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President Donald Trump meets with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House on Feb. 13, 2017.
“With the kind of uncertainty, entrepreneurs are finding it a riskier idea that they are going to be to move or stay in the U.S., so there has been an increase in the volume of applications.”
One of the companies Extreme Venture Partners invested in is Fulfili.IO, a business management software startup. Co-Founder Sharoon Thomas, says they chose Canada over the U.S. because “the U.S. system is very difficult to navigate.” Thomas says recen tevents in the U.S. now makes him feel good about his decision. “There’s a lot of things uncertain about a startup and you don’t want one more thing on your list to be worried about, so I think that stability is a big factor.”
Political uncertainty led a group of entrepreneurs to set up True North, a for-profit venture designed to help U.S. tech workers with H1B visas to relocate to Vancouver.
Co-founder Michael Tippett says “tens of thousands” of people have come to its website and they are working with tech companies’ human resources managers to explore options to move teams to Vancouver. “If people have valuable skills and they are able to come in and contribute to the economy, they are more than welcome to make Canada their home.”
San Francisco based payment startup Kash plans new hires in Toronto because of fear of disruption from the Trump administration. Kash CEO Kasra Nejation is a Canadian citizen and U.S. green card holder, who was born in Iran. “I’m 100% sure more U.S. firms will move offices to Canada and more Canadian firms will hire people stranded because of this order.”
Nejation sent a tweet after the executive order first hit telling H1B visa holders he would help them find a job in Canada. Nejatian says he received 200 emails in two days in response.
“It almost doesn’t matter how the courts end up determining this law…people don’t want uncertainty.”
See also: Iranian startup exec shifts plans because ‘the US is just not a stable country’
