Longo’s entrepreneurial footprint spans several highly successful ventures, including co-founding Gamelancer, a gaming network he helped guide to a public acquisition, and Travly, which grew into a leading travel network and hotel booking application. Beyond digital media, his diverse investment portfolio includes partnerships with major lifestyle and hospitality brands such as Prince Street Pizza, as well as strategic stakes in new technology ventures. He is currently an investor and startup advisor, continuously expanding his commercial reach from his home base in Miami.

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Q: Your path as an entrepreneur seems to move very quickly. How did your career begin, and what drew you to the digital media space?

Zak Longo: My journey really started when I took a massive leap of faith early on. I didn’t take the traditional route of attending university; it just didn’t really seem logical to me. Instead, I moved from Canada to New York at the age of 18, and then to Los Angeles at 21.

Living in those hubs exposed me to the incredible power of digital attention. I realized early on that attention is the ultimate currency in modern business. If you can build an authentic audience and aggregate attention at a massive scale, you can essentially launch and scale almost any consumer brand. That realization shifted my entire focus toward digital infrastructure and media networks.

Q: You co-founded Gamelancer in 2019 and eventually saw it go public. Can you share the strategy behind building that platform?

Zak Longo: When I founded Gamelancer in Los Angeles, the goal was to create a dedicated, highly interactive space for the global gaming community. Gaming is a core pillar of modern entertainment. We focused heavily on short-form content and community aggregation on major social channels.

The strategy worked exceptionally well because we treated gamers as a collective lifestyle demographic rather than just software users. By the time I moved on in 2022, following our acquisition, we had successfully taken the company public. It was an incredible masterclass in quickly scaling a digital media property by understanding and respecting the target audience.

Q: Another major success in your digital media portfolio is Travly. How did you manage to scale this brand to billions of monthly impressions?

Zak Longo: Travly was built on the exact same thesis of audience aggregation, but we applied it to the travel industry. We grew it into the largest travel network on social media, accumulating billions of followers and impressions a year.

With Travly, we leveraged our large audience to launch a hotel booking app. When you own the media ecosystem and the distribution channel, your user acquisition costs drop significantly, helping you scale a utility product much faster than traditional competitors.

Q: Beyond tech, you have a substantial footprint in physical hospitality through partnerships with Prince Street Pizza and Andrea’s Cookies. What attracts you to the food and drink industry?

Zak Longo: I love the tangible nature of hospitality and consumer brands. It’s a great balance with the digital tech space. With Prince Street Pizza, we currently have 20 locations in the U.S. and Canada, and we are currently in the process of expanding internationally to markets like the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. For Andrea’s Cookies, we have four locations and are expanding globally, including securing a presence in all major stadiums in Toronto.

The common thread between a digital gaming network and a pizza location is community and brand loyalty. If you apply the same marketing agility, speed, and cultural relevance that work on social media to a premier food product, you can create massive, sustained lines out the door.

Q: You invest in brands like xAI and Myodetox. What is your personal philosophy when choosing where to deploy capital?

Zak Longo: I look for businesses that disrupt human behaviour or optimize daily routines. Gummly is a great example of this. We created the world’s first jet lag gummy, and we are currently pivoting into high-end oral care. I also invest heavily in spaces that support health, lifestyle, and infrastructure, whether that is physical rehab with Myodetox, liquid supplement tinctures with Apothekary, or cutting-edge artificial intelligence as an investor in Elon Musk’s xAI.

I invest in spaces where I see an inevitable cultural shift. I want to be involved with teams that know where the consumer is going, not just where they are now.

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