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👩🏻 Top insight to share from me, Co-Founder Weiting

The brain behind the product and engineering of Openroom is Vishal Bollu, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer.

Vishal is also my real life partner. We met in high school.

After that, Vishal went to the University of Waterloo for Software Engineering.

During University days, Vishal did his rounds of co-op at companies large and small, in the US and in Canada.

Then he decided that big corporate wasn’t for him. So he worked for startups over the last decade. Just before Openroom, he led the engineering team at a cybersecurity firm and it got acquired in early 2024.

During the last decade together, Vishal and I always spoke about building a company together. We were waiting for the right problem to solve, the right time, the right solution, and evaluating whether we were the right people to solve it.

We encountered a bad tenancy experience ourselves. We ended up learning so much from it that we knew we had to share with the world.

Building for a transparent and connected rental ecosystem comes with heavy responsibility.

And this happened:

Just kidding - it wasn’t Openroom. It happened in University. Perhaps he studied too hard.

The AI note taking tool we’re sharing about today might have helped Vishal in his school or work meetings by automatically taking notes for him. Maybe.

Regardless of the reason for his cranial landscape change, the pressure to make sure we build Openroom right weighed heavily on him.

Now what?

The Ministry of Public and Business Services Delivery and Procurement (MPBSDP) of Ontario has been assessing both our Financial Credit Reporting into the Credit Bureau (for Rental Debt and Rent Rewards) and Court Order Search Engine over the last year to ensure we are in compliance with the Consumer Reporting Act.

The Result?

We’ve officially got our registration certification on Wednesday, July 9, 2025 as a Consumer Reporting Agency!

Vishal feels relieved knowing that Openroom is here to stay.

And, we absolutely could not have done this without you. You are the ‘connected’ part to our vision towards a transparent and connected rental ecosystem.

We are continuing forward to hold people accountable for their actions.

Log in to your Openroom.ca account to find out some of the changes that we’ve made in precision, memory, and intent of use across the site to ensure you can continue to use Openroom for a long long time.

🎁 Share your win with us, get rewarded!

I must admit, looking at tenancy disputes every single day is exhausting.

That’s why we celebrate wins every week - the big ones and the small ones.

We’d love to hear your top win for the week at work or in life (small or large) and put together a ‘community wins’ collage for the next newsletter.

Reply back to this email!

• Celebrated a birthday?

• Got a promotion at work?

• Got money back from rental debt?

• Kiddo took their first steps?

Oh yes, everyone who responds back will be put into a basket for random giveaway draws this upcoming Wednesday from Canadian small businesses we admire.

• Frank’s Place - French & Italian fusion breakfast, lunch, dinner in Vaughan

• Rentals.ca - helps renters find apartments, houses, and condos for rent across Canada.

• SingleKey - helps housing providers screen tenants, collect rent, and protect income with rent guarantees

• Haletale - white-label property management system designed for growing portfolios, which is fully customizable and seamless integration with existing tools

• Rent Panda - tenant placement and property management services across Ontario

Thank you all for continuing to be part of this journey with us.

Let’s keep on moving forward.

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. search registry, report rental debt, impact credit history).

We also educate about rental housing, and we advocate for a more transparent and connected rental ecosystem - working with government and industry groups to support both responsible housing providers and residents.