David DiNardo, MBA
I joined the Ottawa Hospital straight out of university and spent two years there — while building Envolta, a cloud accounting firm, on the side from October 2012. When the hospital laid me off in 2014, I went all in. Ten years after incorporating, Envolta had 45 people serving businesses across Canada, and in October 2022 I sold it — ten years to the month, which was the plan from day one.
- 2012Working at the Ottawa Hospital, fresh out of university. Incorporated Envolta in October and built it nights and weekends — a cloud accounting firm when most firms still ran on paper and shoeboxes.
- 2014Laid off from the hospital. Went all in on Envolta and promised myself nobody would have more control over my trajectory than I did.
- 2019Seven years in, I finally matched my old hospital salary. Then it tripled, then quadrupled. Entrepreneurship is a long grind before the hockey stick.
- 2022Sold Envolta in October, 45 people and clients across Canada, to one of several buyers. Built as a sellable asset from the start.
- 2025Launched Laid Off To 8 Figures to have the conversations founders don't have on stage.
- 2026Building Taxifi, an AI accounting firm for Canadian creators and small businesses, and documenting it in public on the show.
Every founder story you hear is told from the stage, after the exit, with the messy middle edited out. I spent ten years in that middle. Hard work didn't guarantee anything, a bigger salary didn't mean more take-home pay, and the thing that finally worked was a decade of uninterrupted reps while I had no mortgage and no kids to protect.
So this show does the opposite of the highlight reel. I sit down with real founders — mostly Canadian, a lot of them from Ottawa — and we go through the actual decisions: the layoff, the first dollar, the first hire, the month it nearly fell apart, the numbers behind the sale. In between, I record solo episodes about what I'm learning building Taxifi, in real time, mistakes included.
If you're in the messy middle right now, this is the show that tells you the truth.
I'm looking for founders who've built something real and will talk about it honestly — what it cost, what broke, what the numbers actually were. Guest, story tip or question:
hello@laidoffto8figures.comOne email,
every week.
New episodes a day early, one concrete move from each guest, and what I'm testing in the business. Free, unsubscribe anytime.
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