2025 planning definitely got more interesting…

With SAAS NORTH Conference last week in Ottawa, that concludes my whirlwind* fall tour, but all the learnings are just beginning to percolate.

I really love seeing the representation of the Canadian SaaS landscape from the technology, to the people, to all the creative ideas and insights. We spent a good chunk of time during our weekly team meeting going over takeaways and these ones seemed to generate the most buzz:

⏩ The rise of the fractional CFO

Not part of any formal talks but in connecting with other attendees, the role of Fractional CFO is becoming more and more popular… and this is truly a great move!

Even at earlier stages, companies are looking for someone to come in and provide strategic executive level financial guidance during transformational periods like fundraising, exits, M&As, new growth etc.

For those not quite ready for the overhead of a full-time CFO hire, it can be a great strategic option to make.

⏩ The great pricing migration – entering the era of “Results as a Success”

Like the journey from on-prem to cloud, AI is disrupting standard per seat pricing and shifted things towards “pay for success/outcome/results” based models for SaaS.

Although not entirely new, this model has entered the zeitgeist with big guns like Salesforce’s Agentforce where you pay by conversation.

It will be interesting to see how this trend continues to shape the market and I’m sure lots of lessons to be learned for and by early(ish) adopters. And we’re already looking at how to integrate this here at ForecaaS Software Inc.

⏩ And of course, the masked investor aka SaaSquatch

A perfect representation of Canadian humour, he came in with the ugly truth of what being an investor and being invested in is really like.

Like the mental shift for Founders going from the one in charge to being an “employee” on the VC treadmill. Or the financial reality of being valued every day on the stock market when public vs only at financing events (raising funds or being acquired) when private.

And if you were hoping to see the return of the days of inflated metrics and charm being enough to get funded, better think again. VCs will likely begin loosening purse strings again in 2025, but will also be more scrupulous in their expectations of how often, accurate, and provable your metrics need to be. And that is a good thing!

So get ready… and feel free to reach out, we can help with that!

Lots to ponder over at ForecaaS HQ, thank you to all the awesome speakers, fellow attendees and the hosting orgs for putting these events on.

* yes it was only two local events but it was occasionally windy out 🤓