A year ago, Optiml launched. Back then we had zero customers. Today the landscape looks very different. From building Canada's tax engine province by province and territory by territory, to creating a community of DIY financial planners, here's the story of our first year.

The Early Days

The first challenge wasn't finding customers or building a front end. It was tackling Canada's tax system.

There was no playbook. We had to build a tax engine for every province and territory, going through CRA codes line by line, interpreting, modeling, and testing. Progress was slow and at times it felt impossible. But over time, step by step, the foundation took shape.

Once the tax engine was in place, progress accelerated. The front end began to take shape and we started building the optimization algorithm, the foundation of Optiml. The ability to optimize a financial plan, not just follow a set deposit or withdrawal order, but run the numbers and develop an optimized plan. That first MVP gave us momentum.

From Basement to Boardroom

The physical journey of building Optiml tells its own story. We started in my basement, hunched over laptops, debugging tax calculations and wrestling with provincial regulations. It was cramped, it was humble, but it was where the foundation was laid.

As the team grew, we leveled up to my uncle's dining room table. More space, better light, and the kind of family support that can't be measured. That dining room became our unofficial headquarters, where we refined the product, ran our first pilot, and took hundreds of discovery calls that shaped our understanding of what users really needed.

This year, we finally moved into our own office. Real desks, whiteboards on every wall, and a space that actually feels like the home of a growing fintech company. It's a small milestone that represents something much bigger: the transition from scrappy startup to sustainable business.

Support and Validation

The ecosystem around us propelled us forward. Volta, CDL Atlantic, Invest Nova Scotia, ACOA, and IRAP provided mentorship, funding, and accountability. In larger hubs, startups compete for every inch of attention. In Atlantic Canada we found the opposite. Mentors, founders, and researchers stepped in to guide us on the idea we were determined to build, even when the path was unclear.

That support carried us to our pilot in January 2024, when we launched with 200 users across Canada. It validated the pain points we were solving, highlighted the capabilities users wanted in a DIY planning tool, and gave us critical feedback. We spent the summer refining the MVP before our official launch in September.

There is a saying, "ship at 80 percent." The product will never be perfect, so ship and refine from there. We launched, and we learned. Hundreds of discovery calls helped us focus on what mattered most and shaped the roadmap.

A Community Forms

As we grew, an unexpected subculture emerged. DIY financial planners who had been using spreadsheets, custom calculators, and scripts to manage their own retirement plans found a home in Optiml.

From subreddit threads where strangers helped each other before our team could reply, to emails from people saying "I just told my boss I'm retiring this year," it became clear that Optiml was more than software. It was a community with real impact.

Building Alongside AI

Optiml started before AI went mainstream. I remember the first time we used ChatGPT, it was for drafting emails. Months later it could write code. Now it is built into Optiml itself, powering personalized insights across an entire financial plan.

The change has been transformative. What once took five people six months can now be done by one person in two weeks. AI has given us speed to test, pivot, and adapt faster than most early-stage companies ever could.

Year One Achievements

This first year has been about building steadily while moving fast. We have rolled out new features week after week, and the pace has become expected. Our most recent milestone is an in-app AI that interprets and understands a user's entire financial plan, providing advanced insights and answering questions about their own numbers.

Over 45,000 financial plans have been run. Growth is steady, retention is increasing, and the platform is stronger every month.

The market has shifted quickly and AI is reshaping expectations. Yet the fundamentals remain the same. Listen carefully, build deliberately, and focus on solving problems that matter.