of Xero’s investment and commitment to small businesses was echoed by the fourth Canadian Fund winner.

“The fact that Xero is interested in what we do, beyond just numbers or money, is exciting,” said Mick Lautt, CEO of Scimar, a medical technology firm based in Manitoba. “[It’s] creating a platform for us to celebrate the impact we’re trying to achieve together, and that’s what makes it all the more special to us.”

Winners in the Upskilling for the future category, Scimar’s stated mission shows just how special their impact could be: the goal is to end Type 2 diabetes!

Small business, big goal indeed: Whether in Canada or elsewhere, the challenge is a singular, sobering one: 80 per cent of young people living in indigenous communities will develop Type 2 diabetes in their lifetime. Eight in ten young people!! (It’s about 50 per cent in the general population.)

Not only is a solid medical understanding of the disease, its root causes and its effective treatments necessary, so too Lautt and his team felt that a fuller understanding of indigenous communities and cultures was also needed for the company to succeed.

So Scimar will use the Xero funding and invest it right back into its employees. Seventeen staffers will receive specialized training through the Truth2Action Reconciliation for Business program, which Lautt says will help everyone be a better citizen and Scimar be a better business.

Each of the four Canadian companies selected in the first Fund have unique stories and specific goals that reflect the personal and professional interests of the founders and the employees.

But Lautt probably spoke for them all when he said, “I can’t tell you how thrilled we are to be the winners of the Xero Beautiful Business Fund.”

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