SAAS NORTH NOW

For years, SaaS growth followed a simple equation: more people meant more seats, more licences, more revenue. Now, as AI begins to absorb work that once required teams, that relationship is starting to break.

Product teams today can build faster than ever. Tools like Claude Code and AI copilots have compressed development cycles and lowered the cost of execution. What hasn't changed is the harder part of product work.

When a company crosses the billion-dollar revenue mark, it is tempting to focus on the milestone itself. What often goes unexamined is the operating discipline, the cultural decisions and the structural rigor that made that milestone possible.

Across startups, a simple question keeps coming up: how much of this work still needs a human? Recent shifts, including tools like Claude Code, have accelerated what small teams can realistically build and automate, changing expectations across roles and workflows.

After years of tighter funding, heightened global competition and rising expectations on efficiency and execution, the decision feels less hypothetical and more defining.

This year has pushed founders into constant adaptation. With market resets, scarce capital, restructuring pressures and changing board expectations, many are re-examining how they define resilience, influence, and success.

Budget 2025 has formally kickstarted a national defence tech push, with roughly $81 billion in new funding for the Canadian Armed Forces and a dedicated $6.6 billion Defence Industrial Strategy meant to grow a domestic defence industrial base.