High Tech Couture. Created and executed by some of MaRS’ most ambitious clients, these self-described “explorers” aren’t afraid to take risks and fundamentally believe that innovation is their only job.
The late billionaire Roy Thomson got an unlikely start as a corporate giant, selling radios and auto parts from the trunk of his car. Before a young Izzy Asper became the owner of his own media empire, he worked such long hours, even while he was courting his future wife, that her family nicknamed him “coffee” because that was all he had time for. Canada’s last generation of media titans, who often started with nothing, built their companies into massive enterprises of content and distribution because they shared a dogged perseverance, a willingness to take risks, and the ability to seize an opportunity.
Oreon Mounter
The Royal Few

Theroyalfew.com (TRF) is an exclusive social network with benefits that targets the 19 to 35 socially active demographic.
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Joanna Track
Dealuxe.ca

The goal at Dealuxe is to own the position of Canada’s ultimate online destination for contemporary fashion brands for women.
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Chad Hamre
Ethical Ocean

Ethical Ocean is the destination to shop for eco-friendly, fairly-traded organic, and vegan products.
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Josh Sookman
Guardly

Guardly is a mobile safety service that allows you to instantly alert, connect to and collaborate with a trusted safety network in an emergency.
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Romeo Candido, Davin Lengyel, James Milward
HERD.fm

Herd.fm believes people need to share their love of music and share the locations that matter to them. Herd.fm facilitates this need in an innovative way—by using mobile phones to create shared location-based musical connections.
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Jacques Chamberland
HugeMonster

HugeMonster builds casual social games targeted at the most highly-valued, least-served user demographic, using a reusable and scalable cloud-based game platform.
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Simon de Boer & Nic Sulsky
InGamer

InGamer is a real-time social gaming platform played in conjunction with live sporting events.
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Ray Newal & Areef Reza
Jigsee Inc.

Jigsee helps to entertain and educate millions of people in emerging markets by streaming free, high-quality video content to basic phones over low-bandwidth networks.
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Neil Sweeney
JUICE Mobile

JUICE has quickly emerged as Canada’s leading mobile marketing and advertising firm, ushering more than 50 leading brands into the mobile space.
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Grant Ritchie
Locationary

Locationary offers a sophisticated cloud-based management system that makes it easy for publishers to collect, manage, and enhance their local business places’ data.
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Wilf Dinnick
OpenFile

OpenFile is a new model to gather, share and report local news—you suggest the story, we assign the professional reporter, and together we shape the news.
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Kunal Gupta
Polar Mobile

Polar Mobile provides media Publishers around the world with a Platform that makes it fast and easy to launch mobile Apps across every smartphone.
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Ray Reddy
PushLife

PushLife was a mobile commerce platform for buying and managing digital goods (music, ringtones etc.) across a range of mobile devices.
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Sami Siddique
Synaptop

Synaptop is a cutting-edge cloud-based personal computing solution that lets individuals within the enterprise collaborate seamlessly with consumers
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Shayan Hamidi
TheRedPin

TheRedPin.com is Canada’s first online brokerage, and the GTA’s only one-stop condo destination, where every new and pre-construction condo has an in-depth profile.
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Jesse Moeinifar & Ali Ghafour
Viafoura

Viafoura is a cloud-based social conversation platform that provides online brands and publishers with a suite of social applications and services in one fully-integrated solution.
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Barbara Tassa and Danny Wang
WeblishPal

WeblishPal puts learning back into the hands of students and provides boundless income earning opportunities for tutors. And we make it easy for both English learners and tutors to connect across international boundaries
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A Word from the MaRS ICE Advisory Team


MESSAGE FROM SUE MCGILL

Since joining the MaRS IT, communications and entertainment (ICE) practice, I have had the privilege of working with our Mod Media Makers as an advisor. Recently, I sat down with all 17 at the ultrahip Gladstone Hotel.

MESSAGE FROM NATHAN MONK

We walk in cities planned on grids, sit in rooms with four walls and in classrooms with chairs all facing one direction. We use one-way communication. But thankfully, new media have derailed linear living, and the revolution is being led by individuals like our Mod Media Makers.