SAAS NORTH NOW

Defence has quickly become one of Canadian tech’s biggest conversations. For Samuel Witherspoon, CEO and Co-Founder of Anvil, that creates a significant opportunity for technology companies willing to understand the market they are entering.

Two founders walk into SAAS NORTH AI. No, this isn’t the start of a bad joke. One is building an early-stage AI-SaaS company and figuring out how to scale it. The other is wondering whether technology built for commercial customers could solve problems in defence.

Canada’s defence build-out is creating an opportunity that reaches well beyond traditional defence companies. Software, AI, autonomy and cyber are becoming part of the country’s sovereign capability, and some of the technology Canada needs may already be under development inside its startup ecosystem.

AI is helping users reach value faster, while making product-led growth more expensive, pricing less straightforward and differentiation harder to defend.

During a SAAS NORTH 2025 discussion moderated by Leo Lax of L-SPARK, Kevin Ford (Calian Group), Jil Macdonald (Walnut Insurance) and James Povitz (NAventures) explored how startups, investors and enterprises can work together to bridge that gap.

Growth conversations often begin with capital, though investors are only part of the picture. Non-dilutive funding such as grants increasingly plays a role in how growing companies finance hiring, product development and expansion.

When Evan Solomon, Canada’s first Minister of AI and Digital Innovation, joined SAAS NORTH in late 2025, the conversation centered on a bigger question: could Canada move beyond AI research leadership and become a place where enduring AI companies are built?

The best ideas in SaaS often take shape through conversation, on stage, between sessions and in the moments where operators compare what they are seeing in real time. Across those discussions, a consistent pattern has started to emerge.

Inside many companies, AI hasn’t arrived all at once. It has been showing up in small ways, a tool here, a workflow there, gradually finding its place inside day-to-day work. What follows is rarely a clean transformation.