Bill Murphy

Bill Murphy is a Canadian chartered accountant turned fintech entrepreneur and investor who has spent his entire career building tools and services for small businesses — "first as a Chartered Accountant and then as an entrepreneur." He holds a BBA from Cape Breton University and later studied at the IFSE Institute (2018–2019). His accounting-services roots run deep: from 1997 to 2001 he founded Ledgers, described as Canada's first official accounting franchise. He has also held senior operating roles including COO at Belmont Health and Wealth (2011–2014), Chairman at Synapp6 (2010–2014), and President & COO of GBL Inc. (2014–2016).

In 2012 Murphy co-founded Wagepoint alongside Shrad Rao (CEO) and Ryan Dineen (chief architect), a small-business payroll platform born in Halifax. Murphy — the team's chartered-accountant credibility — initially carried the CEO title and served as the public figurehead and Chairman of the Board, while Rao operated as de facto CEO. Wagepoint scaled quickly, processing over $120 million in Canadian payroll by mid-2014 and expanding into the U.S. It raised roughly $2 million in seed capital in December 2014 (Extreme Venture Partners, BDC, and ACOA) and a further $2 million from TIMIA Capital in 2017. In September 2020, U.S. private-equity firm Providence Strategic Growth (PSG) took a majority stake in a recapitalization; Murphy was bought out of his position while co-founders Rao and Dineen retained shares and continued running the company.

Murphy channels much of his investing and company-building through Gremlin Ventures (founded 2015, Halifax/Calgary), a fintech-focused venture studio that uses a product-first, studio approach to build and back early-stage SMB software companies — Gremlin is the firm behind both Wagepoint and huumans. In 2021 he co-founded huumans (with Rob Boynes and Richard Landzaat), a bookkeeping-as-a-service platform that launched publicly in October 2022, and he serves as its founder and CEO. Gremlin has also launched Quota, an AI-powered financial-reporting dashboard for SMBs. Murphy is additionally the author of *A Forest Tale* (2014), a startup fable about entrepreneurship.

• Backs SMB-focused fintech at the seed/pre-seed stage — payroll, bookkeeping, and financial-reporting software for small and medium businesses, primarily in Canada.
• Product-first "studio" builder, not just a check-writer — Gremlin Ventures is structured as a venture studio that incubates and grows companies (Wagepoint, huumans, Quota) rather than a purely passive fund.
• Driven by lived operator empathy: "As an entrepreneur, I know running a business is tough. Business owners need reliable and cost-effective services, along with advice from a trusted source."
• Believes technology should keep a human element: "A human touch is crucial when running a business, and many solutions in the market lack this" — the founding logic behind huumans.
• Motivated by the economic weight of small business: he has noted SMBs make up roughly half of Canadian GDP yet remain underserved by existing financial tooling.