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AI Meal Scanning Startup Scales Rapidly

You need a strong concept, and something that’s realistic that you can actually execute, and are capable of.

Andrew Shore is a Toronto-based entrepreneur and founder of Amino, an AI-powered nutrition platform that helps people better understand what they’re eating by simply scanning their meals with their phone. He would be a great guest for the Canada’s Entrepreneur podcast.

Since launching in September 2025, the platform has grown quickly, surpassing 100,000 users and more than 2 million meals scanned, with over 30,000 meals currently being analyzed each day. Amino uses AI image recognition to identify foods and estimate nutritional values instantly, removing the need for manual food logging and making nutrition tracking easier for everyday consumers.

Andrew has a background building consumer technology platforms across gaming, blockchain, and AI, and is focused on building tools that help people make better daily health decisions.


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He Left Corporate for a “Marketing Isekai”

“This is a must for any entrepreneur who’s ever wondered if there’s more to business than KPIs.”

Suneel Mistry is a Toronto-based marketing leader who made an unconventional career move — he stepped away from a corporate marketing role at HSB Canada (a Munich Re subsidiary) to do a 6-month sabbatical placement through Cuso International with the Protected Areas Trust in Guyana.

As a Communications Specialist, he worked on capacity building for conservation in the Caribbean, using modern marketing and storytelling tools to drive environmental awareness in resource-constrained environments. He even traveled to Chile for the RedLAC Congress (the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Environmental Funds).

He calls the experience his “Marketing Isekai” — borrowing from the Japanese anime genre where a character is transported to a completely different world. For Suneel, that world was the rainforests and protected areas of Guyana, where his corporate marketing skills had to adapt to entirely different realities.

He studied Communication Studies at York University, founded Studio Two Seven in 2017 as a creative media platform, and has photographed across Colombia, England, Guyana, Mexico, New York, and Toronto. He’s also a cinephile and Star Wars enthusiast.


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How Great Entrepreneurs Build Things That Last

“When you meet another entrepreneur, it’s like finding a special friend.”

Taylor Beech believes progress in business and life comes down to disciplined execution, applied consistently over time. For more than 25 years, he worked at the intersection of performance, systems, and growth — starting as a personal trainer, then translating that operating discipline into entrepreneurship and real estate development. Today, he is focused on building Dominion Crate Works, an industrial packaging company serving manufacturers that require export-grade, military-spec, and mission-critical crating. His work is grounded in fundamentals: clear processes, reliable execution, and long-term value creation. Alongside this, he mentors and coaches men in their second act through Second Wind, helping them rebuild energy, clarity, and internal leadership so they can execute at a higher level in business and life. The common thread in everything he does is simple: turning intent into action and building things that last.


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Opportunity-driven retirement entrepreneurship

At a time when more Canadians are rethinking what retirement looks like, lifelong sailors and retired brand builders Sian Roberts and Kevin Dunal offer a compelling second-act founder story.

While living aboard a 95-year-old Dutch barge in the Netherlands, the couple encountered a problem familiar to many downsizing consumers: traditional cookware simply wasn’t designed for tight, modern living. Their search led them to nesto by Cook Vision, a German-engineered nesting cookware system that reduces storage needs by up to 50 per cent without compromising performance or durability.

With more than 50 years of combined experience launching and scaling brands across North America, Roberts and Dunal quickly recognized a broader market opportunity, particularly as Canadians move into smaller homes and prioritize longer-lasting household investments. Though officially retired, they made the deliberate decision to return to entrepreneurship, leading nesto’s expansion into Canada.

Today, they are building the brand around a system-based, “buy better, buy once” philosophy, positioning nesto as a premium alternative to cluttered cookware sets, and a case study in opportunity-driven retirement entrepreneurship.


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Putting a delicious spin on the ancient digestive tonic Kombucha

Zoey Shamai, founder of Tonica Kombucha, which is celebrating 20 years in business this March.

Zoey founded Tonica in 2006 as the first commercially available kombucha brand in Canada, helping introduce and build a category that is now firmly established in grocery + specialty retail nationwide. With no outside investment and no formal business training, she grew the company from small-batch brewing within Toronto’s yoga community into a national brand now available in more than 2,500 stores.

Under her leadership, Tonica became a recognized Canadian success story, including a memorable appearance on Dragon’s Den, further cementing the brand’s profile and credibility as it scaled. As a former yoga teacher with a deep interest in health and fermentation, Zoey built Tonica around traditional brewing methods, ingredient integrity, and long-term thinking.

Today, Tonica operates out of its own certified organic and HACCP production facility in Ontario and offers a diverse portfolio of bottled and canned kombucha flavours. Zoey remains the sole owner of the business, overseeing production, distribution, and brand strategy – an increasingly rare model in today’s consolidated CPG landscape.


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The Billion-Dollar Lesson in Being Different

Come into any situation with a clear idea of what you can contribute, and what you would like to get out of it.

Michael Shapiro is a cultural entrepreneur, author, and language enthusiast passionate about reviving ancient Jewish traditions through modern innovation. He’s spent my life embracing what others might call “personal weirdness” and turning it into something extraordinary.

He’s always been fascinated by languages, alphabets, and the meaning of words. At age twelve, he took a Hebrew calligraphy class and in high school, he was the Hebrew language valedictorian.

