The new world of work can be frustrating, and giving employees a voice can feel difficult. Nothing is more demoralizing than a culture where no-one listens to your issues or ideas.

With many remote workers feeling it’s hard to raise important issues and get a reciprocal feedback loop going, now is the time to find out if your organization can be more ‘open’…

In 2022, culture is now more important to employees than salary but 86% of employees feel they are not heard ‘fairly or equally’…63% believe their views & opinions are completely ignored!

More to explore…

What makes a high-performance leader or employee tick? Research shows that companies win more often when they build genuinely diverse, equitable, and inclusive cultures (learn more here).

These can be high-performing companies or individuals stepping into bold, authentic leadership styles that set them apart from others. Companies and leaders considered to be “high performers” are spread throughout key, identifiable workplaces around the globe and the one thing that binds them together is that to be consistent in high performance they’re setting themselves apart from the status quo and fighting for a new way to do work better.

Thanks to the Covid pandemic and other social and demographic changes, we’re living through a once-in-a-generation power rebalance between employees and employers. Gone are the days of top-down hierarchical dictatorships in workplaces. We’re seeing a new era emerge with new norms, where people have their voices heard —and feedback turns into new possibilities for organizations to pursue.

High performers win more not because they go against the status quo and this is due to the way that they solve problems. The best way to solve modern-day organizational problems is to have competing ideas on the table to thoroughly discuss, not just the wisdom from a few of those at the top or who are the loudest. New research from Harvard Business Review titled  Approaches to Solving Problems in the Workplace , states that, “Highly effective teams solve problems the right way and have common features: the teams are cognitively diverse and psychologically safe.”

So, companies who build more diverse teams and create “speak up” cultures where there is trust and respect amongst cognitively diverse people do far better at solving everyday challenges than those that who have a more traditional and less cognitively diverse and psychologically safe spaces for problem and solution discussion.

According to Boston Consulting Group’s 2017 Diversity and Innovation Survey, companies with above-average diversity scores (via investing in creating conditions for cognitive diversity) generate nearly 20% more average revenue from innovation than companies that have below average diversity scores (and subsequently have not invested in creating the conditions for cognitive diverse in their organizations).

Companies with more diverse Leadership report higher Innovation Revenue

Companies with above average diversity scores

Average innovation revenue 

Source: Boston Consulting Group’s 2017 Diversity and Innovation Survey

The latest research from Kaspersky, a leading enterprise innovation and security company states that, “88% of successful high performing organizations encourage innovation at every level, in every team,” and don’t silo innovation into one small department. And, in their follow up report on Bottom-up Innovation in Enterprise shows they share the most important values required for building high performing and innovative organizations.

• • Instilling Entrepreneurialism
  • Creating Diversity (of thought and personnel)
  • Empowering individuals

Not convinced by the research? We can tap into the wisdom of others, so let’s analyze what Steve Jobs has said.

Working with the world’s most innovative companies at Swae, we know that high performers thrive in workplaces where there is an idea meritocracy, not top-down authority and dictatorship.

An idea meritocracy is defined as a decision-making system where the best ideas (irrespective of who proposes them) win out. The concept has been around for a long time but was popularized by Ray Dalio in his best-selling book Principles: Life & Work, which shares an in-depth exposé of his organizational and operating strategy within his company called Bridgewater (learn more here), which is arguably the most successful hedge fund.

Dalio attributes the “idea meritocracy” at Bridgewater as a decision-making system where new investment and policy ideas can come from anywhere in the hierarchy, can be challenged by anyone, and the most debated are the ideas put forward for institutional decisions, as the system responsible for the quality and quantity of good decisions made to lead to such an outsized performance gap against all other competitors in their space.

Examples from these cultural icons and highly innovative business tycoons helps paint the picture of the powerful underlying constructs that Swae brings to the table. It’s built for any organization or leader who wants to unleash the collective intelligence that lies within a workplace.

Swae is not a fickle chat or upvoting app. 

Swae is not a boring idea enablement workflow platform. 

Swae is not just a product innovation platform.

It is so much more; turning feedback into organizational change and creating a bottom-up idea meritocracy.

