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Josh Martow shared this14 years ago I decided I wanted to build startups for a living, so I applied to NEXT Canada. They accept just 36 students across Canada to develop into entrepreneurs, and as a pre-med student I thought I had no chance against the business/comp sci kids… Well I was right. Applied in two different years, got to the interview stage both years and was rejected both years. Well, 14 years later after some time working at other people’s startups I finally built my own (Chaser). Turns out Next Canada has a program for founders with real business traction so I thought why not. This time I got in, and it ended up being both a gratifying full-circle moment and an awesome experience: - 1 of 12 businesses chosen to present at Venture Day - 1 of 6 to receive the ‘Nanji Innovator’ award (cool trophy attached) - Met a ton of inspirational founders, both early and late stage My one regret is that I held the N backwards in this photo.
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Josh Martow shared thisThis has to be some sort of AI world record. A guy pitched me on LinkedIn. I did not reply. Then his AI switched sides, impersonated me, and wrote a pitch selling my product. We are far from Skynet.
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Josh Martow shared thisWe went a little off the rails trying to answer a simple question: What’s the best way to delegate work? So we analyzed 290,214 real Chaser tasks across 1,109 teams. The strangest finding: Neutral, direct requests were completed on time 68.6% of the time. Requests containing “ASAP” or “!!!”: 62.3%. Requests containing “please”: 61.8%. Not suggesting everyone stop saying please, but I definitely didn’t expect that result. The findings are correlational, but the apparent impact of these four habits was hard to ignore: → Assign one clear owner → Post the task in a shared channel, not a DM → Set a clear deadline (and not too far in the future) → Send the request in the morning Tasks with all four had more than double the on-time completion rate of tasks with only one: 78.4% vs 38%. Bruce Crumley at Inc. Magazine took a closer look at our study here: https://lnkd.in/eGxcGwj4 Does this line up with what you’ve seen?Want Projects Done on Time? Remove These 2 Words From Your MessagesWant Projects Done on Time? Remove These 2 Words From Your Messages
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Josh Martow shared thisSome teams perform best with no dedicated project management software, some need a traditional tool, and some run best in Slack. Ever wonder if there might be a better way for your team? Join for my presentation at Slack Toronto office this Wednesday 5:30pm EST! Streaming online if you can't make it in person.Josh Martow shared thisJoin Slack Community Toronto to learn how you can run projects in Slack! We have invited Josh Martow, co-founder of Chaser, who will be walking us through whether you should use traditional project management tools, run projects directly in Slack, or use a hybrid approach. The session will include a look at Slack Lists, the new Slackbot, and Chaser, each using different approaches to turn Slack into a place where work gets tracked. This will be a hybrid event, with the in-person portion being held at the Salesforce office. When Wednesday, June 10, 2026 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM (EDT) (Virtual event will start at 6pm) Where Salesforce Office Toronto 10 Bay Street #400, 5th Floor Rm C03 Toronto, ON M5J 2N9 RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/eYvtf8YeHow and When to Run Projects in Slack | Slack CommunityHow and When to Run Projects in Slack | Slack Community
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Josh Martow shared thisMini progress update on Chaser shared by my Co-Founder! 2025 was a big year for us.Josh Martow shared thisHave not posted an update about Chaser for some time. It's been a big stretch for us! Since the start of 2025, we've grown 23x to over 175 companies on paid plans, with 1,200+ daily active users and net dollar retention above 115%. - Partnered with a top notch UX designer and released a completely new web portal with calendar view, bulk actions and custom sections - Built an MCP server and an extensive public API - Got SOC2 Type 2 Certified - Sprinkled AI strategically, where it helps - A myriad other features to make tracking work in Slack possible
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Josh Martow posted thisGot a little reminder of how far we’ve come last week when Slack released an update just for us. It’s kind of embarrassing, but until a week ago when using Chaser to create a task in Slack, any hyperlinks in your task would automatically get removed. Full typed-out URLs worked fine, but not hyperlinks. It caused a ton of confusion/frustration but there was nothing we could do because it was happening on Slack’s side, not ours. Well, we’ve grown a lot over the last few years and now Slack is replying to our emails. Last week they pushed out a change specifically for us. Chaser users, your hyperlinks are safe now. Thank you Slack!
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Josh Martow shared thisEvery week I see another post about why Slack fails at execution. I think Keegan S. is right, but the big question is whether you’re better off managing work in a separate tool, or fixing how work happens inside Slack. PS: Appreciate everyone who keeps tagging me in these posts 🙏Josh Martow shared thisOne of my first moves as Chief of Staff: kill Slack as the project manager. Most startups still dump tasks, decisions, and deadlines into Slack threads. They wonder why nothing gets finished and everyone feels overwhelmed. Slack is chat. Not a project tool. Threads get buried. Decisions vanish. No ownership. No due dates. No visibility. I switch teams to Linear in the first month. How it works: All work lives in Linear issues. Slack becomes announcements and quick questions only. Every task gets an assignee, due date, and status. Comments stay in the issue. Projects get cycles and roadmaps. Results from three companies: Execution speed up in the next sprint. Time to resolve issues dropped from 14 days to 5 days average. One team reduced daily Slack messages 45%. Founder stopped chasing updates; everything visible in one dashboard. Your competitors use Linear or Notion for real work. They ship faster and burn less mental energy. Slack is for talk. Linear is for progress.
