Being an Entrepreneur | February 2026
- Chris Herbert
- 7 hours ago
- 2 min read
Featured in this Post
This Gen Z Pair Built a $34M Startup in Canada, Only to Move to U.S.
Two Gen Z founders—neither of them Canadian—built Internet Backyard while studying in Vancouver, raising $4.5 million USD at a $34.5 million CAD valuation before relocating to San Francisco to scale.
Co-founder Mai Trinh is an international student from Vietnam; her co-founder Gabriel Ravacci is from Brazil. Their platform, Gnomos, automates billing and financial metrics for data center operators still managing finances on spreadsheets.
After incorporating in Delaware, Internet Backyard closed its funding round in just one week. By contrast, across all of Western Canada in Q1 2025, total pre-seed funding was just $3 million USD.
Trinh cited Canada's fragmented regulatory landscape and slower customer adoption: "US customers are more comfortable piloting. In Canada, procurement cycles are slower, and people wait for regulatory certainty."
While this story highlights ecosystem gaps, it also raises a question for Canadian policymakers and educators: are we investing enough in developing homegrown entrepreneurial talent?
Canada's universities and accelerators attract ambitious founders from around the world—but if the ecosystem can't retain them, the same barriers will push Canadian-born founders south too. "You have all these micro funds that really want to support first-time founders," Trinh noted. "But because they don't have enough capital, it becomes very hard."
The priority should be building pathways for Canadian entrepreneurs to launch, fund, and scale here—not just training talent for export.
Date: January 27, 2026 | Source: This Gen Z pair built a $34M startup in Canada, only to move to U.S.
Y Combinator Reverses Decision, Will Invest in Canadian-Domiciled Startups Again
Y Combinator's decision to restore Canada to its list of accepted countries—after quietly removing it late last year—offers relief for Canadian founders, but also exposes a deeper vulnerability in the domestic startup ecosystem.
The original change would have forced Canadian startups to reincorporate in the U.S., Cayman Islands, or Singapore to participate in the world's most influential accelerator.
That a single Silicon Valley institution could send shockwaves through Canadian tech highlights how reliant the ecosystem remains on external validation and capital.
The reversal came after sustained backlash, with investor John Ruffolo summarizing the outcome bluntly: "I guess being a fucking pain works." Yet the debate revealed a divided community—some argued YC was simply formalizing what ambitious founders already do, while others pushed back on the narrative that redomiciling is necessary to attract capital. Former Panache Ventures partner Chris Neumann noted that "virtually every US VC is willing to invest in a Canadian-domiciled company."
For entrepreneurs, this episode raises strategic questions beyond incorporation. Only 32.4 percent of Canadian-led high-potential startups created in 2024 were headquartered in Canada.
The underlying gaps—limited early-stage risk capital, slower procurement cycles, and weaker global signaling from domestic programs—persist. Canadian founders should advocate for stronger homegrown alternatives while recognizing that building for global markets often means navigating ecosystems beyond our borders.
Date: February 5, 2026 | Source: Y Combinator reverses decision, will invest in Canadian-domiciled startups again
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