Swae can help your workplace become an industry example and high-performing entity due to the help in building a more constructive speak up culture. As demonstrated above, this is a critical step for driving more innovative ideas forward, faster.

Swae’s AI and Collaboration features help people refine ideas together in an inclusive way. Imagine an open suggestion box combined with a conditional guarantee of a decision. Anyone can suggest ideas within the organization they belong to, and ideas compete for decision attention equally. The ideas that receive the most debate graduate to a decision. Leaders commit to making a decision about the fate of popular ideas directly on the platform.

Fair, transparent, bottom-up, and meritocratic decision-making. That’s the Swae way.

How Swae supports high performers everywhere:

Swae serves the people that love to disrupt the status quo (for the good).

Swae serves DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) by using Swae’s collective intelligence, collaboration, and crowdsourcing features allowing members of DAOs to create proposals anonymously with the support of AI that will improve the quality of those proposals and then open them up for the input of the larger community.

The crowdsourcing feature will enable the proposals to be debated on their merits, edited with others’ perspectives, and voted on by all active members of the community. The proposals that receive the highest engagement (positive or negative) automatically percolate upwards to a decision DAO community and its “council,” where projects can be funded or supported in whatever way the DAO chooses.

This process for revealing decision-ready ideas from the bottom-up can be adapted to any organization that is bold enough to desire it and for the leaders ready to disrupt the stale and boring hierarchical status quo and create environments that value people and what they have to say.

To further expand on the Kaspersky’s Bottom-up Innovation in Enterprise report, the top three barriers larger organizations face when trying to innovate more include:

A. Organizational structures add too much complexity (48% agree)

B. Too many people are involved in the [decision-making] process (42% agree)

C. It takes too long to make decisions (40% agree)

40%

It takes too long to make decisions

Swae helps to create diverse and inclusive environments with less pain and less noise.

We know that when employees speak up, good things happen. An MIT Sloan study shows that when employees are comfortable in speaking up more often about many emerging topics, they are more likely to stay at the company longer, and to exhibit positive employee behaviors.

Employees who spoke up more were 92% more likely to want to stay with the company (even if offered a comparable position elsewhere)

96%

The more diverse and inclusive the teams, the better because people feel comfortable and safe to be more open, engaging, and speak up more often.

Swae is for the brave.

Swae exists to build positive workplaces that debias decisions, empower constructive debate, deepen collaboration, and tap into intrinsic motivations for engagement.

Breaking down the biases and structures that zap out our motivations in the workplace is critical for creating high performing organizations and cultures.

Unchecked bias has a massive impact in the workplace that can derail businesses from finding great ideas and making significant decisions every single day. An article by McKinsey & Company How Biases, Politics, and Egos Trump Good Strategy  shows data that proves cognitive bias eats away at the positivity within a company’s culture.

Here are a couple of the top biases according to McKinsey & Company to look out for:

• Overconfidence: this type of bias leads people to ignore contradictory information. They don’t hear anything other than their “own voice” when considering options.
• Confirmation Bias: refers to the human tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. One study found, for instance, that 80% of executives believe that their product stands out against the competition—but only 8% of customers agree.

A more empowered and engaged way of doing business is on the rise…

We see a bright future ahead!

We at Swae envision a world where everyone understands their value and is seen for that value in their workplaces and where everyone can feel included and have a voice. Call us crazy, but we’re passionate about this vision and are working hard to make it as obvious as the current system that works in the opposite manner.

Swae is helping organizations across the world to solve today’s problems and create tomorrow’s strategy. From Start-ups to Charities, and Enterprises to DAOs, our clients find that their greatest resource is their people, and Swae is proven to help get the best from the untapped potential within their workforce.

Find your next winning ideas using Swae

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What does Future of Work even mean?

Like many phrases, the “future of work” has been a term thrown around for a long time in conferences and such and is a buzzword people use, but many don’t really understand what it means.

We found Deloitte has a pretty good (and simple) definition:

“We define the future of work as a result of many forces of change affecting three deeply connected dimensions of an organization: the work (the what), the workforce (the who), and the workplace (the where).”

