Workplace Culture 
Matt Carlson sat down for an interview with ApplyBoard’s Martin Basiri, to talk about the challenges and wins of launching a start-up in a new country.
University is a rite of passage for many young Canadians. Typically, starting that journey is a straightforward process of picking a school and applying. But for foreign students looking to study abroad, the process is not so simple. Just ask Martin Basiri. As a young student living in Iran, Martin had his eyes set on studying abroad to obtain a master’s degree. Through many hoops and hurdles, Martin eventually landed at the University of Waterloo. And it was from this very experience that Martin created ApplyBoard — an automated platform designed to simplify the study abroad application process for international students.
Matt Carlson: Tell me about ApplyBoard’s origin story and your learnings along the way. What were some of the biggest barriers to growing your new business?
Martin Basiri: I moved to Canada from Iran 11 years ago to attend the University of Waterloo. The process of starting my international studies was an incredibly challenging one, for several reasons.
For starters, I couldn’t speak English at the time. It was also difficult to find the right school that matched my career goals and to secure a student visa. Soon after, I helped my brothers go through the same complicated process.
Like many students, my brothers and I were living on tight budgets. To make money, we started helping other international students navigate the application and visa process.
Fast forward four or five years; my brothers and I had all graduated and were working full-time. We wanted to return to the entrepreneurial roots we had built in Iran – growing up, I was always creating new projects and really enjoyed the challenge of building something.
It was here that we reflected on the university application and visa service we provided in university and thought, maybe we can automate this process? Can we build it into something?
Today, ApplyBoard has more than 1,500 people in over 25 countries around the world. To date, we’ve successfully helped over 300,000 students to achieve their study abroad dream.
MC: So, what was your MVP (minimum viable product) when you started?
MB: Just one web page. It was just a simple inquiry form that students would fill out to provide a high-level explanation of their goals.
Everything after that was a manual process where we’d work with students to complete their applications. Step-by-step, our process has become significantly more automated over the years.
MC: How much of the process have you automated?
Even today, we’re not 100% automated. In fact, it could take us another 10 years to get to that point. The challenge is that the traditional application system is broken and so complicated.
Every school has a different application system and different requirements. Plus, there’s the whole visa process. So while we’re very automated at this point, we still have some manual components that are necessary to accommodate the system.
So you know how most businesses start from zero? Well, we started from a negative point.
Martin Basiri, CEO and Co-Founder at ApplyBoard
MC: So it sounds like, and to borrow from Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup, in the beginning ApplyBoard was more of a concierge model and now you’re shifting to more of an automated product.
MB: Yes, so you know how most businesses start from zero? Well, we started from a negative point.
We didn’t even have visas when we started. Our biggest challenge, in the beginning, was securing our permanent residencies (PRs) so that we wouldn’t have to leave Canada while building our company.
Without those PRs it was difficult to secure credit cards to borrow against during our early build days. We got really lucky though when we received a Canadian Startup Visa that helped cover our initial costs. Then in year two of business, we finally landed our PRs. That’s when we could really start growing. Before that, it was very hard to convince anyone to invest in us when we couldn’t even show we would be staying in Canada long-term.
MC: How is building a business today different than when you founded ApplyBoard?
MB: Fundraising for both immigrants and born Canadians is so much easier than before. You probably know this, but there was a time not so long ago, as recently as 2018, when Silicon Valley investors wouldn’t even consider Canadian start-ups. The popular thinking at the time was that unicorn-level businesses could only be built in Silicon Valley, New York, or Beijing and nowhere else.
It’s amazing how many things have changed in just four years. Fundraising is much easier to access. Gaining access to necessary tools, like website building platforms, has also made things a lot easier. The growth of the cloud has really enabled this. You can really build a company today with no code experience thanks to tools like Google, AWS, and Shopify.
There was a time not so long ago, as recently as 2018, when Silicon Valley investors wouldn’t even consider Canadian start-ups. The popular thinking was that unicorn-level businesses could only be built in Silicon Valley, New York, or Beijing and nowhere else.
Martin Basiri, CEO and Co-Founder at ApplyBoard
MC: What barriers do entrepreneurs have today that they didn’t have when you started?
