She tried to build Vancouver’s Y Combinator. Why did she leave to build a US startup instead?

Mai Trinh and her team wanted to build Vancouver’s Y Combinator . This summer, she founded Red Thread Club, a community for the city’s Gen Z tech scene. But when it came time to build her own AI startup, she decamped to San Francisco instead.

“The US lets us test, ship, and scale faster before bringing those capabilities back into Canada the right way.”

Trinh, a graduate of Simon Fraser University, says she faced an easier pathway to citizenship and fewer barriers to building a company in the United States. So this fall, she sunsetted Red Thread Club and moved to San Francisco to work on her startup, Internet Backyard. She and Internet Backyard co-founder Gabriel Ravacci have now raised $4.5 million USD ($6.2 million CAD) in a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) at a $25-million US