Opinion: Canadian startups need to stop playing slow

Written by Alistair Vigier, CEO of Caseway, a Vancouver based technology company that partners with other tech companies through joint revenue deals to bring automation into outdated workflows. 

News broke recently that Y Combinator would no longer invest in Canadian-incorporated startups. Some in Canada responded with the usual hand-wringing about brain drain and sovereignty. I was happy about this. Maybe this was the wake-up call we needed.

And evidently, the shock worked. Within days Y Combinator reversed its decision and added Canada back to its list of accepted countries. But whether YC’s policy sticks or not isn’t the point. The episode spotlighted an uncomfortable truth. If Canadian founders want to build big, competitive companies, we need to stop playing slow.

Y Combinator did not reject Canadian founders or talent. It rejected Canadian paperwork. The accelerator was willing to fund Canadians, just not Canadian-incorporated companies. If you wanted into YC under the short-lived policy, you had to reincorporate in the United States, Singapore, or the Cayman Islands.

In other words, structure your company like you’re actually planning to scale globally. As someone who has built a legal technology startup in Vancouver, I understand this firsthand. I’ve seen what happens when you build inside a system that rewards caution over speed. If you want to create something big and competitive, doing it the “Canadian way” often just gets in the way.

Things happen faster in the United States. That speed is often the difference between winning and fading out. Take my experience with Caseway. Not long ago, we signed a major partnership deal in the United States to integrate our legal automation software (called CaseForm) into 8am, which is used by tens of thousands of law firms. From first call to final signature, it took just a few months.

By contrast, when we attempted a similar deal here in Canada (with a well-known Vancouver-based legal company), it went nowhere. We had meeting after meeting. There was lots of polite enthusiasm and “let’s keep talking” vibes, but no decision ever got made. The contrast was glaring. In the U.S., we had hustle and closure. In Canada, we got stuck in polite limbo.

Speed is the currency of startups

In the United States, speed is a competitive advantage. Companies move quickly because they know their rivals won’t wait.

In Canada, too often we stall. We set up committees, run small pilots, stretch timelines from quarters into years. Founders end up stuck waiting for someone (an investor, a customer, a partner) to make up their mind. By the time a Canadian startup gets a “yes,” an American competitor could be months or years ahead.

Y Combinator’s own numbers illustrate this problem. Startups that reincorporate in the United States tend to achieve roughly twice the valuation of those that stay Canadian. There’s a reason top Canadian startups like Instacart and Clearco flipped early.

And consider this: the Canadian companies that went through YC and became unicorns nearly all flipped into Delaware C-corps along the way. The message is pretty clear. Forget the flag-waving debate over U.S. vs. Canada, the United States simply makes it easier to raise capital, close deals, and scale aggressively. Canada, on the other hand, makes it easy to get stuck in the mud.

It’s not that we lack talent or ideas. Canadian founders are brilliant, and our technical skills are world-class. But too often that potential gets smothered by a culture of hesitation. Our business landscape is dominated by large players who take forever to make decisions and rarely place bold bets. Our investors often play it safe. They prefer the certainty of mutual funds, bonds, or real estate over the uncertainty of technology startups in emerging industries. Our institutions move slowly, and sometimes they’re proud of that.

This environment can lull Canadian entrepreneurs into a false sense of progress. Many don’t realize that polite interest is not the same as a real commitment. A CEO saying “I love what you’re doing, let’s keep in touch” isn’t a signed contract.

A dozen meetings with angel investors that yield “we’ll think about it” are a cardinal warning sign. Startups can’t afford to “keep talking” forever. If deals aren’t getting signed, all the feel-good conversations in the world won’t extend your runway.

Canadian founders need to think bigger

I am proud to be Canadian. I was born here and I built Caseway here. But national pride should never get in the way of smart business decisions. If you’re a founder who is serious about growth, you need to go where the capital and the customers are.

Often, that means incorporating in the United States. You have to do this not because you’re disloyal, but because you’re setting your company up in the best possible environment. Setting up a Delaware corporation or a headquarters in the United States isn’t “selling out”; it’s stepping up to play in the big leagues.

Some will say that this mindset fuels the brain drain, and maybe it does to a degree. But blaming the United States for providing a more fertile ground for startups won’t change our situation.

Instead of complaining that YC briefly turned its back on Canadian domiciles, we should be asking why Canadian investors and institutions aren’t stepping up to make staying an equally attractive option. Why is fast execution so difficult in Canada? Why do our entrepreneurs feel they must relocate or restructure abroad just to access the same growth opportunities their American counterparts take for granted?

Most founders I know aren’t itching to leave Canada. They’re forced to look elsewhere because the capital and networks they need are often south of the border. The best accelerators, the VCs that write big early cheques, the first customers willing to take a chance, many of these are in the U.S. ecosystem, moving at U.S. speed.

I don’t want Canada to lose its best technology minds forever. But I also don’t want to watch those minds waste away in endless Canadian networking coffees and “pitch-prep” meetings while their U.S. peers are out signing term sheets and landing contracts.

My hope is that more Canadian startups will do what it takes to win, even if that means going abroad, and then bring those wins back home. Build abroad if you must, but use that momentum to spark change in Canada. And in the meantime, let’s stop acting like a Canadian incorporation is some sacred badge of honor.

If choosing Delaware over British Columbia is what lets you grow, then do it. Flip the company. Close that deal. Grow the business. You can still hire Canadians. You can still contribute to our economy and invest in our communities. The difference is you’ll be doing so from a position of strength, not stagnation.

One personal example is that after a lot of effort, my team is closing a $1.5 million pre-seed round for Caseway on February 7, 2026. We’re thrilled. But I’ll be frank, raising that money in Canada was far harder than it probably would’ve been in Silicon Valley. The demand was there, but the urgency wasn’t.

Fewer local investors were willing to move quickly and lead; those who did step up took their time. We made it work, but the process reinforced how much hungrier the U.S. startup scene is. This needs to change if we want the next global success stories to come from Canadian soil.

The good news is that a wake-up call can prompt action. Y Combinator’s short-lived ban on Canadian startups certainly rattled cages. It even prompted some colorful responses from top Canadian investors – “I guess being a f***ing pain works,” one said of the quick reversal. YC heard the message and corrected their course.

I’d like to think our collective pushback—founders, investors, media—made a difference. But we shouldn’t need a Silicon Valley accelerator to hold up a mirror for us to recognize these issues. Let’s use this moment. Let’s actually fix the slow-moving, play-it-safe tendencies that hold us back.

Y Combinator might not always wait on Canada to get its act together. Founders here shouldn’t be waiting, either. The time to pick up the pace is now. Each of us in the Canadian startup community needs to act with the urgency and boldness this moment demands, before someone else eats our lunch.