Matt McGowan

Worth knowing

Matt has been the person a global platform trusts to open and run a country: he took Snap's Canadian operation from a new country manager seat to a full general management role covering multiple products. He knows how Canadian advertising budgets actually get decided. Worth a note if you are bringing a platform or ad product into Canada, or selling to Canadian media buyers.

Story

Matt was born and raised in New York and has since lived on three continents. He relocated from New York to Toronto in 2014 and made it home, working at Google on advertising business development before Snap named him Country Manager for Canada in 2019, succeeding Joe Strolz. By 2021 he was Director and General Manager of Snapchat Canada, with Spectacles, Zenly and the Toronto-built Bitmoji team under him, and he stayed in the GM seat through 2024. In 2025 he moved to Bell Media as Senior Vice-President, Business Solutions, now on the Canadian side of the table he spent a decade selling to.

In Matt's words

Global c-suite builder with a track record of driving growth, operational excellence, and enterprise value expansion across public and private companies on four continents. Scale leader who has expanded commercial revenues from $1.7B to $5.4B in 6 years, $9M to $20M in 3 years, $3B to $12.5B in under 3 years, and $20M to $150M in 7 years. I have managed multi-billion-dollar P&Ls, complex international expansions, hyper-growth scale ups, and high-value strategic exits. Please do say hi!

Highlights

• Country Manager then General Manager, Snapchat Canada (2019-2024)
• Advisory board, Chartered Professional Accountants (2021)
• Featured speaker, Banff World Media Festival (2021)
• Has lived and worked on three continents