Flagship Podcast

Most clinical AI companies are racing toward the patient. Compiled Health is running the other way. Christian Chartier is a physician by training, admitted to McGill's fast-track medical program at 19, stepped away halfway through to study math and computer science, came back to finish, and graduated residency about a year ago. Along the way he spun a research project into a real product: image generation for plastic surgeons, letting patients see a plausible post-operative result before consenting to surgery. That thread, informed consent, and the time it takes to actually get it, runs through everything he's building now. With his co-founder Antoine, Christian started Compiled Health after noticing a specific failure in primary care. In a twelve-minute visit, a physician is expected to recall an effectively infinite rule set from memory, fact-find, and then counsel the patient on trade-offs. The counselling is what gets crowded out. Compiled's answer is a pipeline that ingests guidelines and consensus documents and compiles them into machine-readable artifacts — think decision trees, or a game of twenty questions that reliably terminates at the right next step.  

Sam Witherspoon is the CEO and co-founder of Anvil, a Canadian company building the information layer behind military intelligence, pulling data out of siloed networks and repositories, normalizing it into a single open standard, and serving it up through mission applications that turn work that used to take hours or days into seconds or minutes. Roughly a decade in, Anvil sells across NATO, has just crossed 100 people, and has never taken venture capital. We get into why Sam deliberately refuses commercial business, how a 30-minute training burden became his sharpest differentiator against the giants in the category, and the moral conversation Canada isn't having about lethal autonomous weapons systems. Sam is candid about the risks of the current defense funding boom, what he tells founders who show up looking for a government contract, and why he can't honestly promise a VC that a dollar in becomes a dollar thirteen out. In this episode: What Anvil actually does, and why everything lives in silos "Victory through information advantage" — the mission, and selling across NATO How Anvil differs from Palantir: 30 minutes of training, open APIs, no ambition to be everything to everyone Why target development and weapons interfacing shouldn't exist in the private sector Sensor fusion in practice: distinguishing a T-90 from a farmer's tractor AI, Jevons paradox, and the danger of abstracting the human out of a targeting decision Canada's bright red line on lethal autonomous weapons — and the debate we're avoiding The origin story: banker's boxes, Steelcase as first paying customer, then RCMP and USSOCOM Cracking Canadian procurement: an active clearance, a reference customer, and an engineer-lawyer Warnings for defense tech founders: entitlement, "move fast and break things," and who's swimming naked when the tide goes out Air-gapped networks, hot-swappable models, and gold-standard human-annotated evals The magic wand: what is Canada's actual role in the world? Why defense doesn't fit the traditional venture model — 32 potential customers on Earth Hiring, growing in "gulps," and why Sam is optimistic about this moment in Canadian history  

Sam Witherspoon is the CEO and co-founder of Anvil, a Canadian company building the information layer behind military intelligence, pulling data out of siloed networks and repositories, normalizing it into a single open standard, and serving it up through mission applications that turn work that used to take hours or days into seconds or minutes. Roughly a decade in, Anvil sells across NATO, has just crossed 100 people, and has never taken venture capital. We get into why Sam deliberately refuses commercial business, how a 30-minute training burden became his sharpest differentiator against the giants in the category, and the moral conversation Canada isn't having about lethal autonomous weapons systems. Sam is candid about the risks of the current defense funding boom, what he tells founders who show up looking for a government contract, and why he can't honestly promise a VC that a dollar in becomes a dollar thirteen out. In this episode: What Anvil actually does, and why everything lives in silos "Victory through information advantage" — the mission, and selling across NATO How Anvil differs from Palantir: 30 minutes of training, open APIs, no ambition to be everything to everyone Why target development and weapons interfacing shouldn't exist in the private sector Sensor fusion in practice: distinguishing a T-90 from a farmer's tractor AI, Jevons paradox, and the danger of abstracting the human out of a targeting decision Canada's bright red line on lethal autonomous weapons — and the debate we're avoiding The origin story: banker's boxes, Steelcase as first paying customer, then RCMP and USSOCOM Cracking Canadian procurement: an active clearance, a reference customer, and an engineer-lawyer Warnings for defense tech founders: entitlement, "move fast and break things," and who's swimming naked when the tide goes out Air-gapped networks, hot-swappable models, and gold-standard human-annotated evals The magic wand: what is Canada's actual role in the world? Why defense doesn't fit the traditional venture model — 32 potential customers on Earth Hiring, growing in "gulps," and why Sam is optimistic about this moment in Canadian history  

Zaid Al Hamami built Immunio in the early 2010s, sold it to Trend Micro, and is now back at it with Boost Security. He joins Nectar to talk about what changes when you build a cybersecurity company twice, fifteen years apart. The conversation traces Zaid's path from coding as a kid in Jordan to running product at Canonical, founding Immunio and navigating the RASP category consolidation, and the market insight behind Boost: securing software at the speed that AI now writes it. What gets covered: Why "if you build it, they will come" nearly cost Immunio its shot What Mythos actually changes for cybersecurity, and where it's overhyped The economics of running frontier models on every pull request (hint: tens of millions) Developer endpoints as the new CISO blindspot CI/CD pipelines as the next supply chain attack surface Why agile is dead and the best engineering teams are now three people How one major airline restructured 600 developers into 200 three-person pods Founder scar tissue from a first exit, and what ports over to the second company Plus the story of Zaid and Nectar being WeWork neighbors years before Amiral ended up investing in Boost.  

