One Canadian company is trying to lure talent back home—an effort that started with a holiday dinner.
In October, Wealthsimple hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for a group of Canadians (and a few “honorary Canadians”) in San Francisco, the company’s chief people officer, Diana McLachlan, shared in a LinkedIn post at the time.
Canada’s tech ecosystem has long contended with its talent leaving the country to build and work for companies in Silicon Valley. That early (by US standards) Thanksgiving meal marked the beginning of Wealthsimple’s North Star program, meant to guide expat talent back home.
“Our goal was simple: to have real conversations about what it would look like to build ambitious, globally impactful companies based in Canada,” McLachlan told BetaKit in a February email. “From there, North Star became a simple open invitation.”
“When the work is real and the ambition is high, Canadians want to build for Canadian companies.”
The open invitation comes in the form of an evergreen job posting calling on all Canadians abroad to apply to work for the Toronto-based FinTech. McLachlan said the company has not put any marketing dollars behind it, but the response was “overwhelming.” So far, the posting has garnered over 6,000 applications, resulting in seven offers, five hires, and nearly 70 ongoing conversations with candidates.
“To me, that says something important: when the work is real and the ambition is high, Canadians want to build for Canadian companies,” McLachlan said. Wealthsimple just wrapped its third North Star event earlier this week, this time in New York City, where 26 attendees joined for a happy hour in the Lower East Side.
Canadian tech has always reckoned with the tendency for homegrown talent to leave the country. According to data compiled by Leaders Fund, only 32.4 percent of Canadian-led “high-potential” startups created in 2024 were headquartered in Canada, while almost half were located in the US.
The brain drain conversation was reinvigorated earlier this year when it was revealed that acclaimed San Francisco accelerator Y Combinator had removed Canada as a permitted site of investment. While the decision was eventually reversed, Garry Tan, YC’s Winnipeg-born president and CEO, has commented on surprise run-ins with numerous Canadian founders looking to base their startups in San Francisco.
But, as the North Star job posting says: “what if the next big thing isn’t there—it’s here?”
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McLachlan said Canadian talent has historically left because they’ve felt bigger opportunities were elsewhere, and it’s not just the Valley. North Star has received around 1,000 applications from Europe, the United Kingdom, and other global tech hubs.
“Ambition is gravity,” she said. “Big, meaningful problems pull people in.”
Through North Star, Wealthsimple is trying to create that gravity. If a mission is bold enough, people will stay, McLachlan said.
North Star “offers them the chance to do the most meaningful work of their career while staying connected to home,” McLachlan said. “It’s not a compromise.”
Feature image courtesy Wealthsimple.
Disclosure: Wealthsimple vice-president of payments strategy and chief compliance officer, Hanna Zaidi, sits on BetaKit’s board of directors.