There's no shortage of announcements about Canadian defence: procurement reforms, industrial strategies, billion-dollar commitments. What gets less attention is what the companies actually building the technology are doing in the meantime.
North Vector Dynamics is one of them. Led by CEO Paul Ziadé, a former engineering professor, the company designs and builds systems that detect and intercept hostile drones, with an engineering team based in Canada. Paul is candid about what has been hard and what still is. He's also convinced this is a real moment for defence technology in Canada, for the builders willing to push through the friction.
From no conversations to real capital
For most of North Vector's early life, raising money was the hardest part. Paul says that not long ago, most Canadian investors wouldn't seriously consider an early-stage defence company at all. There simply wasn't a playbook.
That has changed quickly. Sentiment has shifted, restrictions have eased, and investors are taking defence seriously. Building systems that are openly kinetic, rather than more comfortable dual-use technology, was a hurdle at first. Today North Vector has a strategic group of Canadian and allied investors behind it, with more interest building.
The customer is still the hard part
The bigger unresolved problem, Paul says, isn't capital. It's the customer.
Canada still lacks a procurement pathway that moves at the speed of startups. He points to models elsewhere, such as the US Defense Innovation Unit, as examples of how a modern entry point can work. Big incumbents can wait out sales cycles that last years; a young company can't. So alongside pushing for change in Canada, North Vector is also working with allied partners where decisions move faster.
For other Canadian defence founders, that's a pragmatic lesson: build for your home market, but don't make your survival depend on it moving quickly.
Talent is the advantage
If capital was the biggest challenge, talent has been the biggest opportunity. Having spent nearly a decade as a professor, Paul has seen firsthand how strong Canadian engineers are. Plenty of his former students now lead teams at major American aerospace, auto and tech companies.
In his view, Canada has struggled to give that talent a reason to stay. Early-career engineers want work with purpose and real stakes. North Vector's pitch to them is simple: stay, and build something that matters here.
Where the moat is
Plenty of companies work on drones and autonomy. Paul draws a clear line between that crowded space and what North Vector does. Hitting a small, fast-moving target at long range is difficult enough. Doing it on its own, every time, under interference, in a compact package and cheaply is a different order of problem.
North Vector's answer is vertical integration. The team designs and builds most of the critical subsystems in-house: airframes, guidance and control, computer vision, launch systems, power systems and its own flight-controller hardware. A strong internal toolchain, including hardware-in-the-loop testing and advanced aerodynamic modelling, lets them get high performance from inexpensive commercial components rather than exotic, expensive ones.
The next step is to bring even more in-house, including propulsion and other energetic components, to reduce supply-chain risk and enable sovereign production at scale.
Staying small and sharp
As the company grows, Paul is careful about culture. The first hires set the standard, and he believes that standard spreads. "I strongly believe that excellence compounds."
North Vector hires for extreme ownership and leadership potential, and avoids growing for its own sake. On process, the rule is that structure has to earn its keep. Rigour is non-negotiable where it matters, such as flight testing, and compliance comes with the territory in defence. Every other process has to justify itself and stay as light as possible.
Thinking in years
On geopolitics, Paul resists easy conclusions. The current reordering isn't simply good or bad, he says, but the direction is clear: allies are pushing for self-sufficiency and sovereign capability. That brings friction, from tariffs to export controls to supply-chain disruption. It also creates an opening for governments to become credible, long-term customers of domestically built technology.
North Vector's response is to plan in years rather than weeks: building sovereign capability while keeping strong partnerships in the US and Europe.
Selling capability, not hardware
Paul's view of go-to-market starts with the operator. In defence, he says, you aren't selling a product. You're taking responsibility for a mission outcome. That means working with end users early, understanding training, logistics and sustainment constraints, and designing around them.
It also shapes partnerships. North Vector positions itself as a capability provider that fits into existing systems, rather than a hardware vendor asking customers to adapt. If operators can't use, sustain and trust the system, he says, the job isn't done, however good it looks on paper.
What comes next
Today the focus is short-range air defence and force protection. Looking ahead, Paul sees hypersonic threats as the next major inflection point. North Vector isn't building hypersonic defence products yet, but it is building expertise and working on a government hypersonics program. The plan is disciplined: win in counter-drone first, then apply what it has learned in autonomy, guidance and high-speed flight to tougher threats.
What we took away
For years, starting a defence company in Canada meant being either brave or reckless. Paul's story suggests that's starting to change, but only for founders who can operate through the friction rather than wait for it to clear. Capital is arriving. Talent is here. The customer is the last piece, and companies like North Vector are making the case for it by building anyway.
This piece draws on our full conversation with Paul Ziadé. Read the complete interview on the Fello blog.
Interview lightly edited for length and clarity.
