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J

Josh Borts

Co-founder, Lighthouse Labs

EdTechToronto

Josh Borts is a co-founder of Lighthouse Labs, the Canadian coding bootcamp started in 2013, where he served as chief financial officer. Uvaro bought the company in early 2025, and both firms filed for bankruptcy that year. A Waterloo computer engineering graduate from Montreal, he earlier worked in proprietary trading in Hong Kong and co-founded the Toronto agency Functional Imperative.

Josh hasn’t spoken on a TechTO, TechVancouver or TechWaterloo stage. This profile is here because Josh co-founded Lighthouse Labs, which appears in 2 talks in the archive.

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Quick answers

Who is Josh Borts?

A co-founder of Lighthouse Labs. The Jewish Independent (October 2015) named him, Jeremy Shaki and Khurram Virani as the co-founders and said he was the company's chief financial officer, based in Toronto. The HRchat podcast (March 2020) introduced him as co-founder and CFO, and his February 2020 BetaKit op-ed carried the byline 'co-founder of Lighthouse Labs'.

How did Lighthouse Labs start?

According to The Jewish Independent (October 2015), Borts and Khurram Virani, partners in the Toronto development company Functional Imperative, came up with the idea and asked Jeremy Shaki, a friend of Borts since high school in Montreal, to get involved.

What happened to Lighthouse Labs?

BetaKit reported in October 2025 that workforce training platform Uvaro bought Lighthouse Labs earlier that year, and that about two months before the article both companies stopped operating and filed for bankruptcy.

What did Josh Borts do before Lighthouse Labs?

He told The Jewish Independent (October 2015) that he studied computer engineering at the University of Waterloo, spent three years on trading strategies with a proprietary trading group in Hong Kong, then moved to Toronto to launch a startup called SocialStreet. FITC's speaker page for its 2015 Web Unleashed conference calls him a co-founder and managing partner of the agency Functional Imperative.

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Maintained by TechTO · facts sourced and dated · last reviewed Sep 16, 2026