Why this matters
Canadian startups don’t miss out on SR&ED because they don’t know it exists. They struggle because the evidence for a strong claim is scattered across meetings, files, test logs, and invoices, then painfully reconstructed at year-end. That costs founder time, weakens claims, and creates audit risk. CRA itself says the best supporting evidence is generated while the work happens, yet the whole market still asks teams to gather it at claim time.
SREDer flips that: SR&ED documentation as a byproduct of doing R&D, not a reconstruction exercise. Not an autonomous filing bot, but a trusted evidence layer that makes the human-led claim process faster, clearer, and more defensible.
What exists now
- A product charter, rulebook design, and evidence-strategy grounded in CRA’s actual T661 requirements
- A workspace-mapping and organizing pipeline that reads a company’s messy records and structures them into claim-shaped evidence
- An internal pilot running against a real test case, with pilot output being evaluated against what a consultant would produce
What I’m looking for
- Pilot companies: Canadian startups or SMBs doing physical or deep-tech R&D (cleantech, robotics, advanced manufacturing) who claim SR&ED and would let a passive evidence layer run alongside their work
- Advisors: SR&ED consultants or founders who’ve been through CRA reviews and can pressure-test what “defensible” really means
Open questions
- Does the wedge sell to founders, to their SR&ED consultants, or through them?
- How passive can capture actually be before it needs workflow change?
- What’s the smallest slice that proves value in one claim cycle?