Capital & Economics

Per-seat licensing built an industry. AI agents have broken its spine.

When one agent does the work of five employees, enterprises stop buying 500 seats and start buying 100,  and your ARR goes with them. We’ll get into what outcome-based, consumption-based, and hybrid pricing actually looks like in practice, and how to price for a world where the buyer might not be human.

Software multiples have compressed dramatically.

The premium that SaaS commanded for two decades, built on high margins, recurring revenue, and infinite scalability, is being repriced by the market in real time. What does that mean for how you build, what you are actually worth, how you might exit, and how you talk to your board?

The fundraising environment has shifted and the old rules are being rewritten.

Revenue-based financing, AI-specific funds, strategic partnerships, and the private equity game is different. We’ll map the new capital landscape for Canadian founders: what cross-border fundraising looks like right now, and how to tell a compelling story when your business model doesn’t fit a 2019 ARR chart just yet.

Consolidation is accelerating.

Major players are acquiring for AI capabilities; smaller companies are merging for survival. For Canadian founders, that means opportunity and threat in the same moment. Learn the new M&A landscape, what makes you an attractive target, and how to keep as much money on the table as possible.

With US tech policy in flux and global capital moving in unexpected directions, some are arguing that Canadian SaaS companies have a rare geographic and reputational advantage right now.

Others aren’t so sure. We’ll have the real conversation about whether this is genuinely Canada’s window or a marketing line, what would have to be true for it to land, and how long the door stays open.

The pricing model is broken, and the math problem goes deeper than seats vs. outcomes.

AI infrastructure runs on tokens, and most SaaS operators have no idea what that means for their margins. This session gets granular on compute costs, inference costs, and token-based pricing, and how to build a business that doesn’t accidentally become unprofitable at scale.