What started in Montréal as an experiment in peer learning has grown into a global event technology company.

Today, Braindate helps organizations create meaningful connections at events around the world. More than 1 million participants across 100 countries have used the platform, with more than 500,000 one on one and group meetings booked to date. The company has remained proudly bootstrapped along the way and was named one of Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies in 2025.

For a company growing at that pace, the team needs to evolve just as quickly as the business.

New capabilities create new roles. Growing teams create new levels of responsibility. And competing for exceptional talent means understanding what the market expects.

That was the opportunity behind our collaboration with Braindate.

As the company continued to grow, its leadership team wanted to make sure its compensation strategy was keeping pace, giving the organization the ability to attract strong talent while building a sustainable foundation for the future.

The goal wasn’t simply to build salary ranges. It was to make sure Braindate’s people strategy could support its next stage of growth.

New Roles, New Opportunities, New Talent Needs

Braindate’s journey is unusual.

What began as a Montréal-born peer-learning experiment has become technology used by leading organizations and major events around the world. Its platform supports live, virtual and hybrid experiences, helping organizations create meaningful connections at scale.

As the business evolves, so does the talent it needs.

New roles are created to support new priorities. Existing roles grow in scope. And increasingly specialized positions require the company to compete in a broader talent market.

That creates an important question for a growing organization:

How do we know whether our compensation is competitive enough to attract the people who can help us get where we’re going? For Braindate, the answer was to take a more intentional look at compensation before the next phase of growth demanded it.

The goal: stay competitive while staying true to the business

Braindate wasn’t looking to become the company that simply pays the most.

The goal was more thoughtful, understand the market, make informed decisions and build a compensation approach that reflects the company’s growth ambitions and values.

That meant creating a clearer way to evaluate new roles and determine competitive salary ranges without losing the flexibility that comes with being a growing company.

For leadership, this meant being able to approach future hiring conversations with greater confidence.

For candidates, it meant being part of a company that had done the work to understand its position in the market.

And for the organization as a whole, it meant building an approach that could evolve as the company continued to grow.

Starting with the roles

We began by looking at the roles themselves.

Because titles can mean very different things across organizations, we looked beyond the title to understand the actual scope and expectations of each position.

We considered:

• Scope and complexity
• Level of responsibility
• Decision-making authority
• Required experience and expertise
• Leadership responsibilities
• Expected impact on the business

This created a clearer picture of how roles fit within the organization and provided a foundation for evaluating future positions.

That’s particularly important in a company where growth can create entirely new roles and capabilities.The framework needed to support where Braindate was going, not just describe where it was today.

Looking at the market

Next, we looked externally.

We benchmarked relevant roles against market data to understand competitive compensation for comparable positions.

This is an important distinction.

Market benchmarking isn’t about finding a number and automatically matching it.

It’s about understanding the market well enough to make an informed decision about where an organization wants to position itself.

For a company competing for specialized and experienced talent, that perspective matters.

It helps leadership answer:

• Are we competitive?

• Where do we want to position ourselves?

• What will it take to attract the talent we need?

• And how can we do that sustainably?

The result is a compensation strategy based on data and context rather than guesswork.

Turning insight into a framework

With the roles understood and market data in place, we developed salary ranges that could support Braindate’s continued growth.

The value of a salary range isn’t simply the number attached to it. It’s the flexibility it creates. Different candidates bring different levels of experience and expertise. Roles evolve. Responsibilities increase.

A range allows the company to account for those differences while maintaining a consistent approach. It also means that when the next new role is created, leadership has a place to start.

Instead of asking, “What should we pay for this role?” from scratch, the company can make the decision within a broader compensation framework.

That’s what makes the structure scalable.

The next step is putting the framework into the hands of managers. With a clear reference point for each department, managers can approach compensation conversations with greater consistency and confidence, while having a shared foundation for discussing roles, growth and pay. As the company evolves, the framework can evolve with it.

More than compensation: building for the next chapter

For a company like Braindate, people are a significant part of its ability to continue innovating.

The company has already demonstrated that a Montréal-born idea can grow into a global platform. Its technology is now used by organizations and events around the world, and its mission of creating meaningful human connection remains at the heart of the business.

Building a compensation framework is one way to protect that momentum.

It helps the company compete for the talent it needs. It gives leadership better information when new roles emerge.It creates greater consistency as teams grow. And it provides a foundation that can evolve with the organization.

In other words, compensation becomes an enabler of growth not simply an HR process.

Preparing for what’s next

Fast-growing companies don’t have the luxury of waiting until everything is figured out.

The organization will continue to change. New opportunities will emerge. New roles will be created. And the talent required to support the next stage may look very different from the talent needed to get the company here.

That’s why building the right foundations early matters.

For Braindate, developing a market-aligned compensation structure wasn’t about adding bureaucracy to a fast-moving company.

It was about giving a fast-moving company the structure it needs to keep moving.

As the business continues to grow, its compensation strategy can grow with it: helping leadership attract exceptional talent, make informed decisions, and build the team needed for whatever comes next.

The takeaway for growing companies

If your company is growing quickly, your people strategy shouldn’t be an afterthought.

New roles, new capabilities and new markets all change what you need from your talent strategy. And compensation is a big part of that equation.

For companies entering their next stage of growth, that’s not just good HR. It’s good business.