In this exclusive interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, we explore the inspiring journey of Imam Khalid, the visionary founder and CEO of SellStatic. From his early days witnessing the challenges faced by his father in real estate to building one of Canada’s fastest-growing student-led startups, Imam is on a mission to revolutionize marketing for realtors and small businesses alike. With SellStatic’s innovative AI-powered platform, he’s breaking down barriers and making powerful marketing tools accessible to all entrepreneurs. Imam opens up about the delicate balance between academic life and leading a thriving company, shares his vision for AI’s role in the future of marketing, and offers invaluable advice for the next generation of business leaders aiming to make their mark. This engaging conversation is packed with insights that will resonate with anyone passionate about entrepreneurship and innovation.
Imam Khalid is the founder and CEO of SellStatic, one of Canada’s fastest-growing student-led startups transforming how realtors, small businesses, and startups market themselves. Inspired by his father and upbringing in a hardworking immigrant family and growing up around realtors, Imam built SellStatic to make powerful, affordable marketing tools accessible to businesses of all sizes.
Your journey with SellStatic began by witnessing your father’s challenges in real estate and a desire to make a difference for hardworking entrepreneurs. Can you share how those early experiences shaped your vision for SellStatic and what specific problem you set out to solve for small businesses and realtors?
I love this question because it takes me back to those early mornings and late nights hearing my dad on intense real estate calls. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what he was going through — until I got older, started going into the office with him, and saw it all firsthand. The grind, the burnout, the endless hustle to stand out in such a competitive space.
That’s when I started digging deeper. I watched how everything changed when he focused on cleaning up his marketing and had more time to do real outreach. He quickly became a four-time Platinum Award winner at RE/MAX, among many other recognitions. That shift lit a fire in me.
I realized most realtors and small business owners don’t fail because they lack passion or effort, they fail because they lack time, tools, and visibility, spending time on the wrong things. So we built SellStatic to solve that. It turns one sentence into hundreds of AI-generated ad creatives in seconds, and we’re now working on automating A/B testing and performance tracking. The mission? Help the business owners and realtors do more with less.
SellStatic stands out for its AI-powered platform that generates, tests, and optimizes ad campaigns in minutes. How do you see AI transforming the marketing landscape for small businesses and startups in the next few years, and what excites you most about the direction of this technology?
Marketing and AI is a beautiful space to be in right now. We’re seeing some of the biggest companies in the world shift toward AI-generated content, videos, and even entire campaigns. But what excites me most is how this technology is now becoming accessible to the everyday entrepreneur not just Fortune 500s with massive budgets.
For small businesses and startups, AI levels the playing field. It eliminates the guesswork, reduces costs, and speeds up execution. What used to take a full team and days of work can now be done in minutes. Over the next few years, I see AI becoming a true creative partner for entrepreneurs and realtors, offering real-time insights, refining messaging, and making data-driven decisions feel effortless. The future isn’t about replacing people, it’s about empowering them with tools that amplify their impact so they arent wasting hours on canva designs and editing.
Balancing a double major and scaling one of Canada’s fastest-growing student startups is no small feat. What were the biggest challenges you faced in those early days, and how did your background as a student and young founder shape your approach to leadership and company culture?
Balancing a double major while scaling one of Canada’s fastest-growing student startups has easily been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But it also taught me how to prioritize with relentless focus. Time management was the biggest challenge, especially during exam season, when keeping the team aligned and motivated felt like a second full-time job. There were nights I’d be studying for midterms while prepping for investor calls, and days I’d bounce between labs and national pitch competitions.
What made it possible was the incredible support system around me. Shoutout to Lassonde and the B.E.S.T program having access to a space to build, mentors to guide me, and resources tailored for student founders made all the difference. It gave us the platform to scale while still being students.
Being a young founder shaped our entire culture. Everyone at SellStatic is under 24, and we live by the motto: we work hard, but we also play hard. We bring startup hustle with student energy. That mindset keeps us grounded, focused, and resilient. We’re building a company that reflects who we are, hungry, passionate, and ready to outwork anyone.
With SellStatic’s recent milestones-national recognition, major partnerships, and the upcoming launch of SellStatic V2-what are the most significant ways your platform is changing how businesses advertise today? What new features or innovations should users be most excited about in the near future?
SellStatic started by tackling the first and most painful part of advertising, ad generation. But as any business owner knows, running great ads is about more than just making them, it’s about distribution, testing, and tracking. With the launch of SellStatic V2, we’re stepping into that full cycle.
Our new release brings some serious upgrades: enhanced ad generation in 3–5 seconds, a built-in image editor that lets users tweak creatives on the fly, and dynamic sizing for everything from digital stories to print-ready flyers. On top of that, we’ve completely overhauled our user interface to make the entire experience faster, cleaner, and more intuitive.
But what really excites me is what’s coming next. We’re working on features that solve real problems, like our upcoming video ad generator. Users will be able to upload a short, raw clip and let SellStatic turn it into dozens of polished ad variations. And soon, we’ll be rolling out automated A/B testing — ads that learn and adapt based on how your audience reacts, optimizing themselves in real time.
We’re not just making ads faster. We’re changing the way businesses think about marketing, making it smarter, simpler, and scalable.
Looking back on your journey from idea to national recognition, what key lessons or advice would you share with other young entrepreneurs and small business owners hoping to build something impactful from the ground up?
The biggest lesson I’ve learned? Validation is everything. One of my favorite quotes from Y Combinator is “make something people want” and it couldn’t be more true. I started SellStatic thinking data was the key to every realtor’s heart. I had graphs, charts, insights but what I didn’t have was demand. After getting the door slammed in my face more times than I can count, I realized I was building what I thought they needed, not what they actually wanted.
So I started listening. Calling hundreds of realtors. Sitting in on their client meetings. Watching where they spent their time and where they struggled most. That’s where the real version of SellStatic was born.
To any young entrepreneur out there: don’t just fall in love with your idea and features, fall in love with the how, the problem you are really solving for your ideal clients. Be obsessed with the customer. And don’t be afraid to get uncomfortable, because that’s where growth begins. Rejection, long nights, and pivots are all part of the game. The hardest thing as a founder is when everything is breaking down, nothing is going your way, yet you still have to find a way to show up and act as if everything is ok, but I promise you that everything will fall in place if you are consistent.
Start small, stay scrappy, and move fast, you don’t need to have it all figured out to build something that changes lives.
