The SaaS playbook is being rewritten in real time.
Artificial intelligence is changing what software can do, how quickly products can be built, how companies reach customers and what customers are willing to pay for. For founders, that creates much bigger questions than where to add AI to the roadmap.
What happens to a business model when software starts doing the work? Where does defensibility come from when building gets cheaper? Does distribution become the bigger advantage? How do you price, hire and scale when the economics of software itself are shifting?
Those questions will be at the centre of SAAS NORTH AI 2026, taking place November 4–5 at Rogers Centre in Ottawa.
Now in its 11th year, the tech conference brings together more than 2,000 founders, operators, investors and ecosystem leaders. This year’s program focuses on what it takes to commercialize AI in B2B software, with conversations spanning product, pricing, distribution, capital, people and trust.
The theme for this year’s event is Scaling in the Era of AI.
“The SaaS conversation has moved beyond adding AI to the roadmap. Founders are reconsidering what they build, how they price it, how they reach customers and where their advantage comes from. SAAS NORTH AI is about bringing together the people making those decisions inside real companies and comparing what’s working.”
When AI Changes the SaaS Equation
One of the biggest questions facing SaaS companies is what happens when the cost and speed of building software change dramatically.
AI can allow smaller teams to build products faster, automate internal processes and deliver capabilities that previously required significant engineering resources. But lower barriers to building can also mean more competition.
That puts greater pressure on areas such as distribution, customer relationships, proprietary data, trust and brand.
Several sessions at SAAS NORTH AI will tackle that tension directly.
“AI Isn’t Coming for Your Job. It’s Coming for Your Business Model.” examines the broader implications of AI beyond workforce disruption, asking what happens when AI changes the value a software company provides and the economics behind delivering it.
Another session, “The Age of Agents: Distribution Dominates Decisions,” looks at what happens as AI agents increasingly perform tasks on behalf of users. If AI agents can increasingly do the work, the competitive advantage may shift toward distribution, context and the information agents need to make useful decisions.
For founders, that raises a fundamental question: if everyone can build faster, what becomes difficult to replicate?
Distribution May Become the New Battleground
The AI boom has made product development increasingly accessible. The challenge is turning that product into a sustainable business.
That is putting renewed attention on go-to-market strategy.
“The Future of Go-to-Market: A Playbook for an AI-First World” will explore what is actually working in GTM now, from using AI to sharpen ICP and targeting to building stronger sales discipline and using agentic AI to grow without simply adding cost.
The issue extends to pricing as well.
Traditional SaaS companies have largely built their businesses around recurring subscriptions and predictable revenue. But AI-powered products can increasingly deliver outcomes rather than simply provide access to software.
That creates difficult questions around how companies capture value.
Should customers pay per seat, per usage, based on outcomes or through a hybrid model?
Those questions sit alongside the broader economics discussion at SAAS NORTH AI, including “Cracking $10M ARR,” a data-backed look at what it really takes to scale a SaaS company.
The conference is also looking at how the fundamentals of growth hold up as the technology changes. Building may be getting faster, but repeatable growth, customer acquisition and strong economics remain difficult challenges for founders.
Speakers to Watch
The conference will bring together founders, operators, investors and defence leaders representing different sides of the AI transition. Among the speakers to watch are:
Avery Pennarun, Co-Founder & CEO, Tailscale
Pennarun has built across open source, startups and global technology while keeping developer experience at the centre. At Tailscale, that means tackling complex infrastructure and security problems without making the technology painful to use, an increasingly relevant challenge as infrastructure, security and AI converge.
Vitalii Dodonov, Co-Founder & CTO, Stan
Dodonov helped scale Stan from zero to $30M ARR with a lean team and has built AI products designed to help creators grow their businesses. He brings a first-principles founder perspective on building technology around real customer problems while scaling efficiently.
Kyle Poyar, Founder, Growth Unhinged and Analyst-in-Residence, ChartMogul
Poyar has worked with hundreds of SaaS companies from early traction through $100M+ ARR and helped shape the product-led growth movement. His work now focuses on the growth, pricing and monetization questions companies need to solve as the old SaaS playbook changes.
Katheron Intson, Co-Founder & CEO, Sentinel R&D
Intson went from a PhD in pharmacology to building Canadian defence technology. Sentinel R&D is manufacturing low-cost, modular UAVs in Hamilton for allied use, giving her a firsthand perspective on what it takes for Canadian founders to build and scale technology tied to national security.
Margaret Wu, Lead Investor, Georgian
Wu leads growth investments in AI and frontier technology companies including Replit, Tenstorrent, You.com and Darrow. Having worked as a founder, COO, Amazon product leader and investor, she brings a perspective on what it takes to turn emerging technology into a durable, scalable business.
