Episode Overview

Brianna Blaney believes money is a leading barrier to innovation and entrepreneurship, especially for women and equity-seeking groups. As an experienced founder, Brianna has lived this pain. Brianna co-founded Pocketed to level the playing field, helping Canadian businesses easily access over $5.9B annually in free government money including grants, tax credits, and other business incentives. To date, more than 8,000 companies have used Pocketed to apply for over $80M in government funding. Together with her team, Brianna is on a mission to eliminate barriers for businesses. Brianna is recognized as an Emerging Leader by The Peak and 30 Under 30 by BC Business.

Aria Hahn is passionate about data and believes that combined with intelligent statistical and computational technologies, data hold the answers to many burgeoning questions facing multiple industries today. Aria has built tech to solve technical challenges for multiple industries and is now helping to scale technology for Pocketed, a company focused on democratizing access to over $5.9B annually in grant funding in Canada. Since 2021, Pocketed has been named a 2021 ‘Emerging Rocket (ICT)’, featured in The Globe & Mail, interviewed by CBC Radio, and recognized as a Fast Growing BC Business by The Peak. 

Hundreds of entrepreneurs said “it’s hard to find the right grant funding program and it’s even more painful to apply”. This is what inspired Brianna and Aria to start Pocketed.

In this week’s episode of the #StartupCanadaPodcast, sponsored by Mastercard and Scotiabank, we dive into grant funding, co-founder relationships, and navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship. 

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