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. Teams still need to decide what deserves to exist, how to avoid unnecessary complexity and how to protect the people doing the work as expectations rise. At SAAS NORTH 2025, Kris Nicolaou, Founder and CEO of Brain Box Labs, explored that tension through a simple idea: great products emerge when strong systems support great people.

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. At SAAS NORTH, JD Saint-Martin, President of Lightspeed, offered a candid look at how Lightspeed grew from $75 million in revenue in 2019 to more than $1.2 billion in recurring revenue. As he prepares to step down in March 2026 to mentor and invest in early-stage Canadian founders, the perspective he shared feels less like a tactical update and more like a reflection on what it truly takes to build enduring scale from Canada.

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. That reality was front and centre at SAAS NORTH during Work Rewired: Building Lean, AI-First Teams, a candid conversation moderated by Aydin Mirzaee, CEO and co-founder of Fellow.ai. He was joined by Alexis MacDonald, Mohammad Hashemi, and Felipe Izquierdo. Rather than theory, the session focused on what actually changes inside companies once AI becomes unavoidable.

After years of tighter funding, heightened global competition and rising expectations on efficiency and execution, the decision feels less hypothetical and more defining. Against this backdrop, the SAAS NORTH session Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? The Great Canadian Dilemma continues to resonate. Moderated by Lucy Hargreaves, co-founder and CEO of Build Canada, the conversation brought together Matt Himel (Harvest), Rachel Zimmer (Simple Ventures), and Claudio Rojas (National Angel Capital Organization) for a rare, grounded discussion on what staying (or leaving) really entails.

2026 is underway, and many founders are approaching the year with renewed focus. We recently sat down with Dilara Cossette, Founder of FIP. A demand generation agency helping HR tech companies connect with HR leaders through demand generation events. Dilara unpacks how demand generation is evolving in 2026 and what SaaS leaders should prioritise as they plan for the year ahead. From community-led growth to irresistible offers and sales and marketing alignment, Dilara shares practical insights founders can apply immediately.

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. Against this backdrop, the SAAS NORTH session Building Beyond Success: Reinvention and the Entrepreneur’s Journey felt especially timely. Moderated by Siri Agrell, CEO of BetaKit, the conversation brought together Marie Chevrier Schwartz (TechTO & Peerscale) and Katherine Homuth (Oomira & SRTX) for one of the most candid, unvarnished discussions of the conference.

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. Layered on top is a new Buy Canadian policy, the forthcoming Defence Industrial Strategy, and BOREALIS (a new bureau to build sovereign AI and quantum tools for defence). For founders, this isn’t just macro policy. It’s a demand signal. At this years SAAS NORTH, Dominion Dynamics founder & CEO Eliot Pence joined Douglas Soltys, Founder & Editor-in-Chief at BetaKit, to unpack what this shift means for Canadian builders.

With the federal budget now cleared to move forward (and Canada avoiding a destabilizing political reset) the focus has shifted firmly toward implementation. At SAAS NORTH 2025, Evan Solomon, Canada’s first Minister of AI and Digital Innovation, joined C100 Executive Director Michael Buhr for a wide-ranging conversation about what this moment means. Solomon’s message was unmistakable: Canada intends to move from being the birthplace of AI ideas to the home of globally scaled AI companies.

AI is changing the way modern companies think about customer experience and how they build for scale. Ahead of her SAAS NORTH 2025 session, From CX to AI Agents: How Modern Companies Are Reimagining Customer Experience, Jo Lai, HTS’ SVP of AI Solutions and Customer Experience, shared how the company is redefining what great customer experience looks like in the AI era and what SaaS leaders can take from their approach.