Deloitte

When we dig into the technological, generational and social shifts taking place, we see very clearly that organizations today face extraordinary challenges. So, the “future of work” can be very elusive and difficult to map out when things change at speeds never seen before. From the likes of the global pandemic situation, to adapting to new technologies, competitors, customer needs, and social norms, it seems that every development is coming in at rates that we haven’t seen before.

What we see happening right now is that major companies are being disrupted daily, staff is feeling more and more disengaged, and customers are demanding new, innovative ways to connect.

Technology and the Future of Work

McKinsey & Company released a study in 2020 that explored How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point—and transformed business forever.

What they found surrounding COVID-19 in particular is that it pushed companies over the “technology tipping point” and transformed business forever. According to the Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, “We saw two years-worth of digital transformation take place in the first two months [of COVID-19]”.

In the eCommerce space, the changes were even more dramatic as the need to replace physical channels prevalent prior to COVID-19 became a life-or-death decision for many companies. Numerous reports and analysis confirm that COVID-19 forced more digital transformation to organizations in 3 months than over the past 10 years-worth of efforts by organizations and consulting firms combined. Every single industry has had to face new challenges that they need to learn how to overcome.

To help organizations adapt to these challenges, technology platforms have had to step up, with many reports showing how tech outperformed the broader market. Specifically, the entire sector was up about 40% in the calendar year of 2020 alone.

The study by McKinsey & Company also looked at how the workplace environment has shifted and digitization has accelerated supply-chain interactions and internal operations by three to four years! Even more shocking, was that the share of digital or digitally-enabled products in their portfolios accelerated by seven years!

The point? In order to stay competitive in this new business and economic environment it requires companies to think outside the box and come up with better ways to collaborate and to dramatically change their internal practices.

Senior Executives are taking note and recognize technology’s strategic importance as a critical component of the business, not just a source of cost efficiencies.

Chart source: McKinsey & Company Survey

In another study, G2’s 2022 Trends report on Software for the Hybrid Workplace showed that businesses in 2022 have begun to shift their focus from managing a hybrid office to achieving and maintaining efficient modes of communication in the post-pandemic work environment. 

The future of work around technology is that companies must find better solutions to remote working and remote collaboration. These two priorities sit at the top of the list that executives and organizations MUST look at and respond to immediately, or be left behind. 

The future of work around technological changes isn’t in the future anymore, it’s imperative to look at ways to enhance the hybrid work model, collaboration and employee engagement – and permutations of “work from home” – right now.

Generational and Social Shifts and the Future of Work

According to G2, companies will need to continue to offer a hybrid or fully remote option in order to retain top talent, especially after The Great Resignation of 2021 (the government’s jobs report released that over 20 million people quit their jobs in the second half of 2021. Some are calling it the “big quit,” others the “great resignation”).  

The desire for more freedom and flexibility has changed the employee experience forever and is now a huge social shift and generational priority. Therefore, communication and collaboration will be affected if teams are unable to adjust properly. Unfortunately, the standard video conferencing software will likely not be enough for teams in the long run. Part of adapting to this new environment will include a larger focus on tools that can enhance the virtual employee experience. 

High-quality communication and collaboration will become a priority for teams moving forward. Additionally, employers must consider individuals who may feel isolated if there is not enough team bonding time or face-to-face meetings. Finding ways to cultivate a healthy company culture and effective methods of communication in the current environment is vital.  

This is where Swae has been most helpful to organizations. We know that the world has changed irreversibly and new threats and opportunities arise daily for organizations. To source the best solutions to these challenges, the need for diverse options and competition for the best solutions has never been more important.  

A study by PwC Pulse Survey: Next in work states that we are at a pivotal moment for the future of work, and companies can help their businesses and employees thrive if employees remain the number one source of finding good solutions to internal and external challenges.

This is where Swae comes into the picture.

Swae solves this by helping organizations tap into the intelligence of their people with the ability to leverage the power of AI and a merit-based, bottom-up methodology. The outcome is the ability to develop smarter decisions without sacrificing speed.

For example, employees who feel comfortable speaking up at work about problems and their solutions to them are 92% more likely to want to stay with the company (even if offered a comparable position elsewhere) versus 60% for those who don’t feel comfortable or have the chance to speak up at all. 

