Startup & Innovation Research, Strategy & Education
My passion for startups and innovation dates back to my childhood, when I worked summers for my uncle Rob, who took a gamble on a new technology to found Sim Video out of his basement with a single camera. Over the coming decades he gave me a blow-by-blow account of the ups and downs leading to the company’s growth into Sim International, with over 500 employees on four continents providing camera, lighting, grip, post production and studios, working with James Cameron in the early years of digital cinema and servicing high-end productions like GAME OF THRONES.
When making the BEYOND THE PELOTON (BTP) series about Cervélo cycle’s new Tour de France-winning team and the company’s historic run in the late 2000s, I reported directly to the company’s pioneering co-founder Gerard Vroomen, who also shared what it’s like to found and grow a tech-centered startup into a world-class brand.
In 2010 I co-founded my own tech startup Legitmix, and put together a team of music industry vanguards like Biz3 co-founder Kathryn Frazier, Sacha Jenkins of ego trip and Mass Appeal, releasing PR projects with Diplo, Pusha T, El-p and DJ Earworm.
Then in 2014, I starting working with leading digital studio Jam3, creating innovative content and experiences about innovation for Success Academy, Google ZOO and Microsoft, as well as Webby, Canadian Screen Award and Cannes Lion-winning interactive documentaries NUCLEAR DISSENT, CHANGE GOUT and SONS OF GALLIPOLI – not to mention telling Jam3’s story from BEAR 71 onwards through video case studies I co-created.
Recent related work includes a founders education series for startup incubator MaRS, brand storytelling for Detroit-based cannabis startup Common Citizen, and content strategy and production for Liquor Labs’ low-carbon-footprint waste-reuse Vodkow vodka and ethanol fuel factory. 2023 also saw me flex my documentary skills to tell Microsoft user stories around the world and provide strategy and fundraising support for web3 startup Biom, an exciting new platform founded by my former Jam3 colleagues.
Decades of personal and work experience contributes to my ever-evolving qualitative methodology, in turn informed by constant research for a Seneca College class I teach on the theory and practice of transmedia and documentary co-creation using AI, web3 and proto-metaverse XR technologies.