How Kerry Fraser and Kristy Guthrie went from friends to co-founders. The story behind building municipAl AI.
Kristy Guthrie was trying to rebuild a shed in her backyard.
Sounds simple. Except the shed was 100 years old, spooky, right on the property line, and she had no idea what the city’s rules were about rebuilding it.
So she did what anyone would do: she looked up the city’s website.
She couldn’t find the information. Every contractor she talked to told her the same thing: “Don’t pull a permit. Don’t call the city. Stay off their radar.” Which meant she couldn’t get an answer to a basic question about her own property.
“I immediately had fear of God in me,” she says now. “Like, I was gonna be on the FBI’s Most Wanted list if I called and asked a question.”
That frustration—that distrust built into a system where a resident can’t even find basic information—became the seed for municipAl AI.
But here’s what’s interesting: Kristy didn’t build it alone. She called Kerry Fraser, a woman she’d known for over a decade and said: “This is a problem. What can we do? What are you guys doing with AI?”
And Kerry, who’d been building custom software solutions for 14 years, said yes.
The Long Game: 10+ Years of Trust
Kristy and Kerry didn’t just decide to be co-founders one day. They’ve known each other since they worked together at a content marketing company in Kingston.
Back then, Kristy was focused on marketing and content. Kerry was drawn to tech. They stayed in touch over the years. Kristy building an agency, Kerry running a software development company. But they never partnered.
Until the shed.
“We’ve been connected for 10 years now,” Kerry says. “We used to work together, passed business back and forth, and I jokingly called Kerry my “tech bro” because she was doing really interesting, innovative stuff.”
What made this partnership work wasn’t just that they knew each other. It was that they trusted each other.
“When you’re starting a business, spending money, and things are moving quickly, you really find out whether or not you actually trust someone,” Kristy says. “Kerry is deeply trustworthy.”
The Real Problem: It’s Not the Website
When Kristy was working in municipal communications, she noticed something: people couldn’t find anything on city websites. Website redesigns didn’t help. Better navigation didn’t help. The problem wasn’t the website itself.
“I jokingly say—maybe not so jokingly—that I’m the best in the business and I can’t figure it out,” Kristy says. “Which must mean it’s not actually a website problem. It’s a findability problem.”
So she called Kerry and they looked at the tech landscape. At the time, everyone was panicking about AI, while everyone else was trying to build something with it. But most of it vapourware and the two saw an opportunity.
“Everyone wanted to build something with AI, but they didn’t have a clear ROI or a clear problem they were solving,” Kerry says. “It was chaos. But this was different. It was a clear, simple problem that AI could actually solve.”
So they built it together. Kerry managed the tech side, the team, the product. Kristy focused on understanding the municipal context, the communications angle, the market. But they stayed in every meeting together—sales calls, customer meetings, conferences.
“We’re both in every single sales meeting,” Kerry says. “We both need to deliver something that makes our customers’ lives easier and we have to be thoughtful about that.”
The Co-Founder Relationship: Balancing Act
Working with a co-founder is like a marriage. The stakes are just as high, the work is constant, and one person is usually feeling optimistic while the other is feeling raw.
“We oscillate,” Kristy laughs. “Usually one person’s feeling really optimistic and one person’s feeling a little bit more vulnerable, and it goes back and forth depending on the day.”
This actually works in their favour. On days when Kristy’s exhausted after eight meetings, Kerry’s glass-half-full. On days when Kerry’s questioning whether they’ll make their timeline, Kristy’s rallying the troops.
“Starting a business is not for the faint of heart,”
“Starting a business is not for the faint of heart,” Kerry says. “There are days where you’re just like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so exhausted. I still have eight more meetings. Are we going to make the progress we said we would?’ But we’re never both in that place at the same time.”
Plus there’s something else: they speak the same language. Both came from agency and communications backgrounds. Both understand what it means to be problem-solvers. Both care about impact over empire.
“Because of that background, things like how we see the opportunity, we’re very aligned without having to discuss it ad nauseam,” Kerry says.
Building in Tech as Women
When Kristy and Kerry started, they didn’t dismiss the gender angle. They leaned into it.
“There is a network of women founders and women in tech who are excited to wrap their arms around us,” Kristy says. “Our CMS partners, our retail partners, lots of women in our sphere. It’s been an exciting journey.”
Kerry had the same experience. “I’ve had a lot of support from women. We have programs like WE-CAN at Queen’s and connections at our accelerators. I actually feel like it’s a great time to be a woman in tech. There’s a lot of headway being made.”
They’re not naive about it. They know they’re still in the minority. But the shift they’re seeing—from clients, from partners, from other women building companies—is real.
The One Move That Matters
Right now, Kristy and Kerry are focused on one thing: getting those seeds to bloom.
“We’ve been selling for a year,” Kristy says, “and I’m excited for some of those sales to close, for municipalities to actually launch the product, for people to see us working on their websites.”
But it’s deeper than that. What she and Kerry are really building is trust between residents and local government.
In a time of political tension and misinformation at the national level, they’re thinking about the local level—where people actually live, work and pay attention.
“The local level is where real change happens,” Kristy says. “Where we work and play and drive and where our water comes from. Building trust between resident and municipality has real ripple effects. It’s not just about the tech. It’s about what we’re using the tech for.”
That’s what gets them out of bed. Not building an empire. Building trust. Building something that matters. All of it with someone they both trust completely. Each other.