Furthermore, 95% of those who do speak up expressed excitement to come to work to do their jobs and said they would recommend their company as a great place to work, compared with 61% among those who did not have the opportunity to speak up. 

Swae is on a mission to give everyone a voice and to help leaders uncover the possibilities from within their organization to drive significant improvements by unlocking hidden ideas from their people. Unlocking and cultivating the hidden innovations and opportunities have demonstrated time and time again that it can drive massive change and major improvements. The secret to doing this comes from what our inclusive platform activates to get there; trust, collaboration, engagement and an “idea meritocracy” where the best ideas rise to the top.

We want companies to WIN and we want leaders to understand the concept of what an “idea meritocracy” is. Therein lies the key to performance gains, and in the words of one of its most prolific enthusiasts, Ray Dalio, the Founder of Bridgewater Associates – the most successful hedgefund in history – and author of #1 New York Times bestseller Principles, said: 

In his book Principles, Mr. Dalio credits the system of idea meritocracy as the backbone of Bridgewater’s internal operating system and culture for unearthing trapped insights and turning unconventional ideas into organizational decisions. In an industry as reliant on high quality arguments, unbiased information, and sound decisions as the financial industry is – it’s no surprise how an idea meritocracy helped them build a repeatable and scalable system for helping the most appropriate internal and external decisions rise from the bottom to the top.  

Many believe this is Bridgewater’s secret weapon for outperforming all its competitors and every other hedge fund in the history of the industry. 

It’s becoming more widely accepted that an organization’s best ideas and solutions can come from anywhere regardless of the hierarchy, and Swae helps its users feel they have a real voice and platform that they can trust to share their ideas about problems and solutions at the workplace. These are ideas that would otherwise get lost or neglected in the complex and bureaucratic web of tools, workflows and processes that a large-scale modern company encompasses.

In a world where continuous innovation is increasingly critical and organizations must move at the pace of software companies, competitive success — perhaps even survival — requires moving beyond exclusive use of hierarchical decision-making, drawing on the power of crowdsourcing and markets wherever possible. Under today’s business environment and circumstances, creating a speak up culture and an idea meritocracy makes strong business sense. 

Study after study shows that increasing diversity in teams and companies is not an empty feel-good slogan – it actually leads to more frequent and better-quality innovation and improved financial performance, as experienced by firms like Bridgewater (e.g. BCG’s 2017 research findings).  

This is because diverse teams are shown to be smarter, identify and address cognitive biases more frequently in important decisions, and develop better innovations leading to improved financial performance against teams that are more homogenous. 

Experts believe this is the case because the greater the diversity of decision makers the more likely they can collect diverse inputs and options to select from, process information more carefully, and catch inherent biases more accurately, leading to more objective and informed choices to select from, and better end decisions. 

Companies that take these initiatives seriously and moves them forward as priorities perform better. Swae believes organizations CAN THRIVE when decisions are made more inclusively. The combination of creativity, innovative suggestions and quality of arguments presented through Swae can lead to more informed decisions, leading to better quality choices to select from that impact financial and organizational performance.

Swae is helping organizations across the world to solve today's problems and generate tomorrow's strategy. Our clients are finding that their greatest resource is their people, and Swae is proven to help get the best from the untapped potential within their workforce. We'd love the chance to show you how Swae can 'pay off' for you...

Ready to learn how Swae can help your organization?

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What is FOFO, the Fear of Finding Out?

We’ve all seen the meme of the ostrich with its head in the sand. And I’m sure you can recall someone in your life who behaves this way, not opening that piece of mail or asking the questions they know may bring unfavorable information, shielding themselves to temporarily preserve their ‘comfortable status quo’ or carefully crafted worldview.

And now cue today’s “Ostrich Effect”; “FOFO”, prevalent in so many organizations we see. Simply put, it’s the “Fear of Finding Out”, or the selective avoidance of negative information.

Could this cultural and psychological barrier be stopping your company from uncovering the hidden challenges that could derail your track to success?

Strong managers are listeners. Giving your team avenues to share problems and ideas can translate into change that matters

What is FOFO?

They say “out of sight, out of mind” but is that really true?

