, the company is expanding quickly into other countries, and recently doubled down on efforts in Canada with a hiring spree, a new office and its first national ad campaign in the country. Perhaps most importantly for aspiring influencers here, it’s working on ways to help creators monetize their content, and is creating a local infrastructure that keeps up-and-coming stars on this side of the border.
One of those organizers was Mays, also from Saskatchewan and one of three co-founders of the Canada ClubHouse. He had started on Vine, an app for six-second videos thatin October 2016 it was winding down, before moving on to Musical.ly, a platform for lip-syncing, mostly, which Beijing-based ByteDance acquired in 2018 and rebranded as TikTok. Mays took his accounts seriously, posting multiple times a day, and gaining about a thousand followers daily.
With events booked, the group eagerly awaited their planned departure mid-March. But jumpstarting a hype-house ecosystem in Canada presented some difficulties, especially given the peculiarities of 2020. Anxiety about the spread of COVID-19 grew in earnest in Canada in the days before the meetup. Mays and Shmyr, who flew in about a week ahead of the others, rushed from pharmacy to pharmacy to find masks, soap and other suddenly-essential items.
Another ClubHouse member, Donae Baker, who has nearly three million followers, decided to join after seeing American collab houses generate momentum for their residents. “Look at, like, the Hype House,” she said, “[and how] big they’ve gotten and how big the individual people have gotten.” She hoped ClubHouse could accomplish something similar. The 18-year-old Torontonian spent one night with the ClubHouse in their downtown digs. She called the experience fun and the people nice.