In 15 minute blocks, three cultural businesses of the next generation will present their company and their experience within a Montreal incubator. Each presentation will bring forth the organization and its projects, the training received and the opportunities that arose during their incubation, as well as the new objectives and challenges that came out of this experience.
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Magnéto, Visually Tasteful and MySmartJourney will thus present new and inspiring entrepreneurial visions and the methods available to support them.
The human voice is all about building connexions between people.
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Zoe Gagnon-Paquin wanted to work with the voice as an art material when she founded Magnéto in 2016. Magnéto is Quebec's first organization dedicated to making creative, high production value podcasts, spanning genres such as documentary, audio drama, soundwalks as well as new and experimental forms of creative spoken audio. Magnéto commissions and broadcasts new pieces from its artists and also creates branded podcasts for companies and non-profits. Magnéto is currently incubated at the MTLab.
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Zoé studied philosophy at the undergraduate level at McGill University and went on to work as a radio host, producer and radio documentary director, and as a team leader in union organizing, before founding Magnéto. She currently sits on the Board of Culture Montréal.
Self-taught artistically and graduated in business, Kevork Demirdjian always had the drive to be able to make a living off his passion. Through his exploration of photography, motion and design, he is able to translate ideas from draft to final product; his appreciation for music, art and fashion results in producing and conveying them in a visually tasteful manner.
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Through his unique style of photography, he places the subject at home in their universe. Kevork has worked with High Klassified, Fabrikate, Green Hypnotic and Chris James among others, adapting to a wide range of artistic styles.
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His work can be found on streaming music platforms such as Vice, Noisey, Thump, Le Devoir, Fader and Stoney Roads. He was also interviewed by IX Daily.
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Through these projects he created Visually Tasteful, a platform governed under a specific creative mood and æsthetic, relating to culture through visual interpretation. Visually Tasteful made it in the first cohort of Dawson College's incubator icMTL between 2016 et 2017.
Isabelle Lopez is the founder of the MySmartJourney product.
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MySmartJourney is a collection of interactive transmitter kits composed of “magical chips” which enhance physical places with playful or experiential contents. These chips can be placed in very little time, just about anywhere. The user can access selected content by tapping their phone on or around the chip, allowing for site specific, real-time digital experiences.
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MySmartJourney offers a solution that enhances physical places with playful or experiential content. Interactive transmitter kits uses “magical chips” that can be placed easily just about anywhere. The user can access selected content by tapping their phone on or around the chip, allowing for site specific, real-time digital experiences.
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MySmartJourney creation has followed the lean startup principles. Design of the business model is iterative. Hypothesis are made and tested with real stakeholders in the industry, mainly commercial prospects. Choices are made based on operational feasibility concerns and potential for value creation, not on the quest for a perfect product. Thanks to this approach it has been possible to accelerate the product development with a minimal initial investment. A minimum viable product has been developed and sold within 6 weeks and set in an international location within 10.
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MySmartJourney is Isabelle Lopez’s second company. She created MA14 ten years ago, a consulting firm specialized in strategy and technological development. With clients such as MMA, Radio-Canada, SouthShore, Savoura, LOJIQ and other industrial businesses, Isabelle developed a sharp expertise in UX strategy, product development, conversational marketing and ethnographic research.
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If you happen to meet her, it is likely she will mention her love for prototyping and try to convince you to give it a go (by using the “infinite potential for prototyping” of her product of course!).