Education is a right, not a privilege. CEO & Founder, @Passagehq
Toronto
Joined October 2014
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Martin Basiri retweeted
Now available: ChatGPT for Financial Services.
This is a tailored ChatGPT Work experience that combines built-in financial data with GPT-6 Astra’s reasoning.
Teams can develop research, build financial models, and create customized client materials.
openai.com/index/introducing…
Martin Basiri retweeted
Almost half of US unicorns were founded by first-generation immigrants.
The chart is from my earlier research on the topic (I should update it — and will), but the point stands: immigrants have an outsized impact on US innovation.
At the time, 65 countries had produced at least one US unicorn founder. I'm sure the count is higher now.
Martin Basiri retweeted
A first for a Canadian university - The University of Waterloo lands top 10 spot in global ranking for producing entrepreneurs kitchener.citynews.ca/2026/0…
Martin Basiri retweeted
Someone very close to me had a heart attack last week. The only reason he's alive today is that a defibrillator was nearby.
He's OK. But it was a wake up call.
We're now looking to get an AED for our home. If you have one you love, or know this space well, I'd be grateful for recommendations.
Martin Basiri retweeted
The US is shutting the door on H-1B's with huge spikes to application costs.
That uncertainty is our opportunity.
We can welcome the world's best talent and make strides to retain our homegrown innovators.
Read from @MartinBasiri & @mserbinis: buildcanada.com/memos/h-1b & buildcanada.com/memos/win-ta…
Martin Basiri retweeted
Today we’ve raised $52M Seed and we are announcing the public launch of S2.1 Pro.
>It can clone a voice from 5 seconds of audio
>2x faster than Cartesia & 1/6th the cost of Eleven Labs
>most expressive model with word level control over emotion, intonation, pacing etc
We support frontier AI companies including HeyGen, LiveKit, Retell, Sanas, and OpenArt all run our model in production.
If you're a business and we can't cut your voice AI costs by 50%, we'll give you 1 year of Fish Audio for free.
Book a demo: s.fish.audio/tmapke
To celebrate our first birthday, we'll give you 1 month of S2.1 Pro for free. Like, retweet, and comment “Fish” to get it.
Run to support: A challenge to create opportunity : Make a donation today to support Run to support: A challenge to create opportunity runtorelocate.com/donate #run-to-support-a-challenge-to-create-opportunity via @raisely
Martin Basiri retweeted
Alright, y’all know me as the immigration policy ranter but how I got so invested in the subject is more interesting.
Back in 2022, I started a rather popular immigration platform. Fun, crazy, exhausting ride. And now I’m looking for ways out… so any help would be great!
Some backstory about my startup - Immitracker. It was a child of multiple products:
1) MyImmiTracker - an existing immigration application data crowdsourcing tool (I've used it in the past myself)
2) My old startup VisaWire (connecting immigrants to relevant employment / settlement services)
3) Some early support from Bright Immigration (my cofounders business)
Predominantly a consumer product for Canada (and a bit of Australia) with lots of potential! People found out about us organically. All word of mouth. Not a single penny spent on marketing.
On average we got:
1) ~1K users registering monthly
2) 9K+ members currently in our whatsapp community
3) Thousands of cases spread across various trackers
Our users love the platform and our community is flourishing!
Any player interested in entering or dominating the Canadian immigration space would find this product invaluable. It's sticky. Very lean and efficient. Many immigrants now recognize both me and the brand we built over the years!
But not having any external funding or sizeable income can only go on for so long. We’ve bootstrapped since day one. Surviving on subscription fees, small grants, our own finances, and the partnership contracts we signed with reputable service providers.
And as the main operator (my cofounder checked out a long time ago, rip), I'm spread too thin. I’m the company’s lifeblood and keeping it going alone has become truly unsustainable.
So I'm asking for support - if you know anyone in the immigration space interested in an acquisition opportunity or exclusive partnership, please send them my way.
I genuinely do not want to shut Immitracker down. Immigrants deserve to have transparency and honest guidance in their application process. And in these confusing times, that’s what we do best
Martin Basiri retweeted
Happy 50th birthday CN Tower.
The tower that made Toronto. The greatest monument to Canadian ambition.
Martin Basiri retweeted
* Correct quote is “politically left” not socialist. Point stands. Entrepreneurs take potential and turn it into value that’s added to the global GDP. They capture a small amount of that value in the process which is a big part of the incentive. The rest goes to others, employees, shareholders, government, suppliers etc.
You can always criticize them. You can always criticize the redistribution efforts. But you should always remember that without them, there is very little new value enters society and that locks everyone in zero sum competition, sometimes war.
Entrepreneurs are load bearing for human thriving. It’s a glorious act to put yourself out there and build a company that provides good and services to everyone. And Elon is the best entrepreneur that ever was. You don’t have to like him, and sure he’s crazy, but otherwise he wouldn’t do crazy things. Same coin, two sides.
Martin Basiri retweeted
You don’t have to love Elon Musk to recognize what this headline says about us.
A country that spends more time criticizing wealth creation than encouraging it sends a clear message to builders: your success is tolerated, not celebrated.
Canada should be the best place in the world to build ambitious companies. Headlines like this make us look like we’re not quite ready for that.
Martin Basiri retweeted
Today, @GetKoho announced $130M in new capital at a $1.33B valuation.
We’re very happy to welcome Mubadala, Savano Capital, @tobi, CEO, Founder of Shopify, and Michael Linford, COO of Affirm, to the KOHO story. We’re also grateful for the continued support of Drive Capital, Portage Ventures, Eldridge, BDC Capital, and HOOPP.
One of my favourite things about KOHO is that the only way we win is if millions of Canadians choose us. We cannot out-spend or out-market. We have to out-build. The progress we have made reflects the progress our users have made.
So, while we feel very proud of what’s behind us, we’re much more humbled by what’s in front of us. With this capital, we’ve earned the right to keep building on our promise to users. That job remains monumental, and we’re very honoured that we get to do the work.
I want to thank the team for their incredible work these past few years. The world doesn’t yet know how talented, smart and kind the KOHO Collective is - but they will.
I want to thank our investors for their continued trust and support. We’re lucky to have partners who recognize and support the need to take the longer view here.
More than anything, I want to thank our users. We’ve come a long way with much farther to go. We’ll keep earning your trust every damn day.
Back to work 🔥
Martin Basiri retweeted
TD Economics reports that grads from highly ranked universities have the lowest retention rates in 🇨🇦, particularly in the first five years after graduation.
Earlier this year, we hit the UofT campus to ask students:
"Do you plan on staying in Canada after you graduate?"
TD Economics' new report contains stark warning about Canada’s "silent brain drain"
"The core challenge is not in attracting world-class talent, but in anchoring that talent within its borders to build, scale, and lead globally competitive firms at home. Absent progress on this front, Canada will continue to be a feeder system for the U.S. innovation economy"
According to TD, Canada's "demotivating personal taxes" and "labyrinthine business taxes" are big contributors to the problem
economics.td.com/ca-silent-b…
Martin Basiri retweeted
An exceptional discussion between Tom Jenkins and John Stackhouse on Agentic AI, enterprise transformation, data sovereignty, and the urgent need for Canada to step up. Big shout out as well to Shannon Bell, who co-author the book entitled the Agentic AI Genome for Canada who will continue this important conversation at the @Empire_Club launch of COU’s AI Task Force Report on May 29. #AI #AgenticAI @MartinBasiri @StackhouseJohn @OpenText @OntUniv empireclubofcanada.com/event…
