Alison Taylor was complaining about her booking system. That was all. She had just opened a clinic, and the software for scheduling patients was clumsy and ugly. The man who had designed the clinic's branding heard her out and offered to build something better.
Taylor grew up in North Vancouver, where her parents were both physiotherapists, and for a time she expected to follow them. Instead she studied English at UBC with a minor in psychology. She still ended up in the family world, managing one of her parents' practices. In 2011 she opened her own place, Canopy Integrated Health, a clinic that rented space to midwives, counsellors, acupuncturists, massage therapists and others.
By the time the company reached eight to ten staff, both had to leave their other jobs.
The designer was Trevor Johnston, co-founder of the agency Thought Shop Creative. He built a first version for Canopy. For about a year and a half it was simply the clinic's own tool, nothing more.
Then other clinics started asking about it. Taylor and Johnston added billing and began licensing it, around 2012, as a side business. By the time the company reached eight to ten staff, both had to leave their other jobs.
What nobody planned was the name. Taylor found competitors' names generic and their screens poor. They called theirs Jane, a person's name, and made clean design the whole argument. It was a bet that a physiotherapist or a massage therapist, who did not want to think about software, would choose the one that felt friendly.
The money story is unusual too. Jane took an early C$2 million loan from CIBC Innovation Banking, whose banker Joe Timlin pointed out that the company had been built for Taylor's own use rather than to chase a market. It was profitable early, spent little on marketing, and spread through the physiotherapy community largely by word of mouth.
By 2021 Jane had about 50,000 clients worldwide and 217 staff in North Vancouver. Taylor has described running a small clinic as lonely, low-margin work, often without support, and says Jane tries to give owners the help she wished she had.
The lesson is plain. Jane did not start with a market size. It started with one clinic owner's irritation, and a designer who treated it as a problem worth solving properly.