Sector: Technology, education.
Principal: Taylor Duncan
Employees: One
Unique Selling Proposition: Enable businesses to integrate ethical AI for increased efficiency while protecting jobs.
Target audience/market: Small and mid-sized businesses on Vancouver Island and in Greater Vancouver that want to increase efficiency without cutting staff.
Website: northgroup.ai
Artificial intelligence is reshaping business, and Taylor Duncan is working to ensure small companies are not left behind in an AI-driven world. As the founder of North Group, he helps owner-led companies adopt AI to increase productivity without cutting jobs.
Building custom AI systems that connect departments, automate routine work and train staff to use the technology effectively, North Group gives smaller teams the capacity of much larger corporations.
“Right now, most AI tools lack context,” says the 22-year-old Duncan. “What we’re building is the equivalent of bringing every employee to every meeting.” In practice, that could look like a marketing agent knowing what sales have closed, a sales agent understanding what’s been onboarded, proposals drafted automatically based on past work and routed for approval in minutes instead of days. “It’s cross-functional.” he says. “One brain.”
Raised in a family of entrepreneurs, Duncan recalls building a homemade stop sign at age 10 and halting neighbourhood traffic to sell a biweekly car-wash subscription. “When I got my first sale, I realized I didn’t actually know how to wash a car,” he says. So he hired neighbourhood kids to do the work and made himself the permanent salesperson. “That’s kind of how I’ve always operated.”
Now a business student specializing in entrepreneurship at the University of Victoria’s Peter B. Gustavson School of Business, Duncan runs his bootstrapped startup while completing his studies. His work has already earned national recognition, placing second at the Entrepreneurs’ Organization’s 2025 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards Canada and being named one of 12 finalists in the Enactus Canada 2026 Student Entrepreneur Competition.
The idea for North Group evolved from one of his earlier ventures, a social media agency, where Duncan’s clients were AI curious, but didn’t know where to start. After seeing the same gap again and again, he built for it.
The company combines hands-on education with a SaaS platform that can provide up to 10 AI agents per employee, all connected through a shared knowledge base. After learning how a business operates, AI is designed and integrated directly into workflows to automate manual tasks. North Group trains staff and provides ongoing support.
For Duncan, his technology isn’t about replacing people, it’s about freeing them. “We don’t want to reduce head count. We want a 50-person organization to have the output of 500 because they’re utilizing the technology.”
Duncan says he is aware of the apprehension surrounding AI, but warns of the risk of not adapting. “If those small businesses don’t adopt AI, the mega corporations that do will wipe them out.”
