On the TechTO stage ×1
First seen on the TechTO stage in 2018. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Shrad ↗
In their words
It doesn't really matter if they exist as long as you can do it better. You just need to believe that at the end of the day you could deliver something that is better than your competitors.
Before we wrote a first line of code we had talked to about a hundred customers.
Knowing where to say no to customers, that's really important as well, because it's very easy to want to build everything for everyone. Don't do that.
Around the web ×2
Quick answers
Who is Shrad Rao?
The founder of Wagepoint, the small-business payroll software company he started in Halifax in 2012 with $18,000 of his own money. He led it for thirteen years and stepped down as CEO in January 2025.
Is Shrad Rao still running Wagepoint?
No. Wagepoint appointed Ben Richmond, previously Xero's North America managing director, as president and CEO in January 2025. Rao has since described the transition as "jumping off a train going 360 kilometres per hour".
What did he tell the TechTO stage?
In November 2018 he talked about what Wagepoint got right rather than what it got wrong: entering a hyper-competitive market anyway, doing a hundred customer conversations before writing a line of code, and saying no to customers outside its focus.