We started in rural Alberta. Rural development is our passion.
Ground Floor Labs was built on the work of supporting organizations, entrepreneurs and economic developers in communities where the problems are real, the resources are thin, and the margin for a misdirected program is zero. We've done disaster recovery work in Wood Buffalo. We've supported Indigenous women entrepreneurs, New Canadian business owners, BIPOC entrepreneurs, and disabled entrepreneurs in communities across the province. We know what it looks like when a program is designed for a problem that wasn't properly understood because we've seen what it costs the people it was supposed to help.
That experience is where Build With Validation came from.
With a background in Community Economic Development, we've sat across from Economic Developers navigating real pressure from funders who need outcomes, boards who need defensible decisions, and critically, communities who need something that actually works. We built the BWV methodology because the gap we kept seeing wasn't execution. It was a problem definition. Organizations were building good solutions to the wrong problems, and there was no structured way to catch that before budgets were committed.
BWV is that structured way. The knowledge and skills are transferred permanently to the teams we work with. That's intentional; the goal was never to create ongoing work for GFL. It was to leave every community, organization, and team better empowered and equipped to run their next initiative on their own.
We still work primarily with rural and urban adjacent communities, EDOs, and organizations serving entrepreneurs who don't always fit the template that most programs are designed for. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that we now have a methodology that works and a track record to demonstrate the benefits of working with Ground Floor Labs to Build With Validation.
The things people ask us most before they decide whether validation is right for their organizations.
No, Ground Floor Labs is based in Alberta and works with economic development organizations,
nonprofits, and product teams across Canada and internationally. Cohort programs and discovery consulting
can be delivered in person or remotely.
BWV is our award-validated methodology for testing the assumptions behind a program, product, or
initiative before budget is committed. It runs in four phases: Discover, Design, Validate, Exit, and ends
with permanent knowledge transfer to your team. See groundfloorlabs.com for the full breakdown.
Customer discovery is the structured process of learning who your users actually are, what genuinely limits
them, and what they'll respond to before you design a solution around assumptions. It replaces opinion
with evidence gathered from real conversations and data. Yes, we help with it: customer discovery is core to
how we validate assumptions at Ground Floor Labs. For businesses and product teams, that means a
sharper ideal customer profile and decisions grounded in data rather than conviction. For programs, it
means knowing who you're serving and what they actually need before the design is locked in and the
budget is committed.
Economic development organizations, business support organizations, and innovation teams that want
to build validation capability in-house. It's delivered as 8 facilitated sessions with train-the-trainer
documentation, and is scoped to align with per-supplier spending thresholds.
It's a 60-minute working call. We map out what you're trying to achieve, what's in the way, and the
highest-risk assumptions your current approach is built on. You leave with a clearer picture and a
recommended next step, whether or not we work together. No preparation required.
Yes. Engagements can include a funder-ready outcome report with validated metrics, including leading
indicators, such as assumption risk scores and validated learning rates that show progress before lagging
outcomes arrive.
Ground Floor Labs
Discovery-led. Validation-built. Helping organizations find the right problem and build the solutions that actually solve it.
Services
BWV Cohort Program
Discovery Consulting
AI & Digital Integration
Speaking
© 2026 Ground Floor Labs
Alberta, Canada · Working across Canada and worldwide