One thing that’s a lot harder is the competitive job market. Today, more companies are vying for the same talent pool. As such, salaries are a lot higher than when we started. Being able to match those salary expectations can be a challenge for a growing business.
On the other hand, talent can now be sourced remotely from literally anywhere in the world. If you’re a Canadian company, there’s really no limit to where you can hire from. That ability really opens up the talent pool.
MC: You talked about innovation in the early days of ApplyBoard, where your team did everything together. How do you think remote work has impacted innovation and spontaneous ideation?
MB: Humans are smarter than we think. Innovation will always happen when people come together. But then again, working with others is not only about work. Building a start-up is a hard thing. You wake up and work from morning to night. Money is tight in the early days.
I think being physically in the same location as your colleagues gives you a chance to experience more together than just constant work. Whether that’s going out after work or grabbing lunch. These connections help to make the start-up life a bit easier and positively feeds the overall energy. But then again, I’m a person who gets my energy from other people. Some people do prefer to just sit down and focus on work.
MC: To jump back to your point on the Canadian Start-up Visa – has this been a boon to the Canadian start-up ecosystem?
MB: We were one of the first companies to receive the Canadian Start-up Visa. In fact, we were part of its pilot program. I know the program is getting really big and I fully support it. We need more start-ups here because either they make it and hire more people or they fail and go on to work for and grow other companies. But to speak to the overall effectiveness of the Canadian Start-up Visa program, I can’t really say as I don’t have the data.
MC: Are there other things we can do going forward to encourage more people to move to Canada to start their businesses?
MB: One thing that played an important role in ApplyBoard’s success early on was the Velocity incubator at the University of Waterloo. Communitech in Kitchener-Waterloo also played an important role for us as well.
I really like those kinds of places where you can immerse yourself with like-minded people and where you can gain access to key start-up players, like lawyers, investors, and other consultants. Other programs like the National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) and FedDev are very helpful to early start-ups who may not be ready for formal fundraising. The first fund we got from IRAP was for $20,000 and that made it possible for us to hire our first data scientist.
Our company exists in the first place because there’s a lack of innovation with the process in the market. If everything was perfect we wouldn’t exist. Continuous innovation remains one of our core values.
Martin Basiri, CEO and Co-Founder at ApplyBoard
MC: When companies get really big, they want to continue to innovate however it does become more difficult. Do you have any thoughts on how to encourage ‘intrapreneurship’ where employees innovate within an existing company?
MB: Our company exists in the first place because there’s a lack of innovation with the process in the market. If everything was perfect we wouldn’t exist. Continuous innovation remains one of our core values. We continuously talk about and encourage innovation within our team. As part of this, we also look to examples of companies innovating around us and share those examples around the team for inspiration.
One thing that we’ve done at ApplyBoard that I think is really cool, is we’ve curated a small innovation team for handling new ideas that pop up. So any employee that gets an interesting idea goes to this innovation team where the idea is then discussed and analyzed. It functions like a core dev team or innovation lab in a sense. This gives us the chance to foster new ideas, and while not all are put into action, it keeps that spirit of innovation going.
Another thing we do is share with our employees where we want to go. This gives our teams a clear structure to work within when they ideate and innovate which helps to produce better results. Many companies try to do too much all at once. So, you really need to remain disciplined when coming up with new ideas.
About ApplyBoard
ApplyBoard empowers students around the world to access the best education by simplifying the study abroad search, application, and acceptance process to more than 1,500 institutions across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. ApplyBoard, headquartered in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, has helped more than 300,000 students from more than 125 countries along their educational journeys since 2015.
And they’re hiring! To learn more, visit: www.applyboard.com/careers
About Martin Basiri, CEO ApplyBoard
After he arrived in Canada to pursue his master’s degree in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, Martin realized the opportunity international students had at their fingertips, so he leapt at the chance to get his brothers involved.
As the son of two educators, Martin’s instinctive passion for education and modest upbringing in Iran led him to value the pivotal role learning plays in creating opportunity. Martin, with his brothers, envisioned building a platform that could make education accessible to students all around the world.
In 2015, Martin, Massi and Meti fused their passion for building systems and websites with their passion for empowering international students by co-founding ApplyBoard.
