Kìzis was started for one reason: to build the kind of software First Nations offices actually need — and to be answerable to those communities, not to investors.
Why build software just for First Nations?
Most enterprise SaaS is designed around a generic mid-sized company: hundreds of employees, big HR teams, complex hierarchies, a budget to match. Tribal councils and band offices don't fit that mold. A small office of fifteen people does not need (and cannot afford) a tool built for a Fortune 500.
At the same time, the alternative — generic, cheap tools — usually doesn't account for things that matter in First Nations contexts: community-specific holidays, ceremony leave, the way responsibilities flow across families and roles, the trust implications of where data lives. A generic tool will technically work, but every workflow becomes a fight against the software's defaults.
Software shouldn't ask your community to bend around it. It should bend around your community.
What Kìzis is, plainly
Kìzis is a one-person software company (for now) building cloud tools sized and priced for First Nations offices. The first product is a Leave & Sick Day Tracker — modest in scope, useful immediately. The second will be an Asset Manager for tracking furniture, computers, and equipment.
Both are .NET cloud applications. Both are designed to be run by a single staff person, not a tech department. Both are priced in a way that makes sense for a fifteen-person office.
Where the name comes from
Kìzis — also spelled Keezis, Giizis, or Kizis depending on community — means Sun or Moon in Anishinàbemowin (the Algonquin language). One word, both meanings: the same source of light, just at different times.
I liked that for a software company. Software runs all the time — day shift, night shift, the office is closed but the work is still ticking. And the dual meaning suggests something I think is true about good tools: they're quiet when you don't need them, and bright when you do.
The eagle on the homepage
The eagle artwork on our homepage is a placeholder generated with AI while we commission a real piece from an Indigenous artist. Once that's done, the placeholder comes down and the real artwork goes up, with the artist properly credited and paid. That matters to us. We expect it to matter to you too.