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Josh Martow shared thisPretty excited about this one. A Chaser customer asked for an integration with a tool he uses every day, and it’s officially live. He runs a short-term rental management company and introduced me to HostBuddy AI – an AI that chats with guests and flags requests for his team. The only issue: those requests were easy to miss and hard to track. Starting today, you can connect HostBuddy AI to Chaser so every guest request automatically becomes a Chaser task in Slack, so nothing slips through the cracks.Josh Martow shared thisWe're excited to announce our partnership with Chaser to bring seamless task management to property management teams! The Challenge: Action items from guest conversations often get lost between platforms, leading to missed follow-ups and frustrated teams. The Solution: HostBuddy action items now automatically flow into Slack as Chaser tasks, creating instant accountability and visibility for your entire team. Why This Matters: ✅ Zero platform switching ✅ Instant task assignment and tracking ✅ Real-time visibility across your portfolio ✅ Nothing falls through the cracks Built by hosts, for hosts. That's what drives every integration we build. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/ggBK8N98 #ShortTermRentals #PropertyManagement #STR #VacationRentals #Airbnb #TaskManagement #Productivity
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Josh Martow posted thisI’ve asked over 500 managers how their teams manage tasks, and one pattern stood out: They think they have a system, but don’t realize what they’re missing. Their reality usually looks like this: • A shared Slack channel • Someone’s spreadsheet • Everyone’s personal to-do list • And a weekly “sync” to hold it all togetherMeanwhile, the project management tool sits untouched (if they even have one) It makes sense. To most teams, keeping a project board up to date isn’t worth the hassle. No one wants to leave Slack to update a task every time something happens. That’s why we built Chaser. Teams need a central board as a source of truth, but not at the cost of jumping between tools 100x/day. Chaser lives inside Slack. Zero friction. Nothing gets lost. Everyone knows who’s doing what.
Josh Martow replied to a comment
19h
Thank you Linsay! Will reach out to set your team up with an extended 30 day free trial.
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Josh Martow reacted on thisJosh Martow reacted on thisI just wrapped up the NEXT Canada Founders program, and I wanted to take a minute to say thank you. The last few months have been some of the most defining of my time building Padder, pushing me to grow as an operator, a leader, and a founder. Reza Satchu pushed me to think differently about founder judgment. The ability to make decisions with imperfect information, take ownership of the outcome, and get better with every rep. If you've attended one of his lectures, you know his direct approach is a constant reminder that judgment isn’t something you learn in theory; it’s something you build by making hard decisions and being honest about the results. Ajay Agrawal challenged me to think much further ahead about what we’re actually building. He took the time to write a letter to our shareholders from 2030, imagining a future where Padder hadn’t just built for the future of housing, but helped shape it. That exercise gave me a new lens for thinking about the bets we make today and the company they could ultimately create. And Etai Mizrahi and the SPEED program sharpened how I operate day to day, from how I structure my time and prioritize what matters to how I show up for my team. Judgment, long-term vision, and operating discipline. I’m leaving NEXT a better founder because of all three. I’m also incredibly honoured to have been selected by my peers as Top Entrepreneur in the Founders cohort, and by Reza as an up-and-coming high-impact entrepreneur. Those recognitions mean a lot, particularly coming from a group of founders and mentors I respect. I’ve never felt more motivated to build than I do right now. Cheers, NEXT Canada, keep helping Canadians conquer the world.
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Matt Cohen
The latest episode of Tank Talks the Rundown with John Ruffolo is out. This week, John and I covered: - Dayforce’s $12.3B acquisition by Thoma Bravo and the fantastic journey of one of Canada's most outstanding entrepreneurs David Ossip - Why tender offers and Canva’s $42B valuation show private markets are still strong - Cohere’s $500M raise and whether government partnerships can support Canadian AI - The debate over AI infrastructure vs. applications as costs keep dropping - What China and the US are doing on stablecoins—and why Canada can’t afford to stay quiet - Lastly - John’s inspiring first steps in a robotic exoskeleton from Human In Motion Robotics Inc. Links in comments Whether you’re a founder, investor, or policy watcher, this is a conversation worth tuning into.
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Sebastian Alyn Gyr
Two conversations from the past few weeks stuck with me. A founder's growth plan runs through three or four people who know something nobody else can be trained to do fast enough. Fine, until the volume doubles - that's exactly where it snaps. Another team is running two systems that were never built to share data, patched together well enough that nobody's forced to fix it yet. They know a stronger foundation costs more now. They also know skipping it costs more later. Neither client asked us for an AI feature. Both were describing the same fear in different words: our model won't survive the next stage of growth. That fear usually shows up long before the breaking point does. Sebastian. #BusinessStrategy
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Rami Alhamad
Self-healing codebases are here. This week is the first week where every bug report and every error on our prod instance at Alma triggers a headless claude code instance that audits, proposes a fix, and makes a commit. I wake up to 4-5 commits that I review, and then push to production.
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