@michaelmontano

This is not a post with YC interview advice. There are already plenty of those. Instead this is a quick note for any fellow Canadians attending YC interviews in the next week.

Two years ago my company, BackType, was one of the first companies with Canadian founders to receive funding from Y Combinator. Since that summer every batch seems to have more and more strong teams coming from north of the border. Here are a few (non-interview specific) things I wanted to share with teams coming down this coming week:

1. Get in touch. Many of you already have and I hope I have been helpful answering questions about interviews, visas and YC in general. Of course, I am happy to meet up with or chat with all founders (not just Canadians :)). I had coffee with a number of intervewees this week and the quality of teams is very high — PG, Harj, et al. will have some tough decisions to make.

2. Don't worry about visas. I have been through it all when it comes to visas. In fact, my co-founder, Chris, could probably moonlight as an immigration attorney at this point. We can offer lots of pointers with respect to navigating the immigration system (as can dozens of other YC founders), but ultimately this should be the last thing on your mind with your interview just around the corner.

3. Canadian dinner. Last year I attended a "Canadian dinner" in San Francisco with a bunch of YC interviewees and some other transplant entrepreneurs (@danmartell, @acharoo, and others). Let me know exactly when you're in town and I'll organize something similar.

4. Enjoy your trip. If you are serious about doing whatever it takes to succeed then you are probably planning to move here regardless of next week's outcome. For as long as I can remember I planned to move here after graduating. Y Combinator was a great fast track, but I would have done anything to get down here. My 18 hour visit for our YC interview (I had to fly back the same day for my last engineering final) was actually my second visit to the area, but like the first it only confirmed that I had to come back as soon as possible.

Good luck and please feel free to shoot me an e-mail.