Canadian Tech That Can Transform Your Marketing

May 15, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Hi,

Welcome to this week's edition of Built in Canada! We're all about empowering Canadian entrepreneurs, and what better way to do that than by showcasing innovative, new homegrown tools that can help you scale your business.

This week, we're shifting our spotlight from big Canadian companies to smaller SaaS providers that offer compelling alternatives to well-known international players.

Choosing Canadian not only means you're getting fantastic products, but you're also investing back into our vibrant tech ecosystem.

🕵 Our Favourite Finds

  • The first ever minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation(CTVNews)

  • Amilia (Montreal) just banked $35 million to speed up product-led growth (SaaSNews)

  • Canadian venture capital deals plummet to 5-year low (The Logic)

  • An all-Canadian EV aims to revolutionize industry (National Observer)

🏎️ Fast Summary #1 – post bridge

Think Buffer or Sprout Social, pared down and priced sanely. With post bridge, you can publish across all major platforms—LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, and more—in just one click.

No more copy-pasting or endless logins. Schedule your content for peak engagement, customize posts for each platform, and even craft viral-ready videos with easy-to-use studio templates.

🔍 Why it’s cool

  • Channel-based pricing.

  • It’s cheap and useful. Starts at $9/month

  • No-nonsense UI: founders rave about getting a week of posts queued in 30 minutes.

  • Indie DNA: The founder, Canadian Jack Friks, built the tool for his own app-marketing hustle, tweeted a screenshot, and hit 1 K likes. Validation in real time.

📈 Quick hits

  • Users: 6,200 (free + paid); 7,000+ accounts connected.

  • Growth: all organic. One-man show on X, Threads, and Reddit.

  • Stack: Next.js on Vercel, Cloudflare R2 for media storage (per founder AMA).

🧭 Why watch

With Meta’s content APIs tightening and X rate-limits changing weekly, lightweight schedulers that adapt overnight offer a serious edge—especially when the founder answers bug reports at 2 a.m. PST.

🏎️ Fast Summary #2 – Refract

Refract is an AI “ad engine” that turns a single idea into hundreds of platform-ready video ads in about a minute—complete with scripts, avatars, captions, and 30-language voice-overs. Pricing starts at $20/month

🔍 Why it’s cool

  • Speed vs. agencies: one click instead of weeks of creator wrangling.

  • Cost: <$1 per video beats the $100–$5 K typical range.

  • Unlimited variants: perfect for A/B (or A-to-Z) testing.

  • Built by a Waterloo-trained solo founder who previously shipped Magic UI, so the design polish shows.

📈 Quick hits

  • Tech: Next.js front-end, custom diffusion/video models on GPU-cloud (per founder threads).

  • Early users: indie DTC brands and small agencies testing 50–100 ad combos per week.

🧭 Why watch

UGC fatigue is real, paid-social CPMs are creeping up, and fast-moving creative is the new moat. Refract lets lean teams iterate like the big spenders—without agency retainers.

🌯 That’s a Wrap

  • Got a Canadian startup you’d like us to feature? Submit it here.

  • Forward this email to a fellow founder who could use a fresh tool.

Have a great day, eh!

Built in Canada Team