Marcus Daniels CEO, HIGHLINE

Marcus Daniels is a digital product entrepreneur, seed capital investor and innovation platform architect that helps Canadian startups win in global markets.
Co-founder & CEO of HIGHLINE, a VC-backed acceleration platform that helps digital startups supercharge growth and secure institutional capital. Focused on delivering "Speed to Seed" through specialized accelerator products, timely investments and programming in Vancouver-Toronto-NYC-SF. HIGHLINE's foundation is derived from the Extreme Startups-GrowLab merger and financially backed by top institutional investors whose funds under management exceed $2B.
Founder & Executive Chairman of MeshSquared Ventures, an investment & education company focused on evolving digital products. Investor in HIGHLINE and owner of the Toronto Standard, a conversational media & marketing company.
Prior to HIGHLINE Marcus was the Managing Director of Extreme Startups, a VC-backed startup accelerator where he evolved it into a three staged model, led 9 investments to program graduation and managed a 24 company portfolio where two exited profitability each for millions. Former COO at TrendHunter.com, the world's #1 Trendspotting website with over 2 billion views & an innovation partner to Fortune 500 brands. Past VP Operations & Product at Frameworks, a leading retail QSR business intelligence software & eLearning company. Started up the eLearning division at AME Learning, a global financial education company. A digital native that started out by hacking together ventures in 1989 that led to co-founding Fluid eNovations, an award winning web marketing agency.
He has significant board of director experience that includes HIGHLINE, Extreme Startups, Youth In Motion (Canada's Top 20 Under 20), Canadian eLearning Enterprise Alliance & SDEVM. Active in the community as a frequent mentor/judge, on the advisory council for the Dell Center for Entrepreneurs, the co-chair of the Enactus Toronto chapter, and a Board of Advisors member for Venture for Canada. He's a frequent speaker on growing digital startups, seed investing/VC and corporate innovation accelerators. Also, he has architected digital strategy curriculum for University of Toronto.
Marcus holds an MBA from Queen's School of Business, a BA in Psychology & Economics from McGill University and completed the Venture Capital Executive Program from Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley.