40 under 40 — Alborz Massah
Sigma Epsilon, 2016 — Recognized in: 2018
Alborz Massah graduated from the UBC Computer Science program in 2016. While in school, he and a classmate launched their own start-up to help the Canadian liquor industry better manage their inventory with real-time data. The company was called Retail Intellect.
Alborz later went on to win 1st place at UBC’s Start-Up Weekend and was awarded a $25,000 USD Term Sheet paper from Plug and Play Vancouver. One year later, Alborz helped his friend, Matthew Segal, with a hyperlocalized, anonymous messaging application called Lipsi. He combined his knack for technology with his obvious people skills and made use of the relationships that he made in the fraternity system to greenlight a preliminary launch for Lipsi within the Greek system. As a result, the app has gone from 150 to over 10,000 active users in a few months and broke the 32nd spot on the iOS App Store. Alborz led the marketing for Lipsi but also helped out technically where needed. He helped create the website for Lipsi (www.lipsi.ca) and the promotional content, which led to their big launch in September.