a canadian startup

Well.ca Accepts New Friends

A Look Back

A year ago, I went to my first Internet conference, mesh 2007. I had to save up to pay for the admission ticket. I had a plan and an idea, but still no business cards. I had, just that day, registered a new domain: Well.ca. I designed the logo (still used today) on my laptop during a talk by Mark Evans. Over my BlackBerry, during a break in the conference, I emailed back a new graduate applying for a job — that was Chris, our first software developer.

In our first days of operation, we literally hand-filled-out postage labels to ship to our customers, and, carrying towers of boxes, I walked them over to the local post office. It’s exactly one year later — the mesh conference is about to take place again, and we’ve grown from 2 employees to what will be 9 by the end of this month. We no longer hand-write postage labels, but we still write hand-written notes to every one of the thousands of new customers that have bought from our site.

Thank you for your orders, we mean it.

We have the nicest staff working at Well.ca, and together as a team, we’ve done something that, a year ago, people told me couldn’t be done. As new entrants into this very established market, we’ve managed to build a store with more choice than an average brick-and-mortar drugstore.

How do you build an online drugstore from scratch, carry 10,000 different products (and figure out software to manage them all), have $3 shipping anywhere in Canada, and do all of this while still maintaining what I believe to be the most genuine, friendly customer service in the world? We figured out a way.

In the last 12 months, Well.ca was mentioned in several national newspapers, we have customers in every single province and territory (with an unexpected, but strong following in Nunavut). We’ve had to build and rebuild our shipping system 4 times to handle the growth.

A New Investment

I am proud to say that we have just gathered a group of new friends, and accepted a new investment from Jim Estill, CEO of Synnex Canada, along with the Maple Leaf Angels. To my knowledge, this is the largest investment the Maple Leaf Angels have made to date.

A link to the press release is here.

Who are these investors? And what’s in store for Well.ca? Well let me tell you a bit now, and hopefully more later.

Who are these Investors?

Jim Estill is the CEO of Synnex Canada. Jim’s is one of Canada’s biggest entrepreneurial success stories, and his office is just down the street from us. A graduate of the same engineering school that I attended, Waterloo, Jim’s story is well known in our city — starting from selling computer parts from the back of a truck to what is now one of North America’s largest computer distributors. But beyond his entrepreneurial accolades (and something you will see in each of our hand-picked investors), is that Jim Estill is a great guy. He’s been a supporter of Well.ca for a long time now, and from the very first day I met him in his office, he’s been a trusted advisor.

On the Maple Leaf Angel side, we have a group of some of the best names from Toronto’s tech Angel community. Colin Webster is joining our board — he is behind some of the big startups you’ve heard in Toronto: Truition, First Coverage, and many more. He’s caring, he’s smart, and I consider him a true friend. All of the men and women joining Well.ca as investors today are warm, good hearted people with integrity. They are also all successful members of the Canadian business world, and Well.ca will benefit from their experience and advice. We’re proud to call them all friends.

We’ve had a great experience working with the Maple Leaf Angels (MLA), especially Rob Koturbash, the Managing Director. The MLA is a great asset to the Canadian startup community.

What’s in Store for Well.ca?

Although we’ve achieved a lot in the last year, in our minds, we haven’t built half of what we dream for the site.

We have some exciting new technologies under wraps that we can’t wait to release. We have great plans for making our site more enjoyable to shop at.

You can bet we’re hunting down new products, constantly improving our software, and have a few fun plans in store for the future.

Truly, though, we’re not planning on changing our approach. We’ve always had one way of building things at our company: we listen to our customers and build what they ask for. We’re going to keep doing that.

And as you can imagine, we’re hiring.

If you’re ever in Guelph, come visit us any time.

Thank you to our new friend-vestors, Suzanne Dingwall-Williams (best lawyer ever), and our families and loved ones that supported us before anyone else.