Building a successful startup is never a straight path — it's filled with unexpected challenges, pivotal decisions, and moments of self-doubt. In this episode of The Moment, we sit down with Eva Wong, co-founder and COO of Borrowell, one of Canada’s leading fintech companies. 

Eva shines a light on the early struggles of launching Borrowell’s first product and navigating the pressures of being both a founder and a mother. Continue reading to learn more about the realities of entrepreneurship.

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Introducing Eva Wong and Borrowell

Eva Wong is the co-founder and COO of Borrowell, one of Canada’s leading fintech companies. Known for her work in making financial tools more accessible, Eva has played a key role in helping millions of Canadians take control of their financial health.

Eva co-founded Borrowell with Andrew Graham in 2014 with a clear mission: to help Canadians make smarter financial decisions. They launched their first product—an online personal loan—in 2015 and quickly gained attention for becoming one of the first companies in Canada to offer free credit scores in 2016. Today, Borrowell provides a full suite of financial tools, using AI to deliver personalized product recommendations and insights tailored to individual financial needs.

What started as a five-person startup has grown into a company with over 100 employees across the country. With $50 million in external funding and more than 3 million customers, Borrowell has become a major force in Canada’s fintech landscape.

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Key takeaways from our conversation

Challenges are inevitable – even if you don’t hear about them

Entrepreneurship is often painted as a highlight reel, but the reality is far more complex. As Eva shared, “For every story that’s out there that’s super positive, there are at least 10 stories in the background of things that didn’t go according to plan.”

One of Borrowell’s biggest early challenges came when they launched their first product: an online personal loan. The goal was to create a seamless, automated lending process, but the reality was anything but smooth. “We put it out into the wild, started getting applications in, and we were literally rejecting every single application that came in.”

To make matters worse, the company was paying for advertising to attract customers and paying credit bureaus to pull applicants’ credit data — only to turn people away with nothing in return. “It just sort of felt like we were pouring money down the toilet and not getting anything for it.”

In moments like these, founders are forced to ask themselves tough questions: Is this just part of the journey, or is this a sign that things aren’t working? Eva described the internal divide within the team at the time. “There were sort of two camps. One camp was like, Oh, it’s a marketing problem — we just need to find more of the right people. The other camp was, No, the product is wrong. We’re being too risk-averse, our interest rates are too high, and we’re rejecting too many applicants.”

These types of challenges aren’t just strategic — they’re deeply personal. “I think that’s the kind of thing people don’t see behind the scenes. It’s super emotional.”

The Borrowell team eventually worked through these issues, refining their product and their approach, but this experience serves as a reminder that setbacks are inevitable. The key is pushing through uncertainty, making adjustments, and staying resilient — even when the answers aren’t immediately clear.

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Don’t be afraid to lean on others for support

One of the biggest lessons from our conversation with Eva Wong is the importance of having a trusted support system — especially as a founder navigating the highs and lows of building a business.

For Eva, that support came in the form of a Founders Forum — a group of fellow entrepreneurs running similar, but non-competing, businesses. “Honestly, it’s like group therapy,” she shared. “It was highly confidential, highly trusted, and made up of people we had built relationships with over the years. There was a high level of trust in each other.”

During difficult times, this group became an invaluable resource — not necessarily for solutions, but for perspective. “A lot of times, it wasn’t that I got answers out of it,” Eva explained. “It just normalized things. I’d bring something up thinking, Oh my goodness, I can’t share this. I’m so ashamed. And then someone would say, Oh yeah, yeah, we went through that. That happened to us.”

Having a community that understands the unique challenges of entrepreneurship can be the difference between feeling isolated and knowing that challenges are just part of the journey. Eva’s experience is a reminder that founders don’t have to do it alone.

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Balancing entrepreneurship and motherhood 

The question of whether being a mother while building a company is a disadvantage doesn’t have a clear-cut answer. As Eva puts it, “It’s hard to know because I don’t really have counterfactuals. This is just my experience.”

One thing was certain — she never tried to hide her role as a mother. “I wanted people to be able to bring their whole selves into work.” But the double standards were noticeable. She recalled a time when someone remarked, ‘Eva, you’re out all the time. Your family must never see you.’ Before she could respond, a colleague passing by interjected: ‘Would you have asked that of a man?’

It was a moment of realization. Despite being a dual-career household, her husband, who took on more domestic responsibilities, was constantly praised. “Everyone’s always like, Oh, you’re so lucky! You must be so thankful for him. And I’m like, women have been doing this for generations.”

Beyond external perceptions, there’s also the internal battle of guilt — something many working parents face. “There was this expectation that if I was out, maybe underneath that was the idea that I wasn’t being a good parent,” she said. But instead of letting guilt consume her, she took a pragmatic approach: “If I feel like I should spend more time with my family, then I should just make that choice and do it.”

She also found reassurance in tracking her time. After following a productivity exercise that involved logging her schedule, she discovered that between mornings, evenings, and weekends, she was spending around 40 hours a week with her kids — “another full-time job.” She reflected, “No one would work 40 hours a week and say they weren’t really there.”

Balancing family and business isn’t about achieving perfection — it’s about making intentional choices, setting priorities, and letting go of outdated guilt.