Similar to the Ostrich Effect, FOFO is the fear of finding out, or simply, the fear of knowing the truth. It is often used in the finance industry to describe customers afraid of opening their accounts due to the fear of poor financial health. According to a recent Barclays Bank study, 37% of Millennials had FOFO about their finances and did not like to check their bank accounts.” (R3 Consulting, Overcoming FOFO)

FOFO is also used in the medical field for those afraid to seek medical treatment and finding out they have a condition. Apparently, ‘Fear of Finding Out’ in the health industry makes up a 33% of conscious reasons why people don’t visit the doctor.

The research around FOFO from the medical industry shows that the ‘Fear of Finding Out’ mostly affects those who have an unhealthy lifestyle, and those who struggle to cope with the knowledge of a life-threatening illness. It can also impact those who do not want to be “pressured’ into making lifestyle changes.”

Fear is the foundation on which ‘Fear of Finding Out’ is built upon, and research shoes there are 3 main pillars:

• Fear of the initiating action – 45% of women and 37% of men found the difficulty making an appointment a key barrier
• Fear of the investigative process – 33% of adults who admitted that they had avoided a doctor visit that they deemed necessary citing ‘discomfort with a body examination’ as the primary reason
• Fear of outcomes and implications – one of the most widely endorsed barriers to consultation in regards to cancer was found to be the ‘worry about what the doctor might find’, which was true for 34% of men and 40% of women. Furthermore, between 12% and 55% of people who undergo testing for HIV fail to return to learn whether they are infected

(Source: Cision)

Whatever the origins of FOFO, we at Swae have observed this phenomenon to be deeply prevalent in decision-makers, and the parallels in our findings hold true across all industries and organization types. What we have found is an apprehension – or sometimes even inability – to hear the truth about the problems that persist in their organization and the associated negative impacts they might have on their company’s organizational health and performance, in order to avoid conflicts or disrupt their status quo.

We, at Swae, know organizations thrive and work better when leaders actively acknowledge potentially unpleasant information rather than run from it. We’ve partnered with numerous organizations to correct the detrimental outcomes that have come from simple “pure avoidance.”

To avoid potential disaster and confront FOFO, it is important to first understand where FOFO originates from, and why it’s allowed to persist. It is then possible to open up to the solutions to combat FOFO directly at a systems level in your workforce.
Why do leaders allow FOFO to persist inside organizations?

According to Michael Beer – Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School and author of “Fit to Compete: Why Honest Conversations About Your Company’s Capabilities are the Key to a Winning Strategy” – there are six reasons why leaders allow FOFO to persist inside organizations.
These ‘“silent killers”, as he calls them include:

1. Unclear strategy, values, and conflicting priorities.
2. An ineffective senior team.
3. Leadership behavior – top-down or laissez-faire (hands off).
4. Poor coordination across businesses, functions, or geographic regions.
5. Inadequate leadership/management skills and development in the organization.
6. Low capacity for honest, collective, and public conversations about external and internal reality.

Number 6, the low capacity for honest, collective, and public conversations about external and internal realities is closely related to how good a company is at making change happen (and stick).

If problems aren’t recognized and realities aren’t faced, then a company doesn’t have a sturdy foundation, and without a sturdy foundation how can you build a solid structure?

It’s not about whether you believe in collective intelligence or not. It’s about if you can afford not to listen to the early warning signs and delay action. Swae helps you avoid expensive mistakes and issues

From our experience at Swae, number 6 is the most important and telling factor because it closely correlates to, and in some cases has a causal relationship with, how good and fast a company is at making meaningful and structural change happen (and making change stick) to improve their situation.

We’ve spent the past 3 years deploying our idea management and decision-making platform into various organizations, cultures, and environments, working with leaders across the Globe. Through this, we’ve observed that FOFO is allowed to persist inside organizations because:

• Leaders don’t want hear the truth because they don’t want to take responsibility over solving it;
• Leaders already know the truth and can’t do anything about it (lack of scope or authority); or;
• Leaders afraid of the negative consequences and potential backlash to them from raising the truth or suggesting solutions to known problems

Furthermore, our research with these leaders and decision-makers have clearly shown that organizations that are more risk-averse, who operate under rigid and multi-tiered hierarchies are the most likely to suffer from FOFO at all layers of decision-making, particularly amongst upper and senior leadership. The characteristics and red-flags that come up time and time again include:

• Disregard for employee voice and/or feedback
• Tolerance towards a persisting unhealthy culture
• Resistance towards changing of structure or approach in the face of existential threats (new technologies, trends, cultural expectations, etc.)

