Bizy

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  Launch Roadmap

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  Business Viability

My parents came to Canada with ambition, skills, and a dream to build something of their own. They never did — not because they lacked the drive, but because the system was impossible to navigate without knowing the language, without knowing which forms to file, which licenses to get, or which government office to even call first. They were excluded from entrepreneurship not by ability, but by access. That story isn't unique. Canada welcomes over 500,000 newcomers every year, and a disproportionate number arrive with entrepreneurial backgrounds — yet small business formation among recent immigrants remains dramatically below the national average. The barrier isn't ambition. It's the wall of regulatory complexity that greets anyone who doesn't already know how the system works. Canada's entrepreneurship rate is declining. GDP growth is stalling. And the people most motivated to build — newcomers, first-generation Canadians, people who left everything behind for a better life — are the ones most systematically locked out. bizy was built for my parents. And for every person who is exactly like them.

What It Does: bizy is an AI-powered co-founder platform that removes every logistical barrier between a Canadian newcomer and their first business. In under 60 seconds, bizy:

Validates your idea — runs an AI viability scan that scores your business concept against real Statistics Canada survival data, market density, and competition in your specific city Builds your roadmap — generates a personalised, step-by-step launch checklist based on your business type and province, with direct links to every form and application Navigates compliance — surfaces every CRA form, provincial license, and HR requirement relevant to your exact situation, explained in plain language Finds your funding — matches you to federal and provincial grants you actually qualify for, with AI-generated explanations of why each one fits Launches your storefront — generates a live Reactiv-powered App Clip so you can take your first order before you leave the room Speaks your language — every feature, every AI response, every form label is available in 12 languages including Hindi, Punjabi, Arabic, Tagalog, Urdu, and French

How We Built It: bizy was built in 36 hours at Hack Canada 2026 at the SPUR Innovation Centre in Waterloo. Stack:

Next.js 14 (App Router) + TypeScript — full-stack framework Gemini 1.5 Flash — AI engine powering viability scans, roadmap generation, grant matching, and the conversational co-founder chat Auth0 — authentication Tailwind CSS + shadcn/ui — UI component system

The architecture centres on one core principle: every feature is personalised to who you are, where you are, and what you're building. The province, business type, budget, and language selected on day one flows through every API call, every Gemini prompt, and every piece of content the user sees. The multilingual system was built from scratch using React Context — no external i18n library. It supports 12 languages and critically, AI responses are returned in the user's selected language, not just UI labels. A Punjabi-speaking founder gets their viability scan results, roadmap steps, and grant descriptions all in Punjabi. The compliance data was curated by hand — cross-referencing CRA, provincial ministry sites, and Statistics Canada tables — because no unified Canadian government API exists.

Challenges We Ran Into The data problem. Canadian government data is scattered across federal, provincial, and municipal sources with no unified API. We manually curated datasets for CRA forms, provincial licenses, and grant programs across all 13 provinces and territories. The compliance complexity alone is staggering:

Making AI feel like a co-founder, not a chatbot. Early Gemini responses felt like Wikipedia articles. The breakthrough was aggressive prompt engineering — injecting the user's full business profile, location, stage, and language into every single API call and explicitly grounding the model in Canadian regulatory context. Translation at depth. Translating a UI is easy. Translating everything — dynamically generated AI content, form validation errors, empty states, toast notifications, animated text sequences — required auditing every string in the codebase and building a context propagation system that ensured no hardcoded English string survived. Scope versus time. bizy has twelve features. Shipping all of them demo-ready in 36 hours required brutal prioritisation and parallel workstreams — one person on AI and backend, one on the landing page, one on the dashboard and feature pages, all merging without conflicts.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

The multilingual AI pipeline — not just translating the UI, but having Gemini return viability scans, roadmap steps, and grant descriptions natively in the user's language. A Hindi-speaking founder gets a fully Hindi experience end to end. The viability scan — a genuinely useful tool that gives first-time founders honest, data-grounded signal about whether their idea will survive, before they spend a dollar. Reactiv storefront generation — watching a founder go from zero to a live, scannable mobile storefront in under 60 seconds is the most satisfying demo moment we've ever shipped. The personal story behind it — building something that would have actually helped our own families is an accomplishment that goes beyond the code. Shipping twelve features in 36 hours without the product feeling unfinished — every screen that exists in bizy works.

What We Learned We learned that the hardest problems in this space aren't technical — they're empathy problems. Understanding what a newcomer actually feels when they open a CRA webpage for the first time completely changed how we designed every screen. Clarity is a feature. Plain language is a feature. Showing someone their viability score as a single number instead of a wall of text is a feature. We learned how powerful AI becomes when it's given the right context. Generic prompts produce generic answers. Grounded, profile-aware, province-specific prompts produce advice that feels like it came from someone who actually knows your situation. We learned that multilingual support is an equity issue, not a nice-to-have. Canada is one of the most linguistically diverse countries on earth. Building software that only works for English speakers is a choice — and it's the wrong one. And we learned that the best hackathon projects aren't the ones with the most features. They're the ones that make a judge feel something. bizy has a reason to exist that goes beyond the weekend.

What's Next for Bizy The 36-hour prototype is just the beginning. The roadmap for bizy post-hackathon: Immediate (30-day follow-up build):

Real financial data input for the analytics dashboard — connecting to Wave or QuickBooks for live bookkeeping Expanded grant database with deadline tracking and application status Tax deadline calendar with CRA reminders via email/SMS Accountant and lawyer referral network for when professional advice is genuinely needed

Short term:

Mobile app — the entire bizy experience optimised for a phone, since most newcomers interact with the internet primarily on mobile Expanded Reactiv storefront with full Shopify product catalog integration, push notifications, and order management Partnership with IRCC and Settlement.Org to reach newcomers at the point of arrival — before they give up on the idea

Long term:

bizy Pro — a subscription tier for established small businesses with advanced analytics, benchmarking, and AI-powered financial forecasting bizy for Advisors — a white-label version for settlement agencies, BDC advisors, and immigrant support organisations to use with their clients Expansion beyond Canada — the same model applies to any country with complex SMB regulatory environments

The mission doesn't change: no one should be excluded from building a business because of language, bureaucracy, or not knowing what they don't know. bizy — your first Canadian co-founder.

Built With

• auth0
• eslint
• gemini
• lucidereact
• next.js
• postcss/autoprefixer
• radixui
• react
• tailwind
• tailwind-merge
• tailwindcss-animate
• typescript