A Gen Z founder built a $35-million startup in Canada, then moved it to the U.S.
Mai Trinh co-founded a fintech startup valued at US$35 million, then relocated to San Francisco. She points to visa delays, funding gaps, and limited fintech infrastructure in Canada.
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By Torontoer Staff
Mai Trinh co-founded Internet Backyard, a fintech infrastructure startup valued at about US$35 million, while finishing business school in Canada. She incorporated the company in Delaware and moved operations to San Francisco to scale, citing immigration hurdles, thin venture capital pools, and limited fintech infrastructure in Canada.
Trinh, an international student from Vietnam who graduated from Simon Fraser University, frames the decision as pragmatic. "You wake up one day, you realize your worth, and then you get out," she said. She and co-founder Gabriel Ravacci, who is from Brazil, concluded that operating from the U.S. made growth and hiring easier.
How funding and infrastructure influenced the move
Internet Backyard closed a US$4.5-million round at a US$25-million post-money valuation within a week after incorporating in Delaware. Trinh contrasts that swift access to capital with the fundraising landscape in Western Canada: in the first quarter of 2025, pre-seed funding across the region totalled roughly US$3 million.
Her point is structural. Local micro funds exist and often support first-time founders, but limited fund sizes can make follow-on financing and rapid scaling difficult. For fintech startups, that problem compounds with gaps in domestic financial infrastructure and regulatory support.
Visa barriers and the maths of immigration
Immigration rules played a decisive role. As international graduates, Trinh and her co-founder needed to accumulate employment and credentials to raise their Comprehensive Ranking System score enough for permanent residency. They found the required score rising faster than they could meet it while simultaneously building a company.
Trinh says the Start-Up Visa Program also falls short in practice. "The Startup Visa Program in Canada currently has a 10-year wait time. It just doesn’t work for us," she said. She noted that the U.S. visa options, including H‑1B and E categories, are more straightforward for founders and employees looking to stay and grow a business.
What founders encounter on the ground
For early-stage founders, the daily constraints add up: fundraising cycles that favour U.S. timelines, fewer specialised fintech partners, and immigration processes that require external employment or additional credentials. Trinh described taking French classes to try to improve her CRS score while working full time.
She also built a community called Red Thread for Gen Z tech founders in Canada. The group saw strong engagement, but limited funding and time constraints forced her to wind it down when priorities shifted to scaling the company.
Reasons Canada still matters for tech founders
Trinh is clear that Canada retains strategic advantages, especially in data centre infrastructure. The country’s climate, available land and water, and energy resources make it competitive for data-centre growth and energy management solutions.
It’s a huge industry that can grow if the government is willing to support it, particularly when it comes to data centre energy management.
Mai Trinh
Internet Backyard has already run customer pilots in Vancouver, showing that product-market fit can begin in Canada even if later-stage scaling happens abroad.
Simple changes that could retain founders
- Faster, entrepreneur-focused immigration pathways that do not require founders to pause company building
- Larger, follow-on venture funds to support scaling beyond pre-seed stages
- Targeted fintech and data-centre policies to reduce operational friction for startups
Trinh’s experience highlights how policy and capital shortages send talent to markets that offer both easier visas and deeper funding. She described meeting highly impressive founders in San Francisco who were originally from Canada. "It’s such a shame," she said.
What next for founders choosing where to build
For Gen Z founders weighing location, the calculus is pragmatic: access to capital, ease of hiring, and immigration timelines matter as much as product and market fit. Some founders will continue to start in Canada and relocate as they scale. Others may incorporate abroad from day one to avoid later frictions.
Trinh says she would consider returning if policy and funding environments changed. Until then, Canada will likely remain an origin point for talent, and the U.S. will stay the destination for rapid scaling.
For now, the case of Internet Backyard illustrates a broader trend: Canada can incubate great ideas, but structural gaps push many founders to plant their growth where the ecosystem better matches the pace of modern tech companies.
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