Hello to Canada’s SaaS and AI Community,
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.
Sam has spent a decade building Anvil in defence, giving him a perspective that predates much of the attention now flowing into the sector. Speaking with SAAS NORTH AI ahead of DEPLOY, he shared what growing interest means for founders, how to identify genuine capability gaps and why the strongest opportunities start with understanding the customer.
Key takeaways:
- Defence opportunities start with real capability gaps.
- Build with the customer, not around assumptions.
- Defence demands reliability, trust and a deliberate approach.
- Experience in other markets can be an advantage.
Co-Founder/Producer, SAAS NORTH Conference Editor, SAAS NORTH NOW
Defence Is Back At The Dinner Table
A decade in defence has given Samuel Witherspoon a front-row seat to how dramatically the conversation has changed.
“Five years ago, 10 years ago, I mean even two years ago, defence was a bit of a dirty word,” he says. “Banks would try to debank you for working in the defence industry.”
Today, “it’s dinner table conversation again for the first time in a long time.”
That shift is drawing more founders, investors and technology companies into the sector.
But increased attention doesn’t mean every company has found its opportunity. For Sam, the real work is identifying where technology can solve a problem that isn’t already being addressed.
“The opportunity is finding the seam, finding the gap in capability that isn’t already being met.”
Find The Problem Before Building The Solution
Anvil’s path into defence was shaped by proximity to the customer.
“We weren’t showing up at the door with a great idea and saying, ‘We think this idea might be relevant to you in the defence space,’” Sam explains.
Working closely with defence organizations instead gave the team “insight from inside the organisation about what the challenges were and how we could actually start to address or solve those challenges.”
That matters for SaaS and AI companies considering defence. A technology may have a valuable application, but founders first need to understand the capability landscape they’re entering.
“There’s a lot of assumption that the military does not have the capability you are uniquely offering,” says Sam. Just because a solution isn’t publicly visible “doesn’t mean that capability isn’t already available in some form.”
That makes proximity to the customer especially valuable.
“Actually living the pain for a time is probably the most reliable way,” he says. “The best way is finding a way to actually work on problems with the customer for a while first.”
The opportunity becomes clearer when founders start with the problem defence needs solved, rather than the technology they want to sell.
A Different Environment For Building Technology
Once a company enters defence, the operating environment changes.
Sam pushes back on the assumption that procurement is always slow; Anvil has had contracts move from start to finish in just three days. But some processes are deliberately demanding. Security screening, for example, brings companies into what he calls a “circle of trust” around sensitive information.
That responsibility extends to how technology is built and deployed.
“We operate in no-fail environments,” Sam says. “We don’t get to move fast and break things. We have to move with a deliberate direction and strategy about what we’re going to work on, what we’re going to deliver.”
For SaaS and AI founders, innovation doesn’t disappear. The standard for deploying it changes. Reliability, security and trust have to sit alongside speed.
Experience Can Be An Advantage
When asked whether defence should be a founder’s first market, Sam’s advice is deliberately provocative.
“My initial advice is don’t.”
After a decade in the sector, including years when “you didn’t have two pennies to rub together in this industry,” his point is less about avoiding defence than arriving prepared.
“Find an industry where you can make your mistakes, learn, grow, build a business,” Sam says. “And then when you’re playing with house money, when you’ve figured out the rest of it, defence will always be here.”
For established SaaS and AI companies, that experience can be an advantage. A team that already knows how to build technology, serve customers and operate a sustainable business isn’t starting from zero. The question is whether those capabilities can now be applied to a genuine defence need.
Defence may be a new market but the experience founders bring into it still matters.
Sharing The Scar Tissue At DEPLOY
That experience is part of why Anvil is supporting DEPLOY, the defence and dual-use summit built into Day 2 of SAAS NORTH AI this November.
“Outside of the very traditional Canadian defence companies, we’re one of the ones with grey hair and scar tissue at this point,” Sam says.
DEPLOY brings some of those hard-won lessons into the room, connecting founders with defence companies, investors and leaders who understand how the market works.
The program follows three questions: Build. Fund. Sell. Sam’s experience reinforces why the order matters. Before capital or procurement, founders need to understand whether their technology solves a problem defence actually needs solved.
For companies already in the sector, that can help identify where to expand. For SaaS and AI founders exploring defence, it can provide a clearer view of where their technology fits.
As defence attracts more of Canada’s technology community, the opportunity isn’t simply to enter the market. It’s to understand where you can contribute.
Samuel Witherspoon joins founders, defence leaders and investors at DEPLOY on November 5, as part of SAAS NORTH AI in Ottawa.