“Put that Canadian flag on your backpack proudly and get out there.”

That advice from Dave Kroetsch, founder of Aeryon Labs, got knowing nods and laughs from the early-morning crowd at the Communitech Hub on Thursday. For local startups looking to scale globally, sometimes a little maple leaf can go a long way.

Kroetsch, who built and sold his garage-born drone company for more than $265 million, was one of three speakers at the latest Communitech Breakfast, focused on financial resilience and market diversification.

The event, sponsored by Gowling WLG, brought founders together to share lessons from growing beyond Canadian borders and building companies that can withstand economic headwinds.

“With everything happening globally, especially over the past few months, it’s becoming more important than ever to think about diversification,” said Sean M. Sullivan, managing partner at Gowling WLG’s Waterloo Region office. The firm’s international reach across the UK, Europe, Dubai, and Asia reflects the growing reality for many startups that local isn’t enough.

‘You don’t just put Google ads online and hope somebody finds you’

Moderated by Gowling WLG partner Viona Duncan, the panel featured Kroetsch, Mardi Witzel, CEO of PolyML, and David Coode, CEO of Sera4. Each shared practical advice for exploring global growth with limited resources.

“We knew we needed to get outside of Canada,” said Kroetsch. “You just have to get out there.”

For Aeryon Labs, that meant attending international trade shows as visitors before investing in a booth as a low-cost way to scout opportunities and map markets. 

“Trade shows were a huge way to market ourselves,” he said. “You don’t just put Google ads online and hope somebody finds you.”

Coode shared that Sera4, a bootstrapped company, does more than 90 per cent of its business outside Canada and the U.S. That global mindset has become a strength in today’s volatile environment.

“We go to the U.S. and say we’re Canadian and they say that’s great, they’ll buy from you because you’re Canadian,” he said.

Cultural curveballs and building trust

But operating globally comes with unexpected challenges. Coode said many of the markets Sera4 serves, such as Myanmar or the Congo, require entirely different assumptions.

“People don’t have emails. They skip that whole ‘I’ve got a computer’ stage and go to ‘I’m operating natively on mobile.’”

Kroetsch said that in many regions, even icons and interfaces don’t always translate the way product teams expect. In some countries, relationship-building carries more weight than contracts. And in cultures where direct feedback is avoided, companies may have to rely on signals like repeat orders to understand if they’re doing well or not.

“Trying to interpret what’s a normal level of criticism or interaction you get from a customer varies widely across the board,” said Kroetsch. “We weren’t ready for that.”

Rethinking risk and building in buffers

As funding becomes harder to secure, the panelists encouraged founders to focus less on blitz-scaling and more on sustainability.

Coode advised founders to avoid over-reliance on any one geography. 

“I would advocate not doing 90 per cent in any one market,” he said.

Witzel, whose startup PolyML is building advanced machine learning tools in Waterloo, said early-stage companies must strike a balance between vision and viability.

“The resilience of the company and ability to withstand unpredictable events like loss of customer or change in market would be having multiple use cases in multiple markets,” she said. “But my near-term objective would be more financial predictability… I want to know that our revenue is coming in as forecast by our budget and covers what it needs to cover for the foreseeable future.”

Build what customers want

All three panelists emphasized the importance of making sure that product development meets customer needs.

“We need go-to-market talent,” said Kroetsch. “Sometimes the technologists drive the R&D investment. Sometimes the technology team wants to develop the shiny new thing. Let’s get the ideas in front of customers and find out who’s willing to pay for that development.”

“I think linking development to go-to-market strategy is spot on,” said Witzel. “We need Canadian enterprise to open the door to Canadian early-stage tech.”