What is the cost and risk of allowing problems and FOFO to linger?

Unfortunately, ignorance is not bliss.

FOFO can silently destroy a company before it even knows what’s happening. Leaders typically look at the health of the company when it comes to numbers like revenue and profit, but there are many other factors that fly under the radar. This can include measures like operational or infrastructure issues, the decline in the health of a company’s culture, marketing/sales issues that hinder growth, and more.

FOFO and The Ostrich effect can be a serious drawback to tackling costly problems in organizations. Because it’s so overwhelming to contemplate the severity and complexity and interrelationships of the issues, it’s often easier for decision-makers to just ignore them or reject their importance or downplay information that contradicts their more positive narrative.

Unaddressed FOFO is dangerous, as problems left to linger means organizations are actively eroding their foundation

How can you eliminate FOFO?

Now here’s an important question for you…

If you’ve read the above and still feel comfortable selectively avoiding hard realities and prefer not to embrace the ignorance is bliss mentality, then the next section is not for you.

But, if you want to confront the realities head on, then read on:

At the root of FOFO is the fear of having uncomfortable discussions and possibly constructive but tense disagreements about the realities that confront the organization. FOFO is about confronting the elephants in the room, and in some cases, shining a light on the real truth often to those with authority who may not want to hear it. The fears of doing this are real – the act of speaking up may have ripple effects and consequences on your standing, autonomy, and access to resources.

But, not speaking up usually means that you are prolonging the inevitable. More often than not, silence means that you’re risking your own future, your company’s future, and the future of colleagues you now call friends within your organization as a whole.

To tackle FOFO head on, you must value the potential positive outcomes and solutions that you might reveal more than the discomfort of the process of revealing the challenges. The positive consequences and results must outweigh both the discomfort of raising the issue and the pain of carrying around unresolved truths for a never ending period of time. That’s a heavy burden to carry.

How Swae can help?

The potentially devastating consequences of FOFO can be neutralized when leaders learn how to face the truth, even when it hurts.

Swae was designed to help leaders and employees create a “speak up” culture for everyone’s benefit, without making significant structural changes to how they manage the organization.

By implementing a technology platform like Swae, this enables an organization to source insights and ideas from more people more often, leaders can easily tap into the hidden problems that people are facing and open the funnel to discover winning and decision-ready solutions for solving issues — from the bottom-up.

Simply put, when more voices are heard, leaders see and know more, and they become empowered with new insights consistently. It’s becoming quite widely accepted that our best ideas and solutions can come from an organization’s people (regardless of hierarchy), the same few people don’t need to decide the fate of many.

If you feel your company suffers from FOFO, start by implementing any of these solutions above and you can start to correct your course. A path that’s unique for your people and for the purpose of your company.

If you want to overcome your FOFO, Swae is a turnkey solution that can give your employees a safe and streamlined way to express their feelings, raise problems and give you their best ideas. 

More to explore...

Suggested proposals for Improving CEWS and other relief programs

Based on part one in this series, we reviewed the fundamental issues with COVID-19 crisis relief programs, primarily looking at the Canadian relief programs CEBA and CEWS.

Recently, Soushiant Zanganehpour, CEO of Swae, was invited to provide his perspective alongside other startup Founders/CEOs on this topic to Canada’s Ministry of Innovation Science and Economic Development.

His commentary and recommendations, among the other startup founders present, were focused on the CEBA and CEWS relief programs specifically, and their ability to fit into the startup legal structures and operating circumstances.

3 Potential Solutions to Improve the Relief Programs

The following solutions were the recommended adjustments to the CEWS program to provide the right level of support to those that have been highly affected by the pandemic while supporting economic recovery:

Proposal 1: Redesign the CEWS eligibility criteria to include investment or debt alongside revenue

To help make the CEWS program compatible with how startups within the ICT sector are structured, it has been recommended that the revenue test for eligibility for the CEWS be reframed or expanded to include investments or debt accrued during that time. So, startups that were in the pre-revenue stage and are now in the post-revenue stage, they would be able to demonstrate how they lost financial opportunities resulting from COVID-19, and how they can take advantage of the CEWS specifically to not fall through the cracks.

