When Vancouver-founded workflow automation startup Gumloop announced this week it was opening a new office in the city, the move struck a familiar nerve in the local tech ecosystem.
The company’s San Francisco headquarters will remain its base of operations, but founder and CEO Max Brodeur-Urbas says the Vancouver office is about something more: slowing the brain drain.
“We’re doing this for two reasons,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Ambitious, and exceptional Canadians shouldn’t have to leave home to pursue work at high growth AI startups. Canada gave us our start, and we want to reinvest in the Canadian startup scene. We’ll use the space to host events and grow the tech community.”
The new office, he later clarified, won’t just be for engineers — hiring will take place “across the board.”
A reversal of sorts
The announcement comes less than a year after Gumloop moved its headquarters south, following a USD $17-million Series A. At the time, Brodeur-Urbas framed San Francisco as an irresistible gravitational force.
“It feels like San Francisco is a very strong magnet for exceptional talent, and Vancouver suffers from being too close to that magnet,” he told BetaKit in January. “It’s just too easy for someone who’s exceptional to get paid three times the amount in California and move down, and then they’re just based there.”
That comment resurfaced this week in response to the Vancouver announcement.
Mixed reactions
Dennis Pilarinos, one of Vancouver’s most respected serial entrepreneurs (Microsoft, AWS, Buddybuild, now Unblocked), recalled the remark and called it “particularly unkind.”
“There are many ‘exceptional people’ in Vancouver/Canada,” he wrote. “I know because we’ve been building and hiring here for years.”
Others welcomed Gumloop’s return. Anthony Green, a founder and cybersecurity leader, replied simply: “Eyyy! Welcome back!” Kyle Nianga, CEO of Contntr Growth, praised the idea of companies giving back to their roots: “There’s something powerful about building where you’re from while still thinking global.”
Why it matters
The conversation echoes a long-standing tension in Canada’s tech sector. For years, founders and talent have wrestled with whether to build at home or chase the resources, capital, and compensation of the Bay Area. Statistics underline the challenge: more than 42,000 Canadian-born residents moved to the United States in 2022, the largest single-year jump in nearly a decade.
By opening in Vancouver while keeping its HQ in San Francisco, Gumloop may be signalling a hybrid model—leveraging the capital and density of Silicon Valley while reinvesting in Canadian talent and community.
Whether that approach will help stem the brain drain or simply spotlight it remains an open question. But one thing is certain: in a city still debating how best to retain its exceptional people, Gumloop’s return has people talking.