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1 Million Small Businesses
4 of 10 businesses close in 5 years
Weiting Bollu
November 09, 2025
In partnership with
Good morning / 早上好 / Bonjour / ਸ਼ੁਭ ਸਵੇਰ / Buen día friend!
In this Openroom Co-Founder Newsletter: Small businesses, Openroom’s Rewards Network, Beehiiv Winter Event, and Bill 60.
Also brought to you by our partners at:
Zensurance - Business insurance. Protects business owners from losses due to unforeseen events that may occur during day-to-day business operations, including third-party property damage, errors, or bodily injuries. Learn more.
Zensurance - Landlord Insurance. If you’re a housing provider, get a free quote to protect your rental property from damage, loss of rental income, and liability claims. Learn more.
You’re on this journey with us to build for a transparent and connected rental ecosystem.
A connected world to us means we can share knowledge, expertise, and services with one another.
My Sales Coach, Eric Janssen, said to me: “when you’ve got something so good, then it’s an obligation to make sure it is known to the world. YOU are responsible to make it known.”
But who tends to keep their head down and just get the work done? Who rarely promotes themselves? Who are the unsung heroes behind every thriving neighbourhood?
Small business owners.
A small business is defined with 1 to 99 paid employees.
In 2023, Small businesses made up 92.1% of all employer businesses in Canada. They employed over 10.3 million individuals or 63.8% of the total labour force.
ISED counted 1,074,939 small businesses in their 2024 report (source: Key Small Business Statistics, ISED Canada).
At Openroom, we’re a small business that started operations with 2 employees. i.e. Co-Founder Vishal and myself.
The good news is that 62.5% of businesses that started operations with 4 or less employees were still active after 5 years. and, the bad news is that nearly 4 out of 10 businesses close shop.
Openroom is on year 3.
Of businesses that began operations with 1‒4 employees, 62.5% were still active after 5 years (T+5), 44.3% were still active after 10 years (T+10), and 24.6% were still active after 20 years (T+20), compared with businesses that began operations with a workforce of 20‒99 employees, of which 74.5% were still active after 5 years (T+5), 55.6% were still active after 10 years (T+10) and 34.5% were still active after 20 years (T+20). Source: Small Business Statistics, ISED Canada
In the past, I used to think: “if what we have is so good, customers will naturally come!”
Wrong.
This past year, my team started working with small business owners in Canada - giving them an additional avenue to shine and a little boost to outlive the odds.
But more importantly, to make sure what they’ve built is known to more people today than yesterday.
From restaurants to e-commerce to property management teams - we walked the plazas where renters reside and also where housing providers had their multi-plex and rental homes.
We’ve personally purchased over $25K of goods and services this summer from small businesses like Lumina Bistro (Formerly Frank’s Restaurant), Eatable Gourmet Popcorn, King’s Nail Spa, Chef Won’s Kitchen, Dream Studio, Abstract Studios, and Claymoo.
🎁 Welcome to the Openroom Rewards Network!
Retail and commercial businesses can join in to promote their business to >500K Canadians a year who use Openroom. Think of us like an affiliate partner.
The best part? It’s free of charge.
A call for your help 👇
Openroom is looking for 101 businesses across Canada that have products or services to sell to every day people like you and me (e.g. families, students, seniors, couples) before the end of the 2025 year.
This is your invitation to join the Openroom Rewards Network.
Think about your friend, colleague, or relative - they may own a business!
Perhaps it’s actually your own business. Perhaps it’s your commercial tenants. Whether it’s 3D printing, t-shirt making, food catering, tree pruning - we want to share it with our Openroom community members.
Please extend this invitation to them to join the Rewards Network.
As you gather for the holidays coming up, share this newsletter with them so they can reach more people today than yesterday. The odds against a small business are real - let’s help each other thrive.
☀️ What Else is Interesting?
Openroom uses a service called Beehiiv for our newsletters. Many of you reading this may have your own newsletters or marketing emails (i.e. real estate agents, mortgage brokers, property management firms, small businesses).
Check this out:
The Future of the Content Economy
beehiiv started with newsletters. Now, they’re reimagining the entire content economy.
On November 13, beehiiv’s biggest updates ever are dropping at the Winter Release Event.
For the people shaping the next generation of content, community, and media, this is an event you won’t want to miss.
ps. I’m a supporter of Bill 60, Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025. It’s being debated at Queen’s Park (Ontario) right now.
Out of 325 poll votes from the Openroom Co-Founder’s newsletter on October 25: Over 75% of you responded with “Love It”. Roughly 17% “Hate it”. The rest 8% “don’t understand it”, “don’t care”, or “didn’t read it”. Thanks for your honesty everyone!
I deeply believe it will bring a more fair and transparent rental ecosystem to the great tenants and great housing providers. Bill 60 is going into 3rd Reading in a couple of weeks. After that, it goes to ‘Royal Assent’ at which point implementation begins.
If you oppose it and my views, I encourage you not to unsubscribe to this newsletter yet. I will absolutely write more about the reasons why I support Bill 60 in future volumes of this newsletter so we can digest what’s happening and learn together.
Have questions, suggestions, comments, opinions?
Reply back to this email and I’ll try my best to respond.
Weiting Bollu
Mom, Rental Housing Provider, Rental Housing Advocate, Educator, and Openroom Co-Founder & CEO
What does my team at Openroom do?
At Openroom, we aggregate tenancy court orders across Canada, extract information from them, and put it to public use (e.g. public record search for tenant screening, rental debt reporting to Equifax, legal research for all, reduce delinquency risk while renters get to build credit).
We also educate about rental housing, provide free resources, and we advocate for a more transparent and connected rental ecosystem to support both responsible housing providers and residents.
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