My First Pay Check

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

I both came to Canada very young in the early 2000s. My dad spoke broken English with a heavy Chinese accent, but I didn’t know a word of English and neither did my mom.

I watched my parents push me in a second-hand trolley in the midst of winter snow to visit a friend. In the Chinese culture, I was told the goal was to chase a good job, work hard, buy a house, and stay out of trouble.

So I did that. The “safe” thing. The corporate 9-to-5 was very comfortable.

I climbed the ladder as a software product manager working for companies in EdTech, RegTech, and InsurTech. I led teams of product managers and product designers, and worked alongside engineers. I sat with everyone from front-line sales to executives to walk through the multi-million dollar projects my bosses trusted me with.

Darn, I got paid well.

But, something fundamentally changed in me when I got into a tenancy dispute. It cost me $35,000 in unpaid rent.

🙅🏻‍♀️ It was never just about the money.

What hit harder than the money was realizing how little protection there is when things go wrong. How difficult it is to get help, find information, or even be heard. How powerless you feel, even when you’re right.

Warren Buffett and Sheryl Sandberg’s wisdom has taught me that one of the most important decisions you’ll make is who you marry. Of course, given that you choose to marry.

I am fortunate to have Vishal Bollu - who happens to be my Co-Founder and the Chief Technology Officer at Openroom.

Neither of us grew up with entrepreneurial parents who had money, connections, or even the luxury of dreaming big. Our parents worked to survive.

Starting your own business? That was crazy talk.

Risky. Reckless. Not something people like us did.

Ah well, we did it anyway.

We started Openroom.ca while we were on parental leave for Baby #1. Alternating shifts to care for baby and working on a personal project kept our brains active.

No investors. No salaries. No guarantees.

Just a quiet commitment to build something that should’ve existed already.

💰 What about the finances?

What people don’t see are the sacrifices that entrepreneurs make.

And for the first 502 days after I resigned from my job to build Openroom with Vishal, I didn’t take home a single dollar.

Nothing.

We bootstrapped everything. Burned savings. Hyper disciplined spending.

On July 15, 2025, I received my very first pay check from Openroom.

I have to tell you, earning minimum wage felt so good.

Vishal and I took a moment to celebrate this win by treating ourselves to an ice capp from Timmies.

In a world that celebrates instant wins, there’s another version that people watching don’t see.

Over the last 7 months, I’ve personally:

• Had 1,429 unique conversations with Openroom members through phone and/or text;

• Responded to over 5,000 emails and inquiries into Openroom; and

• Met thousands of you at events both virtual and in-person across Canada whether I’m speaking or simply attending.

These are not stats to brag about. But it’s just a reminder that I see you, hear you, and take this seriously.

You're counting on us to do this right, and that’s what we’re doing.

Some of you might remember when we launched Openroom anonymously. Then we made the decision to put a face to what we’re building.

Naturally, taking a stand and becoming visible brings criticism. This newsletter has grown to 27,000 readers in just 18 months, and the critics have only gotten louder.

Some will resort to intimidation, harassment, and pressure tactics in an attempt to silence us and push us to shut down.

But this is exactly where we thrive.

Pressure doesn’t break us - it sharpens our focus.

What if there’s another way? I invite critics to have a real dialogue together to be part of the solution to the housing crisis.

As our beloved community members, if you hear something that sounds off, don’t just take it at face value. Check your sources. Or better yet, check in with us. We said we’d build Openroom with you in public, and we meant it.

☎️ Call from my dad

My dad called me on Thursday night, he said “You know, you can stop anytime.”

And he’s right. I could stop. I could walk away.

I could go back to corporate life and get time off to go on vacations.

Vacations where I would be drawing cartoons in my notebook, sipping margaritas on a beach in the Caribbean, and devouring book after book where no one is threatening my safety.

That life still exists. But it’s not the life I want - not while there’s still this much work left to do.

And yes, there are far easier things to build than this. No one starts a company in this space for fun. This is messy. Housing is personal. Rent debt is messy. Emotions run high.

Everyone has a story.

There are landlords who’ve lost everything. Tenants who’ve been wronged. Children who’ve been harmed. Seniors who gave up on ever recovering their rent. These aren’t just records in our database, they’re stories I carry every day.

Vishal and I check in every quarter to ensure we are solving the right problem, with the right solution, at the right time, and most importantly if we’re still the right people to solve it.

The answers to all is still a resounding YES.

We know this company inside-out, we dream the vision towards transparency in the rental ecosystem, and we know our names may continue to get dragged through the mud.

That’s fine because we didn’t come here to be liked by the bad actors in the rental ecosystem we are holding accountable.

We came here to change how the game is played.

To our SuperFans who were with us starting Day 1 in 2022 and to those who just heard about us: thank you for supporting us. Please keep being loud, and please keep holding Vishal and I accountable for our actions too.

👉 We are legal. We are compliant. We are credible.

That’s not marketing language but it’s how we run our business every single day, because we cannot afford not to. We chose this path willingly and we’re committed to walking it properly, even when it’s uphill.

Openroom has become a movement bigger than the two of us as Co-Founders. I know that success for us as a connected community will come sacrifices. I also know that we can’t lose if we don’t give up.

We built this with you, not just for you.

Giving tenants power to hold their landlords accountable for rental debt? It’s coming.

Indicating rental debt has been cleared as people change over time? We heard you.

Let’s go.

Reply back and share your thoughts with me. I read every email and I try my best to respond back too.

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 delinquencies and 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 - working with government and industry groups to support both responsible housing providers and residents.