Lieutenant-General Michael C. Wright, Commander, Canadian Army
As part of DEPLOY, Lieutenant-General Wright brings founders closer to the customer side of the defence market and the conversation around how autonomy and AI are changing the future of the Canadian Armed Forces and warfare.
From AI-Native Startups to Scaled SaaS
The diversity of the speaker lineup reflects the breadth of the conversation taking place at SAAS NORTH AI.
For founders, the AI transition is not simply a product question. It touches nearly every part of building a company.
Product teams need to determine whether AI should be a feature, an assistant or the foundation of the product itself. Sales teams are reconsidering how customers discover and evaluate software. Investors are assessing new approaches to pricing, margins and defensibility.
And company leaders are reconsidering how teams should be structured when AI changes what individual roles can accomplish.
That makes the question of defensibility particularly important.
If a competitor can replicate a feature in weeks rather than months, founders need to think beyond the feature itself. Distribution, customer relationships, proprietary data, workflow integration and trust can all become more important sources of competitive advantage.
A New Market Opens on Day Two
This year’s conference is also expanding the conversation beyond traditional SaaS.
On November 5, DEPLOY will bring defence and dual-use technology into SAAS NORTH AI.
Presented by Dominion Dynamics, the founder-first defence and dual-use summit is designed for companies already working across software, AI, autonomy, sensing and hardware, as well as founders looking at defence as a potential market for technology they have already built.
Rather than another defence introduction, DEPLOY is organized around three practical moves:
Build. Fund. Sell.
Is there a real defence problem your technology can solve? Who will fund the company as it enters the sector? And how does Canada actually buy?
The program brings together founders already delivering defence technology, investors backing dual-use companies, commanders setting requirements and officials involved in what Canada buys.
Sessions include:
- The Next Frontier: Defence, Intelligence and the AI Race
- Defence Funding: Choose Your Own Adventure
- The Future of the CAF and Warfare: Autonomy and AI
- Is Defence Your Market? Entering, Expanding, or Doubling Down
- Where Defence Procurement Is Going
For Canadian technology companies, DEPLOY adds another question to the broader SAAS NORTH AI conversation:
Could defence be your next market?
Building for a Changing Market
The addition of defence and dual-use technology is part of a broader conversation about where Canadian technology companies can find opportunities as AI reshapes the industry.
Katheron Intson brings a firsthand perspective from building defence technology in Canada, while Lieutenant-General Michael C. Wright represents the customer side of that market.
For founders accustomed to thinking about SaaS through the traditional lens of subscriptions, customer acquisition and recurring revenue, defence introduces a very different sales environment.
But the underlying founder questions remain familiar.
Is there a real problem to solve? Is there a market? Can the company build something differentiated? Can it attract capital and talent? And can it scale?
Those questions are increasingly relevant across both commercial AI and dual-use technology.
The Fundamentals Still Matter
For all the discussion around AI, many of the questions facing founders are not entirely new.
Companies still need customers. Products still need to solve meaningful problems. Growth still needs to be repeatable. Investors still want to see a path toward a durable business.
What is changing is the environment in which those fundamentals are being tested.
AI is lowering the cost of creating software while potentially raising the bar for differentiation. It is creating new products while challenging existing business models. It is changing roles inside companies while creating entirely new ones.
And as software becomes increasingly capable of acting autonomously, trust could become one of the most important parts of the customer relationship.
The more meaningful the work handed to AI, the more customers need confidence that the technology will deliver.
That leaves founders with a complicated but potentially significant opportunity.
Some established SaaS models may become harder to defend. At the same time, entirely new categories and markets could emerge.
SAAS NORTH AI 2026 is positioning its program around that transition, bringing together the people building, funding and buying technology to examine what is changing and what founders should do next.
SAAS NORTH AI 2026
SAAS NORTH AI 2026 takes place November 4–5 at Rogers Centre in Ottawa.
The tech conference brings together more than 2,000 founders, operators, investors and ecosystem leaders for two days focused on building, pricing, growing and competing in the era of AI.
The 2026 program is organized around five core areas:
- Distribution & Growth: GTM when building is cheap but reaching customers isn’t
- Product & Strategy: Moving from bolt-on AI to products that do the work
- Capital & Economics: Margins, pricing and what investors want to see
- People & Culture: Team design as AI changes what roles look like
- Builders & Disruptors: Where incumbents and AI-native companies compare notes
Day Two will also feature DEPLOY, the new defence and dual-use summit focused on founders entering or expanding in the sector.
Founders Press readers can use the exclusive promo code FOUNDERS20 for 20% off their pass.
Agenda: View the SAAS NORTH AI agenda
Speakers: View the SAAS NORTH AI speakers
DEPLOY: Learn more about DEPLOY