Built here. Building here.
How businesses of every size — two people or two thousand — make a difference where they are. In their own words.
- Any size
- From sole traders to national employers
- Any sector
- Nine industries and counting
- Free
- No fee, ever, to be featured
Every business is built somewhere. Some build back.
A business is rarely just a business. It is a first job for someone's kid, a supplier that pays on time, a room lent out on a Tuesday evening, a decision to hire locally when it would have been cheaper not to. Almost none of that shows up on a balance sheet, and almost none of it gets written down.
Built Here is where we write it down. We profile businesses across Canada — any size, any sector — and publish how they make a difference in the place they operate. The business tells the story. We do the listening, the drafting and the publishing.
These are accounts, not findings
Built Here profiles are single stories, told by the people in them. They sit alongside our research reports, which carry methods and confidence ratings, but they are a different kind of evidence and we label them that way on purpose.
We are looking for the specific, not the impressive.
A good Built Here story usually has a decision in it — a moment where the easy option and the local option were different things.
Who got a chance
A first job, a return to work, an apprenticeship, a hire that a résumé screen would have rejected.
Where the money goes
Buying locally, paying suppliers quickly, or keeping a contract in the region when offshore was cheaper.
Who can get in
Physical access, plain language, flexible hours — the changes that let more people become customers or staff.
What got shared
Training, mentoring, or handing over know-how instead of holding it — including to people who might compete with you.
What got kept open
A space, a service, a route, a tradition that would have gone without the business deciding otherwise.
What went wrong
The thing you tried that did not work. These are often the most useful stories we publish, and we will not edit them out.
The stories
1 publishedThe first profile is below. More are in progress — if you know a business that should be here, nominate them.
Image: Two colleagues in conversation at a workplace.
Kanata Business Drivers
A technology and training firm that designs itself to be leavable — and what that choice does for the small organizations it works with.
Read the storyThis space is for you
We publish profiles as they are ready, and we are actively looking for businesses outside technology — trades, retail, care, agriculture, hospitality.
Nominate a businessFour steps, and you approve the piece before it goes live.
- 01
Nominate
Put a business forward — your own or someone else's. A few sentences is enough to start.
- 02
Conversation
If it is a fit, we talk for about an hour. No preparation needed and no forms to fill in beforehand.
- 03
Draft
We write it and send it to you. You correct anything wrong and cut anything you would rather not say.
- 04
Publish
It goes live here under Creative Commons BY 4.0, and you are free to republish it anywhere you like.
How we choose, and what it costs
Nothing. There is no fee to be featured and no way to pay for a place — if that ever changes we will say so on this page. We select for the specificity of the story, not the size of the business, and we deliberately look for businesses that would not otherwise get written about. Where a featured business is also a CometX client, the profile says so plainly.
Six businesses from one sector, then what they have in common.
Single stories are single stories. Run six from the same sector and a pattern becomes visible — one we can describe honestly without pretending one account is evidence.
Trades and construction
Apprenticeships, local supply, and what happens to a crew when the work dries up. Seeking six businesses.
Care and community services
Staffing, retention, and the decisions that keep a service open in a place that would otherwise lose it.
Retail and hospitality on a main street
What a business gives a street, and what happens to the street without it.
Rural and agricultural
Distance, connectivity, and keeping skilled work in a small community.
Technology and professional services
Hiring locally when remote would be cheaper, and handing knowledge on.
A short synthesis
Each series closes with a brief drawing out what the six had in common — clearly labelled as a pattern across six accounts, not a finding.
Tell us what you built here.
Nominate your own business or one you admire. If you are nominating someone else, we will approach them — nobody is written about without agreeing to it first.
- No fee, and no obligation to continue after the first conversation.
- You see the draft and approve it before anything is published.
- Any size, any sector, anywhere in Canada.