A Toronto founder recently described the heartbreak of losing her best software developer to a U.S. company just months after training him. The offer came with better pay, stock options, and a clear promotion path. He left within a week. It’s a story that quietly repeats itself across Canada’s Black-led startups. For many of these founders, the challenge is no longer getting their first cheque or client. It’s keeping the people who can help them scale.
Every departure drains more than labour. It takes away momentum, culture, and continuity. In an ecosystem where access to capital already lags behind the mainstream, losing top performers can turn a promising firm into a one-person hustle again.
The Talent Tug Of War
Canada’s talent story is complicated. On paper, the country continues to attract skilled immigrants at record levels. But research shows that many of those same professionals eventually move south for broader opportunities and higher pay. A recent analysis from Canadian Immigrant found that although overall Canada-to-U.S. migration has slowed, skilled workers, particularly in technology, engineering, and management, still cross the border in large numbers. In 2024, the median wage offered to Canadian applicants under the U.S. PERM system exceeded USD 130,000, highlighting how salary gaps continue to pull talent away.
Reports from Statistics Canada echo the trend: Canada is a magnet for global talent but struggles to retain its own, especially in STEM fields. For small Black-owned startups, this competition hits harder. They are hiring from the same shrinking pool of skilled professionals that large firms and U.S. recruiters target, but with fewer resources to match salaries or benefits.
Why It Hits Black Founders Harder
For most Black founders in Canada, the fight for talent sits on top of an already uneven foundation. Many of their businesses are self-funded or bootstrapped, with limited ability to offer the salaries and equity packages that high-growth firms use to retain staff. A Business Development Bank of Canada study found that 61 percent of Black entrepreneurs cite hiring and keeping skilled employees as one of their biggest growth barriers.
This constraint is about more than payroll. It’s structural. Black founders often lack access to the mentorship networks, HR systems, and long-term investors that make stable hiring possible. So, when trained employees leave for bigger firms or cross the border, they take with them institutional memory and relationship capital that young startups can’t easily replace.
The result is a quiet cycle of rebuilding. Founders spend more time retraining new hires than expanding the business. Each loss stretches capacity and delays growth.
Policy And Ecosystem Implications
Canada has made progress in funding Black entrepreneurs, but few programmes focus on workforce retention. Initiatives such as the Black Entrepreneurship Program (BEP) and regional loan funds primarily target capital gaps, not the human ones. Yet the two are inseparable. Without teams that stay, even well-funded firms struggle to scale.
The broader ecosystem could learn from tech accelerators that combine mentorship with access to skilled labour pools. Partnerships between Black-owned firms and universities, coding bootcamps, or industry associations could build steady pipelines of trained talent. Remote-first work models may also help small founders hire competitively, tapping skilled workers across provinces or from the Caribbean and Africa who prefer flexible arrangements.
Policymakers, too, can help by creating incentives for skilled professionals to remain with early-stage Canadian firms; through retention credits, targeted grants, or portable benefits. These tools exist in other sectors; applying them to small and diverse businesses would help close the gap between ambition and capacity.
The Real Cost Of Leaving
Talent loss is not a headline issue, but it shapes the future of Canada’s entrepreneurial ecosystem more than any press release about funding ever could. When skilled employees move south or exit for better pay, the effect ripples beyond a single business. It limits the creation of wealth, jobs, and mentorship networks that sustain Black enterprise in the long term.
Canada has worked hard to position itself as a destination for global talent. The next test is whether it can become a place where that talent stays, and where Black founders can build companies strong enough to keep them. Until then, every resignation letter is a reminder that progress without people is only half the story.
