It's unlikely that pairings and unfiltered conversations will dominate the BetaKit Keynote stage on November 5th and 6th.
Every fall, SAAS NORTH brings the Canadian SaaS industry together under one roof. But this year will be different.
The conversations that will unfold on November 5 and 6 at the Rogers Center in Ottawa will not be predictable, and the confrontation on stage will not be obvious. In other words, SAAS NORTH 2025 was created to surprise.
“We designed this year's program so that each leader leaves with ideas and strategies they can immediately implement.”
David Tildesley, SAAS NORTH
The theme for 2025 is SaaS, focused on the future in the age of artificial intelligence. The conference, which has been running since 2016, aims to test industry assumptions and question whether the models that defined the last decade still apply today.
“You can't, looking at the pace of change in software this year, have the same conference as last year,” said David Tildesley, co-founder of SAAS NORTH. “We designed this year's program so that each leader leaves with ideas and strategies they can immediately implement.”
One of the most exciting presentations on the theme “Caring for the Future” will take place at the BetaKit Keynote Stage on November 5th. Hot Tub Time Machine will feature Mallory Brody, CEO and co-founder of Bridgit, and Eldon Sprickerhoff, founder of eSentire. The session will rewind the most important moments in the SaaS industry and then move forward to the future, powered by artificial intelligence. The session promises to be equal parts retrospective and raw.
From here the focus shifts to the SaaS model itself. From SaaS to RaaS Michael Litt, founder of Vidyard and investor at Garage Capital, explores a future in which customers no longer pay for the product, but instead pay for results.
Funding Game will also bring a new version of SAAS NORTH to the classic dating game. One investor takes on the role of the bachelor or bachelorette party, with three founders vying for their attention.
On the second day of the conference, the focus narrows to people. Work Rewired will bring together leaders from Klue, Fellow.ai, Gadget, and Quest to share how they are building lean, AI-focused organizations. The session addresses one of founders' most pressing questions: how to balance automation and culture as the very way we work changes.
And the story isn't limited to startups. On November 6, BetaKit Editor-in-Chief Douglas Soltis sits down with Savinya Berry, executive vice president and chief product officer at OpenText, to learn how one of Canada's largest enterprises is going all-in on artificial intelligence and what it means to be “future-ready” when the stakes are in the billions.
The program is riddled with the fault lines that define SaaS right now: the struggle between human judgment and automation, the shift from subscription pricing to outcome-based models, and the choice between completely overhauling systems or real-time iteration.
SAAS NORTH has long been a platform for war stories, and this year is no exception. JD St. Maarten, President of Lightspeed, will lift the curtain on scaling a SaaS business to 1 billion dollars in annual recurring revenue, a milestone achieved by fewer than one in 10,000 companies.
In another session, Vitaly Pechersky, CEO and founder of StackAdapt, will share how his company intentionally bypassed the hype cycle to seamlessly move to $500 million in revenue.
Rounding out the list of distinguished participants, Chris Nicolaou, founder and CEO of Brain Box Labs, will deliver a keynote filled with tactical lessons from over 20 years of experience building and improving product systems for clients, startups, and his own teams.
BetaKit is once again a media partner of SAAS NORTH and, as in past years, some of the most anticipated discussions at the conference will take place at BetaKit Keynote Stage. For Litt, the value of a conference is determined by the density of colleagues and rivals gathered in one place.
“SAAS NORTH is a really interesting conference,” he said. “I saw that all the people I should be spending more time with are my peers in the SaaS ecosystem. Whether it's investors, mentors, consultants, CEOs, founders, customers, everyone in Canada wants to be here.”
Conversations at SAAS NORTH are rarely confined to the stage. The ideas tested in Ottawa next month will resurface in strategy talks, boardroom discussions and competitive sessions long after the conference ends.
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Get 20 percent off your SAAS NORTH 2025 pass using code. BETAKIT20 when placing an order. See you there!
All photos courtesy of Cube Business Media.
