Why I Started Solunar: Software for the Organizations Communities Depend On

For the past decade I’ve built software for businesses that already had plenty of it: document tools at Apryse, then software for marinas, theme parks, restaurants and car rental companies at Aspire. Again and again, the best ideas came from the people closest to the work, like a marina operator, a safety technician, or a front-desk clerk at an attraction park.

Why here: the place I live and the communities I’m part of

At Aspire, I learned marinas, attraction parks, car rental and nuclear safety from scratch, for customers spread across North America, Europe and Australia. It was rewarding work, but almost none of it touched the place I actually live.

When I left, I wanted that to change. I wanted to focus everything I’d learned about building, scaling and modernizing software on my own backyard: the buildings, neighbourhoods and community organizations in British Columbia that I’m part of. That’s why I co-founded Solunar, and why its first two products are OpenStrata and OpenCommunity.

Building for your own community changes the work. The customers are your neighbours. The problems are ones you can see first-hand. And when the software gets better, the place you live gets a little better too.

The gap: the organizations communities run on are underserved

Think about who actually holds a neighbourhood together:

• Strata councils: volunteers who govern buildings worth millions of dollars, often with an inbox, a shared drive and a binder.
• Community and family centres, drop-in programs and nonprofits: they serve whole neighbourhoods, then spend evenings reconciling sign-in sheets for funder reports.

The software available to them tends to be either expensive enterprise suites built for someone else, or nothing at all. Spreadsheets, paper clipboards and email threads fill the gap.

What Solunar builds

Solunar is a small BC-based company with a simple mission: software for the organizations communities depend on.

OpenStrata

OpenStrata is strata management software for British Columbia. It gives councils:

• one searchable home for documents, bylaws, minutes and AGM packages
• access controls, so some things go to every resident and others stay with council
• a request system that routes resident questions and tracks follow-ups

Residents get answers without chasing council members. It runs in any browser, and councils can pilot it on their own before inviting residents. Read more about what strata councils actually need from software.

OpenCommunity

OpenCommunity is member and program management for community hubs, nonprofits and publicly funded programs. It brings together:

• memberships and attendance
• recurring sessions with automatic rosters
• reception kiosk sign-in with a personal PIN
• payment tracking
• the reporting funders and boards ask for, with multiple locations under one account

Read more about what breaks first when a community centre runs on spreadsheets.

How we build

• AI-native, but boring where it matters. We use AI heavily to build faster and to automate repetitive admin. Privacy, access control and data residency come first, because these organizations hold sensitive information about families and residents.
• Customers teach us the industry. The best lesson from Aspire was to show up without preconceived notions and let the people doing the work teach you. Every feature starts with a conversation.
• Priced for volunteers and nonprofits. These organizations don’t have enterprise budgets, and they shouldn’t need one.

If you sit on a strata council, run a community program, or know someone who does, I’d love to talk. Reach out on LinkedIn, or book a demo at openstrata.ca or opencommunity.ca.