U.S. private schools on board with Aryval

Popcorn, spreadsheet stuffies and branded hot sauce have been offered at Aryval’s conference booths.

The Winnipeg company sells none of those. Still, its leadership reports massive growth over the last two years, with expansions on the way.

Aryval is currently using $500,000 from the federal government to build a platform processing independent school enrolments. Forty-four American schools are set to use its product.

It comes as Aryval plans to manage event data — open houses, group tours — for more than 70 private schools across North America.

“The industry itself, it doesn’t get as much attention,” said Jonathan Remis, Aryval’s co-founder and chief operating officer. “We had this idea of, ‘Hey, we think that there’s an opportunity in this space.’”

Remis and fellow co-founders Wesley Dyck and Dan Yorsh quit their marketing agency jobs and took Aryval full-time in February 2024.

They’d already been working with independent school clients. Often, the institutions didn’t have data to tell whether their events led to enrolments. Much of private schools’ revenue comes from tuition.

Remis, Dyck and Yorsh tapped developers and read about business creation after their regular work days ended. They pulled investors and, eventually, began cold-calling schools to create a customer base.

About a dozen signed up in the first year, the founders said. Roughly 90 per cent of their clients are American.

Aryval’s platform tracks how many families enrol in a school post-event. It logs zip codes and how families learned about the institution.

Data comes through forms families submit pre-event or while walking in. Schools watch attendance numbers in real-time as people sign in via QR codes.

“The check-in experience was something that we zeroed in on,” said Dyck, Aryval’s chief product officer. “You have these massive events. Hundreds of families are showing up, bottleneck at the door.

“We’ve been able to make that a very streamlined experience.”

Aryval has spent the past two years building its event platform. Leadership’s interest piqued when a Seattle customer began looking for a new enrolment management system.

The small Winnipeg firm has hired a handful of people — adding to its dozen staff — as it prepares to launch its new product.

Aryval may expand in North America, the United Kingdom and Australia in the coming years, said Yorsh, the company’s chief executive.

This year, 13 schools in Seattle will trial the enrolment platform, alongside two schools in North Carolina and Wisconsin. Another 29 schools will follow in 2027.

Aryval is in talks with a consortium of 30 California schools, Remis said.

“We find that U.S. customers are a little bit more receptive to new technologies and changes versus Canadians,” he said. “In Canada … you have to fix their problem, but then it’s, ‘Who else are you also working with?’”

Economic uncertainty hasn’t helped draw Canadians, Yorsh noted, adding changing the intake process can be perceived as “scary” and risky with a startup.

The U.S. pool is also bigger, the founders said. In 2021, around 4.7 million U.S. students in kindergarten through Grade 12 enrolled in private schools.

By contrast, some 465,000 Canadian youths were enrolled in 2023-24, Statistics Canada data show. It doesn’t count the number of private and independent schools.

The U.S. National Center for Education Statistics clocked 30,492 American private schools in 2019-20.

“The U.S. dominates the … North American market,” said Juliano Goulart, who leads Tech Manitoba’s virtual growth accelerator program. “It is very important (Manitoba companies) take more market share.”

Goulart encourages startups he works with to expand into the U.S. as soon as possible, despite current trade tensions. Software developers don’t face the same tariff threats levelled at people shipping physical goods, he noted, speaking before the U.S. announced Monday it plans to levy a new 50 per cent tariff on some Canadian imports.

Companies starting in the United States have a larger customer base and potential access to funds. If they grow and enter Canada, it’s hard for a Canada-only tech startup to compete, Goulart said.

The accelerator program he delivers is funded by Ottawa’s National Research Council.

Aryval has received $940,000 in federal grants since September 2024. The funding has come from the National Research Council, aside from the most recent $500,000 from Prairies Economic Development Canada.

Aryval has also raised more than $1.5 million in private investment, founders said. Investors are from Manitoba, Texas, Connecticut and elsewhere in North America.

American schools have been putting “the politics … aside” and often apologizing for international tensions during business dealings, Yorsh said.

Aryval stores data in Amazon Web Services’s Canadian and American servers. It’s aiming to be recognized for System and Organization Controls 2 compliance — an elective data security framework — by the end of 2026, Aryval founders said.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com