For investors
Investing on
Buy equity in a Canadian company or supply business financing with scheduled weekly repayment. Start from $100, review the published facts, and make your own decision.
Explore offerings- $100
- minimum investment
- $0
- Backers investor fees
- In trust
- until the raise closes
- 2 business days
- withdrawal window
Five steps from review to confirmation
Backers operates under National Instrument 45-110, Canada’s start-up crowdfunding framework. The flow keeps the offering document, required acknowledgements, funding status, and withdrawal window visible while you make your decision.
- Step 1
Review the offering
Every company publishes an offering document covering what it does, what the money is for, and what could go wrong. Backers gives you access before you can invest.
- Step 2
Sign the acknowledgement
You confirm you understand the risks — that you could lose everything and that nobody has reviewed the offering for you. It sounds stark because it is meant to.
- Step 3
Invest from $100
Up to $2,500 per offering, so a raise is built from many people rather than a few. Backers charges investors nothing.
- Step 4
Money goes to trust
Not to the company, and not to us. A designated trust account at a Canadian financial institution holds it until the raise succeeds — or returns it if it doesn’t.
- Step 5
Two days to change your mind
After you subscribe you can withdraw within two business days, no reason needed, full refund from trust. If the offering amends its document, you get a fresh two days.
Two ways to invest: ownership or scheduled repayment.
Both start at $100 and follow the same investment process. Equity gives you a stake in a company with no repayment schedule. Business financing has a fixed term and scheduled weekly repayments. The decision is yours: Backers does not provide investment advice.
Equity
You own part of the company
You buy a piece of a startup and you keep it. There is no repayment schedule and no interest — your investment does well if the company does, over years, and is worth nothing if it fails. This is the long game: backing a founder before the rest of the country has heard the name, with a stake to show for it.
- • Money comes back only if the company grows, is sold, or lists
- • No market to sell on — expect to hold indefinitely
- • The upside is not capped; the downside is everything you put in
- • Many launch through Backers Live — watch them pitch, and invest during the broadcast
Business financing
You supply business financing, repaid weekly
An established Canadian business borrows $25,000–$500,000 for one, three, six, or twelve months, and you fund a slice of it. The rate is fixed and printed on the note — 12.99% to 17.99% annualized, set by Backers’ assessment of the business, not by negotiation. Repayment starts about a week after funding: every week, principal plus interest lands back while the business performs, collected from the business by pre-authorized debit and passed to investors in proportion to what each put in.
- • Cash is scheduled to flow back from week one — not at exit, not at maturity
- • The rate on each note reflects its assessed risk band
- • Each listing states its term, security and any personal guarantee
- • Fixed rate ≠ guaranteed: a business can default, and you can lose money
| Equity | Business financing | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Part ownership of the company | A fixed claim to repayment with interest |
| When money comes back | If and when the company succeeds — years, or never | Weekly, starting about a week after funding |
| How much | Uncapped if it works; zero if it fails | The stated rate — 12.99% to 17.99% annualized — if the business repays |
| What can go wrong | The company fails and the shares are worth nothing | The business defaults and repayments stop, with some or all principal lost |
| How long | Indefinite — no market to sell on | One, three, six, or twelve months |
| Who it is | Mostly earlier-stage companies with a story | Trading businesses with revenue we could assess |
How they work — not which is better. That judgement is yours.
Writing more than one cheque
The $2,500 cap isn’t a ceiling on you. It’s the shape of the asset.
The law caps every investor — individual or institution — at $2,500 per offering ($10,000 where a registered dealer has advised suitability). So on this platform, size has exactly one direction: breadth. Ten notes is $25,000 working. A hundred notes is $250,000 — a book of one-hundred small, uniform, weekly-amortizing positions instead of one large one.
And it is a book that moves. A performing three-month note returns principal weekly and is gone in twelve weeks — the same dollar can fund three or four notes a year. Each position states its rate at purchase, amortizes from week one, and never asks you to wait for an exit. Granular units, short duration, weekly cash, stated rates: that is the structure. What it is worth to you is your call.
When a note defaults, the machinery is already built. The debit is re-presented; the note accelerates to principal plus accrued interest; the default is reported to a commercial credit bureau; and the receivable is pursued like any commercial debt — including, where it makes sense, being sold to a collections buyer — where a buyer exists — so investors may recover a portion in cash rather than waiting on a lawsuit. Repayments already made stay made: on a weekly amortizer, a mid-term default puts roughly half the principal at risk rather than all of it — and an earlier default risks more. Recoveries reduce losses; nothing makes them zero.
The assessment exists to keep the default column low before any of that is needed: pre-revenue businesses cannot borrow here at all, coverage is measured before a rate is offered, and the rate itself prices the band. What no one can show you yet is a loss history — the book is new, and we would rather say so than imply a track record we do not have.
Bactoring note example
Weekly repayment changes how the cash moves.
Notes amortize every week. Returned principal can be put back to work after you choose a matching note and complete that offering's investment steps.
- Money in
- $2,500
- One 3-month note at 14.99%, paid over 12 weeks
- about $2,547
- Same money kept fully deployed for one year
- about $2,904
- Illustrative increase over the year
- about $404
The same arithmetic at scale
- Starting capital
- $250,000
- After one fully deployed year
- about $290,367
- Starting capital
- $1,000,000
- After one fully deployed year
- about $1,161,468
The $2,500 purchaser limit applies per offering. Larger allocations therefore span many separate notes and depend on enough qualifying offerings being available.
Arithmetic only, not a projection or expected return. It assumes every payment is made, every weekly repayment is immediately redeployed at 14.99%, enough matching notes are available, and no cash sits idle. Defaults and idle cash reduce realized returns and can cause loss of principal. Backers does not assess suitability or recommend investments.
Backers Live
The first pitch show where the audience doesn’t vote. It invests.
Three days each show, up to ten companies selected on readiness compete on a live broadcast. When a selected company also has an approved open offering, investors can open it from the broadcast. Selection for the show allocates attention, never merit: it is not a view on any company as an investment. You watch a founder take live questions, open any published offering, read the document, and decide whether to invest. The same rules apply as anywhere else on the platform: the document, the acknowledgement, the trust account, and the two days to change your mind.
Read this part twice
You can lose everything
Startups fail more often than they succeed, and a business that borrowed can default. Nothing on this platform is guaranteed, insured, or backstopped by anyone. Invest only what you can afford to lose entirely.
Nobody has vetted this for you
No securities regulator reviews or approves these offerings. Backers checks that the rules are followed and, for notes, sets the rate band — it does not and legally may not tell you whether any investment is right for you.
Your exit may not exist
Shares bought here have no public market and resale restrictions; plan to hold indefinitely. A note ends on its own schedule, but only if the business keeps paying.
Backers Securities Inc. is operating this Funding Portal under the Start-Up Crowdfunding Portal – Exemption in Ontario (OSC), Alberta (ASC) and British Columbia (BCSC). Backers is not registered under securities legislation in any jurisdiction of Canada. We operate under the exemption from the dealer registration requirement. Backers is listed on the Canadian Securities Administrators’ National Registration Search under the category “Start-Up Crowdfunding Portal — Exemption” (NRD #76020). Regulatory information.