Hi all Hope my experience with Canada Startups can help somebody make a well informed decision with their business venture. I registered for the service in March of 2024 - 7 months ago today. Had given up on the funding to be honest. Started a trucking logistics business earlier this year but didn't plan out my costs well. Needed help and government funding seemed to be what was hot and recommended. I contacted Canada Startups mainly because I kept seeing them at all the business trade shows, my accountant recommended them and then I heard a bak manager talk about it so gave it a shot. What they sold me was too good to be true. All seemed perfect to be honest. Why would somebody want to give me money I though, but the guy Noah told me there are multiple grants for exactly what I needed. Too good to be true? I called back a few days after, spoke with a Sally - who told me even more good things. Seems it changed for the better! Registered, got set up and started Business plan took me a week. Wasn't hard and their guy Justin was super great with the simplification of things. Financials werent my thing and I kept getting in the negative haha like my business. Anyways, their guys helped and made Jr very clear. They told me to design a pitch. Which I thought was weird as who wants to see a presentation about my logistics business. I mean, I am aiming not asking for a shark tank guy here. Did it. A bit of a struggle as it's not my strongest point, the design work. They did share a presentation template so that helped. Now, it got frustrating for me as they kept going back and forth and when I though I was done, there was another step. Clarified and explained and my bad. Real simple steps. The full process of the above was done in 2 weeks. The search they said will take a week and right on At the end of the month, I did it all. Options that came back were very surprising. 12 loan programs of which 7 were government, 2 government backed programs and 4 were private, I assumed lenders. Report has 6 grants in there. My guy told me to apply to all grants first and helped me with the first 2 applications. Got the hang of it and in a weekend a few hours, did it all. Now next full month was spent literally sitting on my a**. Waiting. I think I bothered these guys a dozen times about it as I wasn't getting any feedback. End of April came around and I was contacted - got the $1500 grant. This was nice as it covered my initial costs and a bit of marketing. That was it. May came around and nothing. I truly gave up thinking I was right - why would anyone help? I was told to do more searches, to try a few new grants so I did that as well. Hoping. I didn't wanna take a loan out at this time. At least not yet. July - my expert contacted me and said to apply for a 20k grant that just came in I applied right away. August - still nothing Now - September is when it started to get real interesting. It was one call after another by agency. Seems they all woke up and called at the same time lol. Back and forth on a few calls. Send this, give me that, tell me more..etc I worked with my expert on this as they gave me direction as to what to do and say - as well fixed up some of my financial reports too. End of September, I was told I am approved for 3 programs - that was on the 27th. About 3 weeks since, money recieved. $5,000 grant for my communications set up. $20,000 grant for my operating costs (most) $7,800 grant for student help( a new hire) Plus the $1500 start of summer grant. All in all - about 35k in grant money. Justin also notified me a week ago about new options, so currently awaiting that as well. Service turned out to be quite elaborate and extremely helpful for the 500$ fee Turned my expectations around quite a bit. Justin and the team, I can't express how thankful I am to you your support and push