While running a tech solutions agency, Connor Turland and Pegah Vaezi, a husband-and-wife team, became frustrated with bookkeeping options.
“Our vision is to be the powerhouse, the power plant for the Canadian digital economy.”
— Connor Turland, Ceedar
“All the software we tried … was made for accountants, not business owners,” Vaezi explained to BetaKit. “We decided to be the solution.”
Now, Vaezi is the chief product officer at Ceedar, an AI-powered bookkeeping software platform marketed as “the last bookkeeper you’ll need to hire.” Together with CEO Turland, Vaezi secured $200,000 USD ($275,000 CAD) in funding from Metalab Ventures in Vancouver and converted several customers into angel investors.
Established in 2023 in Victoria, BC, Ceedar claims to automate bookkeeping, simplifying financial reporting, maximizing tax deductions, offering weekly insights, and ensuring compliance with Canadian tax laws. It integrates smoothly with existing tech stacks, pulling payment data from Stripe and expense data from business banking platforms like Wise and Venn.
An investor’s interest in Ceedar sparked thanks to BC-based entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson, founder of tech-focused holding company Tiny. Wilkinson linked Ceedar with Metalab, a technological design firm he started in 2006, which now invests in product-focused startups via a $15-million USD venture fund.
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“Bookkeeping remains heavily dependent on administrative labor and outdated legacy software,” Metalab Ventures general partner David Tapp told BetaKit. “Early signals [to Ceedar] in user feedback and retention were incredibly strong.”
Mark Nichols, founder of digital consultancy Tamaribuchi and the third employee at Metalab, was a Ceedar customer who decided to invest after seeing the product’s potential for new entrepreneurs.
“What this new wave of entrepreneurs really need is a set of tools to make the process of getting a business started less daunting,” Nichols shared with BetaKit. “Ceedar is amazing because it alleviates that stress so thoroughly and without much time.”
Other customers turned investors include Shawn Adrian and Gavin Vickery, co-founders of software agency InputLogic. Those early adopters have already pushed Ceedar into profitability, the founders claim. Though Turland and Vaezi didn’t disclose revenue figures, they reported Ceedar experienced 70-percent month-over-month revenue growth in Q1.
Ceedar operates in a competitive market brimming with AI-powered accounting tools for enterprises, alongside competitors like Una Software and large companies such as Intuit’s Quickbooks. The sector has seen some firms struggling to reach profitability and others facing insolvency.
This was the case with Vancouver’s Bench, a bookkeeping tech scaleup primarily serving startups and small businesses. In December, the firm abruptly shut down after reportedly having its venture debt called in by a bank, but it was acquired days later by Employer.com, which reinstated over half of Bench’s team. Bench had previously raised over $100 million in funding but was reportedly burning cash almost to insolvency.
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Turland is optimistic Ceedar can succeed where Bench struggled by integrating generative AI into its product from the outset, an advantage not available to companies founded before OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022.
“There was basically no way to scale without humans,” Turland stated. “There weren’t algorithms suitable for solving the kinds of human problems that you deal with in bookkeeping.”
Turland and Vaezi have developed an in-house AI agent that they claim can replace the work of software engineers—an approach reflecting an industry trend of reduced hiring as firms shift to AI tools for cost-cutting. According to an analysis by financial data firm Carta, the average team size of North American FinTech startups dropped from 7.2 employees in 2022 to 5.3 in 2024. Ceedar currently operates with a four-person team.
Turland added that Ceedar will maintain a narrow focus on its first customer niche: digital service-based businesses, such as agencies and consultancies, to perfect its product, build a base of long-term customers, and remain profitable.
Though Ceedar’s product is currently only available in Canada, the startup plans to expand into the American market soon.
“Our vision is to be the powerhouse, the power plant for the Canadian digital economy,” Turland reiterated.
Feature image courtesy of Ceedar.