AI in Canadian Manufacturing — Sam Pirzadeh (Pioneera Ventures) | BC Founders Day Vancouver 2025

0:00Live from the Vancouver Convention Center, it's the BC Founders Day Vibe Lounge with your host Kevin Fel. Hey everyone, Kevin Fel here at the BC Founders Day with Sam Pirzadeh. Just getting to know folks here that that are bumping around uh of course inside of the uh the BC community and beyond. What brings you here today, Sam? Well, I'd like to be stay closer to the tech community, understand what's going on, understand what's coming through the pipeline in terms of new technologies and what are what just generally what people are working on. But one of the things that really excites me is just the environment, the vibrate the vibrating environment of the tech community. When I come and meet, I just

0:36get a lot of energy and u I go back to work and do what I do. >> That's so cool. It's it it's such exciting times in uh especially in the AI space of course. Um what brought you to uh BC Founders Day? Who are you looking to connect with? >> Good question. Well, what what I do is we our company acquires manufacturing companies uh across Canada. Um what after after our acquisition, what we're focused on is implementing technologies and modernization of these uh uh companies. A lot of the companies that we acquire their owners is from the boomer generation and it's less likely that these guys would have technology implementation into their manufacturing companies. So I like to see what's

1:16happening in terms of um technology entrepreneurship in the manufacturing space especially in the AI space. Right now we're talking about the age of AI. We have to prepare these companies for the next generation which is the the age of AI coming up and um staying connected to founders um and their and their new ideas and what they're working on just gives me ideas gives me a platform to go back and see what's possible from a implementation perspective.

1:44super fascinating. I mean that that that transition point from you know legacy manufacturing to you know however that's going to pivot into into the AI age. What are the some of the hurdles that you're you're seeing in your clientele and how do you shepherd them through that? >> The biggest thing that I'm worried about is is implementation and adaptability.

2:03People right now are a bit afraid of AI because they feel like it's going to replace them but that's not true. what the way ICAI is a tool that's going to enable people to just produce more and do more and make their jobs easier. So we can go automate the the parts of parts of PE, you know, people's jobs that they don't want to do. It's grunt work. It's is boring. They don't really like to do it anyways and keep the exciting parts for themselves. So essentially AI will be an assistant to them. That's how we see it, right?

2:32>> And also we use AI for analytics of the mass amount of data that manufacturing can produce from production line data, from warehouse data, procurement, engineering, and all of that put together. One of the one of the things that we like to do is an analysis of that data and extracting important information that will help us on the operational side.

2:50>> Yeah. Wow. Super critical pieces, right? Like there's there you know if we look at the analogy of of like how manufacturing processes have evolved, you know, it it it is quite an evolution of process. There's a lot of nuance in that, right? Um and now there's a supercharging capacity through AI, not only in knowledge extraction, but how to implement that. further right and enhance manufacturing processes in general.

3:16>> Um, what brought you in a focus to manufacturing in the first place? What what kind of fired you up to to tackle that region? >> Number one, my experience. I'm a I'm I'm by experience. I'm a manufacturer by education. I'm a software engineer. So, the two was brought together by educationally. Um I got an uh I got an education in technology integration and that was this first spark of um passion for me for bringing technology into manufacturing. But why focus on manufacturing? Why Canadian manufacturing is because I believe after co what we realized is that supply chain with full um outsourcing is the wrong way to do it. And a lot of manufacturing especially in core industries strategic

3:58industries are going to make a comeback in North America. But the only way they can be globally competitive is through automation and implementation of technology into these companies. That's the only way because we cannot compete with east you know east Asian countries with some Middle Eastern countries on cost. We cannot right. So we have to be as technology integrated and advance as as much as possible to be able to compete globally.

4:22>> So that's that's my passion. We want to create, we want to acquire these companies to avoid a lot of these companies going down south and and us losing on uh on on the um economical value of them within Canada. We want to acquire them. We want to grow them across Canada, grow them beyond Canada's borders and make them as efficient as possible through technology.

4:43>> You know, there's a lot of talk right now about data sovereignty. Yeah. Um and and that that's the sort of like, you know, when you look at it, it's it's an ethereal sort of, you know, intangible sort of like important uh product and and and um uh material uh that that we're all really concerned about in this new world climate.

5:03>> I I I think you're really on to something that is hyper important that we also look at hardware sovereignty. Yes. Right. >> Yes. uh and and and being able to source things as domestically as possible. Um not only for our own sort of like internal good, but to be uh competitive on a global scale as as everything evolves, right?

5:24>> That has to come with a lot of micro challenges. I I imagine you know besides, you know, the automation and the the competitiveness, you know, I'm sure there's a whole lot of new, let's face it, bureaucratic challenges. um what are some of those that you can speak about that you're helping your your clientele shepherd through?

