A live recording of The BetaKit Podcast is starting to become an annual tradition at SAAS NORTH.
Recorded each year on The BetaKit Keynote Stage, the live pods are often about data: last year, it was about a BDC report on the decline in Canadian entrepreneurs; this year, it’s about the state of Canadian software.
“Canada is hitting above its weight. It doesn’t always feel like that.”
Chris Arsenault
Inovia
Inovia started releasing an annual report on the state of Canadian software to kick off the new year (see this year’s version from February). Unwilling to wait until 2025 to learn about 2024, we cajoled Inovia CEO Chris Arsenault into providing a thin data slice in time for SAAS NORTH to discuss on stage. You can read along to the podcast with those early findings here, because BetaKit loves you.
The early report is broken out into five different sections and a fair amount of optimism. As Arsenault notes on the podcast, Canada is punching above its weight, even when it doesn’t feel that way.
Some of that positivity comes from setting a long enough time horizon to watch the chart steadily rise up and to the right. But the long-term view also notes interesting points of inflection. Inovia notes that the Canadian venture and growth stages are so far apart, they’re two different worlds, while the rise of secondaries and go-privates sit on either side of an IPO window that remains firmly closed.
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Underlying it all is the AI supercycle, which has seen $35.1 billion USD in global venture funding to date in 2024, a 3.6x increase since 2022. Arsenault told us it is not just valuations rising, as Inovia has AI companies in its portfolio hitting $50 million in revenue over the same time period. But pay attention to his comments on how AI adoption and development is changing customer, pricing, and go-to-market strategies, just like the shift to cloud 15 years prior.
So, what is the state of Canadian software? Read Inovia’s State of Canadian Software 2024 early report, press play on the podcast, and let’s dig in!
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The BetaKit Podcast is hosted by Douglas Soltys & Rob Kenedi. Produced & edited by Darian MacDonald. Feature image courtesy SAAS NORTH.