BCBusiness

July/August 2021 - The Top 100

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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K A T I E F O R S Y T H + C L A I R E M C L O U G H L I N AGES: 28 + 26 Co-founders + co-owners, Friendly Composting LIFE STORY: Becoming room- mates in Kamloops soon after meet- ing through recreational volleyball, Katie Forsyth and Claire McLoughlin realized that their adoptive city lacked a program for diverting food scraps and other organic waste from the landfill. So Ladner-raised Forsyth and Campbell River native McLoughlin decided to start one out of their apartment, each putting down $500 to buy their first recycled compost bins. The pair launched Friendly Com- posting just as B.C. went into COVID lockdown, but their timing was right: with homebound Kamloopsians cooking more than usual, the busi- ness grew quickly. "We built pretty much our whole program off our social media channels and word of mouth," says Forsyth, who's earning a bachelor of general studies in education from SFU and previously did education and advocacy work for the Heart and Stroke Founda- tion. Now completing a master's in environmental economics and management at Thompson Rivers University, McLoughlin spent a couple of years as an associate with an investment firm. Friendly Composting, which offers subscriptions online, visits residential and commercial custom- ers once a week to swap full bins for clean ones. "These people are paying to have their organics taken away because they care," Forsyth says. To turn food scraps into soil, the company works with two farms, in Kamloops and Salmon Arm. Last summer, it added a delivery service offering bread, eggs, vegetables and meat from local producers. BOTTOM LINE : As of early June, Friendly Composting served 615 homes and 16 businesses, hauling away 3,000 kilograms of organics each week. The business also had 24 food delivery partners it promotes on social media. "We're telling their stories firsthand," Forsyth says. She and McLoughlin, who employ one full-time staff member, will have about a dozen part-time workers this summer. "If we can scale this up," Forsyth reckons, "we're hoping to implement it in rural communities or small towns or cities that don't have municipal programs." –N.R. N I S H A L K U M A R AGE: 29 Founder + CEO No Days Wasted LIFE STORY: Nishal Kumar was pushed into studying medicine in university by his love for the TV program House and its eponymous foul-mouthed genius of a doctor. But it wasn't to be–after three years in chemistry and biology at UBC, the West Vancouverite decided to switch to a geophysics major with a minor in commerce. Shortly after school, Kumar spent time at a couple of com- panies, including working as one of Tesla's first Canadian employees, and created his first venture, a coathanger for electric vehicles. He scaled that up to a six-figure business that "mostly runs itself these days," he says. Kumar used some of the pro- ceeds from that venture to shift his focus back to the health realm with Vancouver-based supplement maker No Days Wasted and its hero prod- uct, DHM Detox, which is designed to reduce the effect of hangovers. BOTTOM LINE: With help from celebrity endorsements by the likes of hockey player-turned-podcaster Paul Bissonnette and Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver and Abbots- ford native Chase Claypool, No Days Wasted and its seven employees hit seven figures in sales in 2020. Kumar also appeared on Dragons' Den late that year. Although one of the judges called him a "snake oil salesman," he scored a deal with Dragon Michele Romanow. Perhaps Dr. House said it best: "If nobody hates you, you're doing it wrong." –N.C. H A Y D E N J A M E S + J O S H B A K E R AGES: 28 + 26 Co-founder + CEO Co-founder + CTO Fraction Technologies LIFE STORY: After Hayden James and Josh Baker met through a mutual friend four years ago, they started working on an idea to build a Hootsuite-type social media automation business for independent professionals and entrepreneurs. Their startup was housed in the Vancouver office of U.S. conglomer- ate Century 21 Real Estate on nights and weekends. There, they quickly learned about about the residential property industry from realtors who would come and go. "Our question was, How do you bridge this gap between homeown- ers who have a lot of equity but don't necessarily qualify for traditional credit products and can't or don't want to make monthly payments, and these investors that want access to the residential real estate market?" James asks. The answer, it turns out, was a debt product whose interest rate is based on a home's appreciation and gives owners access to $1.5 million in equity. "It acts like equity, but it's structured like debt, so it's cheaper than it would be other- wise," explains James of Fraction's Appreciation Mortgage. "It's a very Vancouver story. I don't know many other places this could have been 44 BCBUSINESS JULY/AUGUST 2021 FROM TOP: SEBASTIAN GREAVES (@BASHLOCREATIVE); NATALIE SKY PHOTOGRAPHY 3 0 U N D E R T H I R T Y Nishal Kumar Claire McLoughlin (left) and Katie Forsyth

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