Sometime in the summer of 2006, the company’s co-founders got together for the first time to discuss the possibility of launching a startup. They were very excited about media becoming social and the quantity of local content being created in this new space. They thought there was an interesting business to build at the intersection of local search and local conversations happening on the internet. Turns out they were right.
Needium
Tap the Need Medium
About Needium
Who are we? Where are we from?
Social media is now a mass-market. Millions of consumers are sharing activities and opinions about local businesses using Twitter and/or Facebook.
They are also expressing needs such as “I’m hungry”, “My car just broke down” and “Does anyone have a dentist to recommend?”, even in smaller cities. Needium takes a different view of how to leverage the social web, focusing on lead generation for small and medium businesses.
Needium was first made available in Montreal in July 2010 and is now available in major cities across North America and Europe. We think we’ve stumbled upon the future of word-of-mouth marketing and have many exciting ideas about where this is going. You can keep up with us @Needium and on our corporate blog.
Read what is being said about Needium in the news in the Press section.
Read the longer version of this story on our History page.
Caroline Desmarais, President & CEO
Caroline Desmarais is a sales expert with plenty of international experience. Previously, she worked in Sydney, Australia as Sales Manager at MaxInteractive, part of the Ybrant Digital Network. Her background is diverse, having studied and worked in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. Caroline has a B.A. in Philosophy and Foreign Languages (Spanish, Italian) from Skidmore College and a Law Degree (LL.L) from the University of Ottawa. She also completed a specialized course in Digital Media in 2010. She has a passion for online media and a flare for all social platforms. 
Sylvain Carle, co-founder
Sylvain is Needium’s “think it, do it, ship it” guy. He’s been on the bleeding edge of new media and networked applications for more than a decade. Sylvain was VP of Interactive Media solutions at LVL Studio, CTO at Messagia and Product Manager at My Virtual Model. He also worked as a CTO for hire in Silicon Valley in 2000-2001, where he was a senior consultant to several dot-com startups. 
Sebastien Provencher, co-founder
Sebastien is Vice-President Product Management at Praized Media. He has more than 12 years experience in local search and online media.From 1999 to 2007, Sebastien played an instrumental role in formulating Yellow Pages Group’s online strategy in Canada. Sebastien co-founded Praized Media in 2007 to help local media companies tap into the growing potential of online word-of-mouth and social media.
If you would like to find out more about us, visit our Team page.
Needium represents a new generation of geo-specific social media marketing.