In this episode of What the Tech from Boast.AI, we sit down with Salman Shawaf, Co-Founder of Yonovo, to discuss why SMBs are wasting thousands of hours chasing invoices—and how AI is finally automating collections.

What You'll Learn:

→ The invisible cash flow crisis: months-long payment delays, forgotten follow-ups, bad debt that compounds
 → Why salespeople hate being collection agents (and what it costs your business)
 → How Yonovo automates accounts receivable using AI (90%+ accuracy on payment prediction and collection sequencing)
 → Salman's origin story: watching his dad chase invoices for 30 years as a wholesale business owner
 → The unexpected parallel between Yonovo (invoice automation) and Boast (government funding automation)
 → Why both companies solve the same problem: removing friction so businesses get paid what they're owed
 → Building community over slides: poker nights, soccer events, World Cup watch parties with other founders
 → The "ship fast" culture: Feature requests shipped the next day with AI development tools
 → Bootstrapping strategy: Why non-dilutive funding (SR&ED) should be your first capital move, not venture
 → The roadmap: From AR to full order-to-cash (AP, forecasting, reconciliation)
 → Why hiring lean matters (even as you scale)
 → The role of IRL events in an AI-first world (and why they're becoming more valuable, not less)
 → How SMBs can reclaim cash flow without hiring more staff

Key Insights:

"A lot of companies try to solve this, but the tech really never existed until a few years ago. Now you can get 90% there."

"I'm an impatient person, so this really works in my favor with the age of AI. We get a feature request from a client and the next day I wake up and get a Slack message from our developer saying, 'Hey, we're done.'"

"Boast gets you the money that you're already owed. Yonovo gets you the invoices that you're already owed. The thesis is similar—we both believe businesses deserve to get paid without friction."

"As AI gets better, that will actually increase the value of in-person events. People are tired of cold LinkedIn DMs. We're always gonna be human."

"The first thing you want to do as a founder is reach for the money that doesn't take any equity away. There's non-dilutive funding available to you, especially in Canada."

About Salman Shawaf:

Salman is the Co-Founder of Yonovo and a community-first founder based in Toronto. He's passionate about building in-person community for startup founders (monthly poker nights, sports events, casual dinners). His path to Yonovo came from watching his father manage a wholesale business for 30 years—constantly chasing invoices and managing cash flow. He believes the best companies are built by people who ship rather than slide deck.

About Yonovo:

Yonovo helps SMBs get paid faster by automating accounts receivable and collections. Using AI, the platform predicts payment risk, automates follow-up sequences, and removes manual work from finance and sales teams. Bootstrapped and bootstrapping-focused, Yonovo specializes in AR today with a roadmap to cover the entire order-to-cash process (AP, forecasting, reconciliation).

Boast accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

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Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.