Zaid Al Hamami built Immunio in the early 2010s, sold it to Trend Micro, and is now back at it with Boost Security. He joins Nectar to talk about what changes when you build a cybersecurity company twice, fifteen years apart. The conversation traces Zaid's path from coding as a kid in Jordan to running product at Canonical, founding Immunio and navigating the RASP category consolidation, and the market insight behind Boost: securing software at the speed that AI now writes it. What gets covered: Why "if you build it, they will come" nearly cost Immunio its shot What Mythos actually changes for cybersecurity, and where it's overhyped The economics of running frontier models on every pull request (hint: tens of millions) Developer endpoints as the new CISO blindspot CI/CD pipelines as the next supply chain attack surface Why agile is dead and the best engineering teams are now three people How one major airline restructured 600 developers into 200 three-person pods Founder scar tissue from a first exit, and what ports over to the second company Plus the story of Zaid and Nectar being WeWork neighbors years before Amiral ended up investing in Boost.  

Bachar Elzein knew at 13 he wanted to build rockets. Twenty-five years later, he's the founder & CEO of Reaction Dynamics — the Montreal-based company building Canada's first orbital launch capability. In this episode, Bachar breaks down the hybrid propulsion breakthrough that makes RDX's rockets cheaper, safer, and deployable from virtually anywhere — including the back of a truck. We talk about what it takes to survive nine years building deep tech, skipping payroll, and betting everything on a technology the market wasn't ready for. We also get into the geopolitics: why Canada is the only G7 country without sovereign launch capability, what the recent federal backing means, and why allied nations are now paying attention. A rare conversation at the intersection of frontier engineering, national strategy, and founder resilience.  

Two years after first appearing on the Flagship Podcast, Nectar, Fred, and Dom reunite for a long-overdue conversation: Amiral Ventures has officially closed Fund 1. In this candid episode, the three partners trace the origins of the fund: how Fred's entrepreneurial journey (including co-developing LTE at Nortel and a successful Series A & B raise at Mnubo) first brought him together with Dom, a veteran M&A banker who went on to launch Xpnd Capital and deliver two IPOs. Nectar rounds out the team, coming off years of post-investment value creation work at PNR and crossing paths with Fred through this very podcast. The conversation gets real about what it actually takes to raise a fund from scratch: nearly three years in the trenches, no product to show, just a slide deck and conviction. They share what they've learned, the primacy of trust-building, the importance of giving candid feedback to founders (even on a "no"), and the gap they're filling in the Canadian ecosystem at the seed-to-Series A inflection point. The team also lifts the curtain on their Prosperity Decoded thesis, backing AI-native companies driving enterprise productivity, sustainability, and resilience; and spotlights their first two portfolio companies: Maxa (AI for CFOs and FP&A) and Maket (AI for residential architecture and design). They close on what excites them most: the caliber of Quebec founders, the community of successful exits now back as LPs and mentors, and the long game of building Canada's next generation of flagship technology companies.  

Today I'm joined by Anthony, co-founder of General Magic and one of the most exciting young builders coming out of the Canadian AI ecosystem. We talk about his journey from building robots as a kid to launching startups while still in university, what he learned from failing his first company, and how General Magic is rethinking the way humans interact with software using natural language. We also dive into their recent $7M seed round, going through a16z Speedrun, and why the future of computing might move beyond the traditional graphical interface. I really enjoyed this conversation, Anthony is thoughtful, ambitious, and building something genuinely interesting. Let's get into it.  

In this episode of the Flagship Podcast, we sit down with Tyler Reid, co-founder and CEO of Xona Space, to explore the future of satellite navigation and why GPS as we know it is no longer enough. Tyler shares his journey from space-obsessed kid to Stanford researcher to venture-backed space founder, and explains how Zona is building a next-generation positioning system designed for centimeter-level accuracy, stronger signals, and built-in security. We unpack how modern infrastructure depends on timing and location, why GPS is vulnerable to jamming and spoofing, and what new satellite constellations unlock for autonomous systems, defense, data centers, and everyday devices. We also go deep on building a hard-tech startup: raising capital for space infrastructure, launching satellites, assembling the right team, and navigating the long road from research to orbit. If you're interested in space tech, deep tech startups, autonomous systems, or the new space economy, this episode is for you. Topics covered: Why GPS needs an upgrade How next-gen satellite navigation works Centimeter-level positioning and resilient timing Space infrastructure and low-Earth orbit constellations From PhD research to space startup Lessons from building a hardware + space company The coming wave of space innovation and lunar missions

What does it really take to build a unicorn-scale company from Canada? At North Star, the Unicorn Panel brings together founders behind global tech leaders to talk candidly about ambition, scaling, capital, leadership, near-death moments, and the realities behind the highlight reel. Moderated by Sophie Boulanger, this conversation goes beyond success stories and digs into the hard decisions: when not to sell, how to think about control and cap tables, scaling teams, surviving crises, and building companies with long-term impact. You'll hear firsthand lessons from founders who have built and scaled category-defining businesses across gaming, mobility, and healthcare technology Topics covered include: Early exit offers vs long-term ambition Scaling from startup to global platform Fundraising strategy and cap table discipline Hiring executives and leadership evolution Crisis moments and near failures Building and keeping tech champions in Canada AI, moats, and the future of company building Recorded live at North Star — Inspiring Entrepreneurs in Montréal.