Borderless AI’s Make It Click podcast continues its series of conversations with Canadian tech leaders with a founder story rooted on Vancouver Island.
In Episode 7, host Willson Cross sits down with Andrew McLeod, co-founder and CEO of Certn, for a conversation about building one of Canada’s standout technology companies from an idea dreamed up during a surf trip in Tofino.
Certn has grown into a global background screening business with hundreds of employees and more than $100 million raised. Under McLeod’s leadership, the Victoria-based company has also earned significant recognition, including placing second in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 in Canada and 24th in the North American Technology Fast 500.
The episode looks back at Certn’s nine-year journey, from early prototypes and design partners to a business serving customers around the world. McLeod shares how the company evolved through multiple pivots, why founders should find the customer before building the product, and what it takes to compete in a crowded market.
For Canada’s tech talent ecosystem, the conversation offers a useful look at how globally ambitious companies can be built from outside the country’s largest tech hubs. Certn’s story is not simply about raising capital or scaling headcount. It is about customer discovery, resilience, hiring, leadership, and the transition from scrappy founder to disciplined operator.
McLeod and Cross also get into the less polished realities of company building. That includes raising the first dollar of venture capital, choosing investors who will be constructive around the table, hiring senior leaders, and learning how to lead through hard conversations.
One of the episode’s strongest themes is leadership. McLeod discusses why being kind does not always mean being nice, why CEOs need to give difficult feedback, and why the most useful feedback is often the hardest to hear. For founders and executives, those lessons are especially relevant as companies scale beyond the early team and require more structure, accountability, and operational discipline.
The conversation also touches on building a global company from Canada, work-life integration as a founder, and the balance between grit and luck. As McLeod’s journey shows, the “overnight success” story is rarely overnight. Certn’s growth was shaped over nearly a decade of pivots, persistence, and hard decisions.
As with other episodes of Make It Click, the conversation is especially relevant for founders, operators, HR leaders, and talent teams interested in how Canadian technology companies are built from the inside. McLeod’s perspective offers a candid reminder that scaling a company is as much about people and leadership as it is about product and capital.
Watch the full episode of Make It Click below.
Borderless AI is a sponsor of Techtalent.ca. Through its Make It Click series, the company is spotlighting conversations with technology leaders about company building, talent, AI, and the future of work.