After earning his MBA from the University of Michigan, he spent two years in Brand Management at Procter & Gamble, but the corporate world felt too narrow for his creative spirit. In December 1994, he left P&G and flew to Israel to study at the Pardes Institute. By June 1995, he met his first Ketubah (artistic Jewish marriage contract) artist. In 1996, he registered Ketubah.com. What he had envisioned as one product line for a gallery soon became his entire focus online.

Nearly three decades later, Ketubah.com has become the largest Ketubah publisher on the planet, featuring 75+ leading artists and 900+ fine art limited edition designs. Michael has created HebrewNamer.com, a platform helping people discover the meaning and proper spelling of their Hebrew names. Last year, a major Jewish Publisher (JPS) published “Ketubah Renaissance”, a coffee table book about this ancient tradition’s modern revival. And he’s about to launch “Doing Jewish Today” an e-magazine for Jewish, interfaith and LGBTQ+ couples and families interesting in connecting with Jewish traditions on their own terms.

As someone who speaks multiple languages and reads 6-7 alphabets (and is aiming for 10!), he believes deeply in embracing what makes you unique. Whether you’re a “Jewish day school nerd” or have your own passion, he encourages everyone to lean into their personal weirdness—it might just become your greatest strength!


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Scaling a business idea into a success story

Dylan Munro is co-founder of Spot & Tango, a fast-growing U.S. based direct-to-consumer dog food company, which launched in Canada in March. Canada is the brand’s first international expansion and is being led by co-founder Munro, a Toronto native who is bringing the brand he helped build in the U.S., back home.

The move reflects both the growing appetite among Canadian pet owners for premium, human-grade nutrition and Dylan’s personal desire to introduce the product to his own family, friends, and fellow Canadians.

Spot & Tango delivers human-grade, vet-developed dog food through a subscription model, including its best-selling FreshDry™️ “UnKibble,” which combines the nutritional integrity of fresh food with the convenience of dry. The company has served more than 100 million meals in the U.S. and is now adapting its operations specifically for Canadian pet parents.


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He Monetized Fandom Before Anyone Else

Nathen Mazri, who I interviewed 4 years ago is a fandom-driven entrepreneur. Widely known for breaking the internet through iconic licensing ventures that include Garfield Eats and Scooby-Doo. His work has been featured in over 500 global media outlets and has generated more than 50 million impressions, and he’s built a passionate community of about 500,000 fans and fanvestors.

Nathan is the founder of EGEEZ, creator of the world’s EGEEZ Cloud, an algorithmic verification marketplace connecting fans directly to verified licenses that brings transparency and counterfeit protection to the $70 billion global licensing industry. The platform earned a Government of Canada SHRED and will debut its beta at Bridge. He also coined Egeezment, a brand new category of real estate that merges entertainment IPs with sophisticated living.

  • Through EGEEZ, he represents IP giants like Mr. Bean, The Smurfs, Emoji and others to build the world’s first IP-themed residential developments, a new category beyond hotels and theme parks.
  • He’s also the author of Arabiolosis, and founder of EGEEZ Academy, and is currently filming a documentary drama about his extraordinary entrepreneurial journey for release in 2026.

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How Ethical Brands Win at Global Scale

A compelling story not just about what they built, but how they built it as partners in life and in business, balancing vision, execution, and accountability at the highest level.

Isaac Langleben and Jacqueline Prehogan recognized that the global food system is broken, and pet food, often overlooked, is one of its most powerful drivers of change. Their entrepreneurial vision emerged from a search for better nutrition for their rescue dog, revealing a deeper insight: pet food sits at the intersection of global agriculture, animal welfare, and consumer trust, yet is shaped by opaque supply chains and inconsistent welfare standards. Isaac and Jacqueline saw this disconnect as both a responsibility and an opportunity to challenge industry norms and build a business aligned with nutrition, animal welfare, ethical sourcing, and transparency at scale.

Founded in 2014, Open Farm develops premium pet nutrition with thoughtfully sourced ingredients. The company pioneered ingredient traceability, enabling pet parents to see where every ingredient originates, while holding partners to rigorous third-party animal welfare and sustainability standards. As Chief Executive Officer, Isaac provides the operational discipline and systems thinking required to scale a values-led global supply chain, while Jacqueline, as Chief Brand Officer, shapes Open Farm’s purpose-driven culture and consumer trust.

Today, Open Farm feeds more than a quarter of a million pets annually and is sold direct-to-consumer and via 8,500 global retail locations. As a Certified B Corporation and one of the fastest-growing brands in the category, Open Farm demonstrates that transparency and ethics are not constraints on growth, but drivers of long-term value. Through their leadership, Isaac and Isaac are reshaping expectations within pet food and influencing how responsible food systems are built for the future. They have recently been recognized as EY Entrepreneur of the Year Canada 2025 winners.

Isaac and Jacqueline’s entrepreneurial achievements have driven them to become the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Canada winners. This is a terrific achievement, and we look forward to them representing Canada in the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™️ Awards in Monaco.


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Why Mentorship is Non-Negotiable for Leaders

David Pisarek combines progressive and comprehensive digital operations expertise with needs assessments, streamlining, and hands-on collaborative leadership to every project to ensure sound solutions that meet customer requirements, capture the competitive edge, and drive growth. His ultimate goal is to drive meaningful change by helping non-profits leverage digital solutions. He is also an accomplished podcast host at Wow Digital Podcast. This is a great listen for everyone but especially those in the not-for-profit sector.


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