5:43>> The biggest thing that we see is the is the risk of the tariffs. >> That's the biggest issue. A lot of the companies that I see, they have a big exposure to the US. So what do we do from this point forward? We are where we are. It's from a trade policy perspective. We are in negotiations. We think we're going to land on something around maybe 15% 10% tariff blanket overall. That's my bet. That's my prediction on what's going to happen.

6:06But what do we do from a manufacturing perspective? We have to diversify our supply chain. We have to look at Asian countries. We have to look at Europe as a market. And from a both on the supplier side and on the customer side and we cannot rely on the US um purely going forward as as a market. The US market is always going to be there, but in order to be active within that market, you're going to have to go into ad market and operate within that market. Absolutely. Which doesn't really gain anything on the can on the Canadian side. So we have to diversify our markets. We have to divers diversify our suppliers and customers. That's the way

6:39I see we we get past this the biggest hurdle that we we were facing. Thankfully our government is removing uh interprovincial tariffs which is going to absolutely help manufacturing in Canada because manufacturing as you know is a very wide supply chain. You can go back east for parts of your product acquisition. You can go back west part of acquisition, but you're putting it together and they're exporting it. If if we're charging interprovincial tariffs to our own economy, we can never be globally competitive. So that's the other issue that I see has to be removed and that's the other that's the next hurdle that we hope is going to get resolved by the current uh government.

7:19>> Absolutely. No, it's it's it's it's amazing that the, you know, the pressures of a changing world have finally confronted us to to look at, you know, this interproofional uh uh uh standpoint and and and paradox that has been everpresent uh and really make moves forward to to to knock those down. you know, it's uh it's it it's sad to see things, you know, evolve through pressure and and and and changing relationships, but uh it it feels like we're in a growing standpoint, at least, you know, policy-wise and certainly, you know, uh culturally, which informs policy overall if we really look at it, right? Um >> is there any sort of particular province uh that is looking like very attractive

8:02as as a a manufacturing hub inside of Canada? the biggest manufacturing hub in Canada is Ontario. That's the biggest manufacturing hub. But I see Alberta as as a very good place that you can establish manufacturing companies because of the the feasibility of uh running an operation there is is is is insanely higher because of the cost perspective.

8:23>> For for manufacturers to be able to be profitable, it's a matter of managing the cost and Alberta um presents that. But in terms of market, the biggest market is Ontario. >> Yeah. Yeah. And that, you know, if I intuit it into that, looking at the the expanse of our country, you know, if we're able to establish like Alberta and Ontario as two big hubs of manufacturing, that's really strategic to service the, you know, the massive expanse that our country has, right?

8:50>> Yes, exactly. We have the talent, we have the capital, we have the urgency in Canada. All we need is um trade policy, just clarity. What is it going to be? Yeah. >> Right. If it's going to be tariff, what is it going to be? just so that we can predict it, right? And we need the interprovincial tariffs gone as when that's gone, Canada thrive, but we also need investment within the manufacturing sector. We need capital to be able to upgrade what's already existing.

9:17>> Yeah. >> And we need to prepare the current manufacturing sector and prepare it for the age of artificial intelligence. We are behind in comparison to um US, in comparison to Europe when it comes to efficiency. So technology integration will help push us higher and be able to compete with that with our computing markets and our neighbors.

9:38>> Absolutely. Absolutely. And and you know, not only that, I would imagine like efficiency of getting the materials and resources that are already readily available within our country, you know, like we're just selling it everywhere else for the most part, right? if we're able to to find efficiencies in harnessing what's in our backyard in our, you know, in our mountains and our rivers and uh in as ecologically sound and and economically sound ways as possible. Um we're in a really strong point. We just need that bridge to to kick it all off, right?

10:10>> Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. >> Super fascinating, Sam. Like you're tackling the big things that, you know, were big things cresting and oh my god, they're here now. And uh yeah, you know, you're you're doing the good stuff here and and I can't wait to see what you know, the the the fruits of your and your contemporaries efforts are, your partners, and I know we're all going to win for it. So, thank you for coming by and and chatting with us. How can people connect with you and get a hold of you?

10:37>> Well, they can find me on LinkedIn, Sam Pirzadeh. I'm from Pioneera Ventures. Um you can find you can find us on our website or you can find us on LinkedIn. connect to connect to us if you have a manufacturing company that you are you you want you want to be you want it to be in good hands after after the handoff or if you want to scale you want to partner um to help you with the technology integration as well as the growth but you want to stay in the business you want to keep offering it you can still reach reach us and we we can help you with that >> cool stuff Sam thank you so much for

11:10coming by yeah Kevin Fel here at the Vancouver Convention Center BC founder Thursday with Sam. Check us out at the BC AAI ecosystem. We have meetups every month here in Vancouver. Uh Sam, if you haven't been already, we'd love to have you. Come by. It's an amazing community. You're more than welcome to speak on stage as well. It's a vibrant, amazing community of people doing things.

11:31>> I'd love the opportunity. >> Awesome. That's what it's all about, folks. Over and out for now. Thank you very much for watching.