You Have A Play. I Have A Stage.
To the 40,000 entrepreneurs stranded by Canada’s Start-Up Visa freeze:
🎭 You Have A Play. I Have A Stage.
There’s a scene in Shakespeare in Love where everything is falling apart. The theatre is empty. The money is gone. The backers are nervous. Someone asks how it’s all going to work out.
The answer?
“I don’t know. It’s a mystery.”
But the thing is — Shakespeare had a play. A real one. Written. Ready. And the Rose Theatre needed one.
Right now, you’re Shakespeare with a play and no stage.
Your Visa Got Cancelled. Your Dream Didn’t.
You did everything right. You wrote the business plan. You got the letter of support from a designated organization. You proved your language proficiency. You showed your settlement funds. You committed — maybe moved your family, maybe left a career, maybe burned a bridge you can’t rebuild.
And then, at the end of 2025, Canada effectively shut the door on the path you were promised. The Start-Up Visa backlog hit more than 43,000 applications. Processing times stretched from 37 months to over ten years for many founders. New work permits were paused and new PR applications capped or closed in advance of a future “pilot” that doesn’t help you now.
You’re not random people. You’re vetted entrepreneurs. Canada’s own system confirmed that. You have skills, plans, funding commitments, and the kind of courage it takes to uproot your life for an idea.
You just don’t have a stage.
I Have A Stage. You Have Plays.
I’ve been building a cooperative commerce platform called Liana Banyan for nine years.
In one sentence: it’s a Cost + 20% cooperative marketplace where creators and workers keep 83.3% of revenue, the margin is constitutionally locked, and sixteen charitable initiatives are permanently funded by three commercial websites. The operating agreement prevents the margin from ever changing.
I have 1,200+ CAD diagrams, over 1,000 documented innovations, patent claims across six applications (with 8 utility patents definite and 9 more possible from the first 130 vetted with USPTO), and handwritten journals going back to prototypes I built on active duty in 2003 — the details, economics, and IP are all documented at the2ndsecond.com.
And I’m giving patent ownership away — in return for sponsoring someone else to join.
I have a stage. You already have plays. What I don’t have yet is a company big enough to fill the theatre.
What I’m Offering You
This isn’t charity. This isn’t a handout. This is mutual rescue.
Your Side:
- You keep your own business. You make your own revenue.
- You get a stall on our lot: infrastructure, tools, and a cooperative marketplace you can build on.
- You bring your expertise to help make the platform better.
My Side:
- I need CTOs, developers, designers, marketers, and operations leads.
- I have 150+ innovations that need builders and sixteen initiatives that need leaders at every level.
- The platform needs a crew.
What You Get:
| Benefit | Description |
|---|---|
| Your Own Venture | A path to build and grow your own business on a live platform — no visa required, work from anywhere |
| Built Infrastructure | Payments, storefronts, member network, and a fixed-margin business model already in place |
| Ownership Stake | Platform Joules: real, constitutionally protected cooperative ownership through contribution, not capital — not stock options that evaporate |
| Founding Member Status | First 10,000 members get enhanced governance and benefits |
| Portfolio Proof | Traction you can point to in any future immigration or funding application |
| Community | Thousands in the same situation over time, not just you alone refreshing a status page |
Build your business ON Liana Banyan while helping build Liana Banyan.
You’re not being hired as unpaid staff; you’re setting up your own stall on a lot we maintain together.
How It Works (No Mystery, Just Steps)
| What You Do | What You Get |
|---|---|
| Apply for a role that matches your skills (code, design, product, operations) | An immediate place in the platform build crew, plus a dedicated “stall” for your own business |
| Contribute work to the platform (features, content, systems) | Platform Joules — a recorded, pro-rata ownership stake in the cooperative |
| Launch or migrate your own venture on the platform | Shared infrastructure, an aligned community of customers, and better unit economics from day one |
| Become a Founding Member (first 10,000) | Stronger benefits, governance voice, and long-term upside if the cooperative scales |
Compensation from the platform itself isn’t cash at the start; it’s ownership and leverage. Your cash comes from your own business running on the platform’s rails.
If you need a salaried job tomorrow, this isn’t the right fit. If you can trade focused time for equity, infrastructure, and proof, it is.
Why This Isn’t Too Good To Be True
I’m not a billionaire or a VC. I’m an amateur engineer who spent forty years designing and nine years building a system where the math works and the people who build it, own it.
The 20% margin from the marketplace funds operations and the sixteen initiatives. The other 80% goes to the people doing the work — funding, providing, making, and delivering — with separate and transparent accounting for everything.
You don’t have to take my word for any of this. You can see all of it: the patents, the economics, the operating agreement, the architecture, the founding story. It’s published and open for inspection at the2ndsecond.com.
Start with “$5 Can Save the World” and “The 1,000 Member Proof” for the short version.
The Sixteen Initiatives Need Builders
Every one of these needs entrepreneurs, not employees:
Volume Savings
Let’s Make Dinner · Defense Klaus · Lifeline Medications · Let’s Get Groceries · Let’s Go Shopping
Value Opportunity
JukeBox · VSL (Village Savings & Loans) · Let’s Make Bread · The Family Table
Community Benefit
Rally Group · MSA · International · Harper Guild · Didasko · Household Concierge · Power to the People
Food security. Music licensing. Microfinance. Business incubation. Crisis response. Education. Privacy. Energy.
Whatever your venture is, there’s likely a place where it plugs into this ecosystem — with your logo on it, not mine.
The Timing
Canada closed a door. I’m not offering you the same door — I’m offering you a different building entirely.
One where you’re not asking a government for permission. One where you’re not waiting in a decade-long backlog. One where your skills and your sweat earn you real, recorded ownership in a cooperative designed to last — while you keep running the business you already believed in.
Forty-plus thousand vetted entrepreneurs just got told “not now, maybe never.”
I’m saying: Now. Definitely. Let’s go.
What To Do Next
- Visit lianabanyan.com
- Look at the roles and initiatives that match your skills and your current business
- Sign up as a member ($5 annual cooperative dues — a signal of commitment, not a business model)
- Tell us what you’re building and where it could sit on the lot
Or just write to me directly: Founder@LianaBanyan.com
“It’s a mystery how it all works out. But the play is written. The stage is built. And the Rose needs a company.”
Help each other help ourselves.
Jonathan Jones Founder & General Manager Liana Banyan Corporation
Sponsor Someone, Own Patents
When you sponsor another founder to join, you receive fractional ownership of our patent portfolio — 8 definite utility patents, 9 more possible, across 1,000+ documented innovations.
$25 sponsors 5 new members. You get patent ownership.
Learn more about Sponsor to Own →
Get a shareable cue card with QR code at lianabanyan.com/hofund — search for “Canada 40K”
FOR THE KEEP.
🏰⚔️