Michael Litt will light up BetaKit Keynote Stage at SAAS NORTH 2025.
Next week, Vidyard CEO Michael Litt will arrive at SAAS NORTH with a message: “SaaS is dead.”
Litt’s keynote is one of many must-see sessions happening on the BetaKit Keynote Stage at SAAS NORTH 2025, taking place from November 5 to 6 at the Rogers Centre in Ottawa.
“Canadian leaders have advantages, we need to lean into them and be more aggressive with our missions.”
Michael Litt, Vidyard
Titled “The Death of SaaS and the Rise of RaaS,” the address will outline Litt’s belief that founders must tie their products to measurable results, price their solutions to a customers’ bottom line, and embrace “full-stack AI.”
“We’re entering a new era for software,” Litt told BetaKit. “Adapt and thrive.”
For five years, the BetaKit Keynote Stage has been where Canadian tech leaders like Litt drop the script and talk about the hard parts of building companies. This year, its programming will centre on one question: how do you build a SaaS company that endures as AI changes everything?
“BetaKit has become a cornerstone of SAAS NORTH’s keynote stage over the last five years,” said David Tyldesley, Co-Founder and Producer of SAAS NORTH. “We’re proud to keep working with BetaKit to host the conversations that move Canadian SaaS forward.”
The conference’s opening session, The SaaS Surge: AI, Adaptation and the Next Growth Frontier, sets the tone of the conference early. Swish Goswami, Head of Growth and Marketing at Boardy, will look at how AI and leaner operations are pushing companies to grow with more precision and less waste.
That thread carries into AI-Native vs. AI-Adaptive, a session led by Radical Ventures partner Sanjana Basu. It’s one of the conference’s most direct conversations about the gap between startups built around AI from day one and those learning to adapt legacy systems on the fly. Another session titled Work Rewired brings the conversation to “tiny teams,” an increasingly prevalent strategy among companies navigating the AI era.
The BetaKit Keynote Stage will also feature a few showdowns and standout moments. The Masked Investor brings forth an unnamed VC to speak openly about how deals actually happen, what founders often misread, and where the next cycle of SaaS investment is heading.
The stage will also host the announcement of this year’s SheBoot winners, which will celebrate the graduates of the program for women entrepreneurs.
On the Gateway Stage, the ninth annual PitchFest Finale Throwdown will close out SAAS NORTH 2025, where 25 of Canada’s hottest SaaS and AI startups will pitch in front of investors and Canada’s SaaS ecosystem for a shot at $10,000 plus in-kind prizes.
That stage will also feature SAAS NORTH’s new Regional Showcase, which will highlight emerging startups from across Canada. SAAS NORTH has partnered up with TechTO, MaRS, Innovate BC, and Startup Atlantic to highlight Canada’s eastern, western, central, and Atlantic tech ecosystems.
SAAS NORTH organizers have said this year’s conference is focused on reinvigorating the conversation around Canadian software. It’s an opportunity Litt embraces, and he says he plans to encourage his audience to act with urgency.
“The data doesn’t lie—tech in Canada has not played out as it could have over the past decade,” he said. “Canadian leaders have advantages, we need to lean into them and be more aggressive with our missions.”
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Get 20 percent off your pass to SAAS NORTH 2025 by using the code BETAKIT20 at checkout. We’ll see you there!
Photos courtesy of SAAS NORTH.
