“We don’t want a break because we’re Canadian. We just want a fair shake,” said J. Paul Haynes, president and COO of eSentire.
Building in Canada is one thing, but selling here is something else entirely.
Entrepreneurs across sectors are creating world-class companies, yet many say they struggle to find the same appetite for innovation at home that they see abroad.
Deals move slower. Risk feels heavier. And ambition, too often, gets muted by caution, or worse, an apology.
Three founders, Haynes, Candice Faktor of Disco, and Jean Le Bouthillier of Qohash, have scaled their businesses globally while navigating the friction of building from Canada. Their insights, shared during a Source Canada conversation moderated by RBCx Ventures’ Anush Sachdeva, point to a problem that goes beyond venture funding or government policy.
It’s cultural. Momentum that shapes how companies buy, how founders sell, and how innovation takes root.
And this culture shows up most clearly in how Canadian companies make decisions. Often that means taking their time, moving cautiously, and often too late.
Why urgency matters more than optimism
For Faktor, who has led social learning platform Disco to expand into international markets, the data speaks for itself: 60% of her company’s revenue comes from the U.S., 20% from other regions, and less than 20% from Canada.
The imbalance highlights differences in how quickly organizations are willing to act. Faktor attributes much of that gap to mindset.
Canada’s smaller market and more cautious business culture, she argues, often translate into slower decisions and less urgency to adopt new technologies. Scale economics make growth harder, and regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles can further slow deals, particularly for early-stage startups.
“There’s just a ton of regulatory and bureaucratic issues in actually getting deals through,” she said. “Especially when you’re an early-stage startup.”
That pace gap matters. Startups operate on limited time and resources, and a slow “maybe” can be more damaging than a fast “no.”
“The worst thing you can do to a startup is dangle the carrot and string them along,” Faktor added.
Haynes sees the same dynamic in cybersecurity, a sector where urgency might be expected given the stakes.
Selling cybersecurity is often treated as essential, yet in Canada he said it can be harder to close deals than in other developed markets.
“In the U.S., there’s an urgency to advance the business,” he added. In Canada, however, “there’s this risk aversion that it’s palpable.”
The “Grinch” factor
Le Bouthillier, CEO of Qohash, describes the issue as a “cultural wound.”
In his experience, a third of potential customers in Canada are eager to work with innovative firms, and are the “ideal buyer.” At the opposite end of the spectrum is another third he calls the “Grinches.”
Based on the moniker, it’s pretty clear where this is going (and it’s not Whoville).
Grinches are not excited by new technology at all, Le Bouthillier explained. “They’re going to buy IBM, they’re going to buy all these mainstays.”
He points to Canada’s oligopoly in sectors like banking, telecommunications, insurance, and manufacturing. These industries are dominated by a small number of large players, where sticking with marquee vendors often feels like the safest choice.
In that environment, early anchor clients carry outsized influence. Landing one can validate a startup and unlock momentum. Missing out can stall growth entirely.
The takeaway, Le Bouthillier argues, is that founders need to qualify buyers as aggressively as buyers qualify vendors. That requires asking hard questions early about readiness, past experience with companies at a similar stage, and whether a partnership is actually viable within a realistic timeframe.
That same discipline, Faktor suggests, applies on the buyer side as well. For resource- and time-strapped startups, clarity matters more than politeness.
“Canadians are also very polite and apologetic, and feel guilty saying no. Saying no can be extremely helpful, and saying yes, when it actually solves your problem,” she said.
“It shouldn’t be charitable to support Canadians. It should be because it’s actually going to help your business.”
The security costs of outsourcing innovation
For both Haynes and Le Bouthillier, the implications go far beyond startup success.
Their companies protect critical infrastructure, and both argue that relying too heavily on foreign providers creates real risk.
Haynes argues that this hesitation has consequences beyond missed commercial opportunities. His company works in cybersecurity, where speed and local capability can matter in moments of crisis.
“There’s very few firms that are doing 24/7 monitoring and investigative work like we do that are in Canada,” says Haynes. “About half of our customer base is in critical infrastructure. These are the things that keep civil society going.”
Concerns about reliance on foreign vendors are no longer confined to founders.
A 2025 survey by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority found that 82% of Canadian cybersecurity professionals now say a vendor’s country of origin matters in purchasing decisions, and more than half have reconsidered U.S.-based providers due to geopolitical risk.
The shift reflects growing unease about where sensitive data is processed and who ultimately controls the systems protecting it.
Le Bouthillier situates that concern within a broader sovereignty question, particularly as artificial intelligence becomes more deeply embedded in government and enterprise operations.
“So you need to dislocate your data and send it to a third party for processing in the cloud,” he said, describing common deployment models. “That opens organizations to massive collection activities and risk.”
Le Bouthillier said he sees this as part of a larger sovereignty challenge, especially as AI adoption accelerates.
“I think we’ve been very naive in Canada with the inherent and growing risks of technology,” he explained.
“We need to do better as a country, because we can’t secure our models, our infrastructure, and then at the last moment, all of our data leaves through the back door.”
The missing muscle in Canadian leadership
Canada has the talent and the technology, but the country’s innovation economy can’t thrive without decision-makers who move faster and buy locally.
For all three founders, the issue is the compounding effect of hesitation, missed deals, and short-term decision-making that slowly weakens Canada’s innovation economy.
Haynes describes that erosion as cumulative rather than dramatic. Each decision to look elsewhere may seem rational in isolation, but together they slow momentum across the system.
“Every time we don’t buy Canadian, our flywheels of our respective businesses and the innovation economy don’t quite turn as fast, and we may not hit the escape velocity,” said Haynes.
Adding to the issue is how frequent Canadian companies end up sold to foreign owners, largely in the U.S., sending IP and taxable profits south.
“The whole thing is like the hip bones connected to the thigh bone,” added Haynes.
Faktor argues that this outcome is not inevitable, but it does require a shift in how quickly leaders are willing to commit. Without urgency, founders are left choosing between slowing down or leaving.
“I want to bet on Canada,” said Faktor. “I don’t want to move to the U.S., and in order to do that, we need to have a really prosperous economy. And, you know, keep our talent here.”
Le Bouthillier frames the issue less as patriotism and more as leadership clarity. In sectors like cybersecurity, he said, the capability already exists domestically. What’s missing is the conviction to act on it.
“I think we have the best technology in the world. We have some of the best talent,” he said. “It’s incumbent upon large organizations to verbalize that, and there’s no reason, when it comes to cybersecurity in particular, people should buy halfway across the world.”
At that point, it comes down to leadership making the decision that this matters, and backing the systems they depend on before those systems quietly move elsewhere.
Final shots
- Urgency drives innovation, not politeness. Long sales cycles kill startups faster than competition.
- Buying Canadian is a leadership decision that builds national capability. It’s not charity.
- There’s no lack of talent. Canada’s innovation challenge right now is a shortage of urgency and confidence.