If the test can reframe revenue to also recognize investment or debt as part of the revenue measure, then many would then be eligible and could benefit from this relief program to be able to survive.

At this time, other than taking on debt (with personal guarantees), without access to the CEWS wage subsidy program or other grants/investments, many like startups like us have a very limited runway to be able to get through this crisis. The fact of the matter is that B2B customers are not in a position to make buying decisions for at least 6–12 months and investors are not in a position to make high-risk investments when they’ve lost 40–60% of their own investment portfolios.

Proposal 2: Expand the range of relief programs beyond CEWS

Alongside Soushiant, there were five other startup Founders/CEOs that were invited to offer potential solutions to Canada’s Ministry of Innovation Science and Economic Development group. Together, they came up with the following list to help expand the programs available:

1. Businesses can be eligible to get government-backed credit at 0% to 2% interest over a fixed term. The maximum credit amount would be a percentage of the business’ expenses on the tax return for their most recent fiscal year-end and should be capped up to a maximum per company.
2. Businesses can choose to get money directly from their bank (similar to CEBA or BCAP), or as a credit or grant from the government directly (in this case, the Canadian government).
3. Business owners should not be required to provide a personal guarantee as is currently being required.
4. There shouldn’t be a strict revenue reduction qualifier. This introduces complex accounting overhead which has already caused confusion for all involved.
5. There shouldn’t be a strict requirement for it to be used for payroll or even credited against payroll accounts.
6. Special non-repayment incentives should be put in place when businesses use this credit to hire back or retain existing employees, hire new employees, or invest in R&D efforts.
7. Punishment should be extreme for abuse and fraud. Administering banks and grant administrators should be required to inform on the misuse of funds.

Proposal 3: Offer a matching investment facility for startups

(A proposed solution from Soushiant Zanganehpour)

This proposal relates to expanding the eligibility requirements of the BDC Capital Bridge Financing Program, to allow non-VC backed ventures to also access the investment facility.

Currently, the BDC Capital Bridge Financing Program only entertains funding requests if a deal is referred and already backed by a pre-qualified Canadian VC firm. If you are referred to this program by a VC firm General Partner (GP), you as the entrepreneur are out of luck (even if you have syndicated a group of accredited investors yourself and have already raised over the $500K threshold).

This financing program suffers from a fundamental flaw. Historically, over 90% of accredited Canadian VCs do not invest in very early-stage ventures (pre-seed, pre-revenue, or post-revenue) and typically concentrate their investments to ventures who are looking for Series A sized investment round and have Series A metrics and achievements to show ($150K+ MRR).

As a consequence, most startups who are backed by accredited angel investors will not be able to benefit from this bridge program, and the government will also not benefit from the potential upside of being involved in such deals at such an early stage.

This leaves a large gap to fill and a lot of high potential companies without access to resources to continue growing and derisking their ventures.

Soushiant recommended that access to the investment facility should be limited only to technology ventures backed by accredited Canadian VCs and ventures that can syndicate their own accredited investors. He recommended that the Government of Canada should offer a Matching Fund Facility through a Convertible Note, and if an entrepreneur or venture is able to syndicate a set of accredited Canadian investors to commit a minimum of $250K or above, they could benefit from this matching funding facility.

Expanding the scope of this facility or building something complementary has multiple benefits:

• It allows other accredited professionals to lead a round, allowing the government to take advantage of the diligence already done on the venture by professionals;
• It allows thousands of other startups to benefit from funding in a risk-adjusted manner
• It may provide additional assurance to accredited investors to invest more in the ICT sector during this particularly challenging time
• It helps the government benefit from any financial upside experienced by promising early-stage companies, as they are involved through a convertible note, not a wage subsidy or through a grant.

Are you a startup or small business facing this same challenge and are concerned about your ability to survive like we are? If so, what are your thoughts on this? We want to hear from you [click here]!