The people
What they build
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Working at Polar
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On the TechTO stage
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About
Kunal Gupta started the company in 2007 as Polar Mobile, building mobile apps for magazine and newspaper publishers, and rebuilt it over the following decade into an advertising software business selling native and social display formats to publishers and brands. Its one institutional investor was Georgian Partners, alongside a group of angels; the company had raised about $14 million by the time it changed hands operationally. After the programmatic side of the business grew 331 percent in 2020, Polar spun that product out as a standalone company called Nova, then adopted the Nova name across the whole company when the American private equity firm Fort Point Capital invested. Gupta led it for roughly fifteen years, handed the CEO role to president Matt Crenshaw in 2023, and moved to the board. He took the TechTO stage in June 2016 to argue that focus, not multitasking, is what a company actually runs on — meeting-free Tuesdays and Thursdays, mandatory disconnected vacation, and no email on his own phone.
Backers
Georgian Partners plus angel investors, then an undisclosed investment from Fort Point Capital that came with the rebrand to Nova
Quick answers
What happened to Polar?
It spun its programmatic ad product out as a separate company called Nova, then took the Nova name company-wide when Fort Point Capital invested. Kunal Gupta handed the CEO role to Matt Crenshaw in 2023 and moved to the board.
Who founded Polar?
Kunal Gupta, in Toronto in 2007. It launched as Polar Mobile, an app development firm for media companies, before becoming an advertising software business.
What did Polar speak about at TechTO?
Gupta's June 2016 talk was about focus: he described a 'making versus meeting' culture with meeting-free Tuesdays and Thursdays, vacation the company checked you actually took, and his own decision to remove email from his phone about five years earlier.