Our Leadership

VerticalScope's management team is comprised of industry-leading professionals, all with extensive experience in their respective areas of expertise. Our management team is dedicated to executing the company vision and maintaining VerticalScope's distinctive work environment, while ensuring excellence in all our products and services.

Rob Laidlaw

Founder and CEO

Rob Laidlaw is the founder and visionary behind VerticalScope. Rob founded TopHosts.com, the predecessor company to VerticalScope in 1999 from the basement of his family home in Saskatchewan, Canada. As CEO of VerticalScope, he has aggressively grown the business focusing his energies on business development, market strategy and platform growth. In 2001, Rob launched the Modified Automotive Group which was later acquired in 2007 by the largest US enthusiast-magazine publisher Primedia. Today, Rob is a passionate enthusiast and avid community user and is focused on continuing to grow our Fora software platform.

Chris Goodridge

President and COO

Chris is our President and Chief Operating Officer and formerly VeticalScope’s Chief Investment Officer. Chris brings over nineteen years of M&A and technology and digital media leadership to VerticalScope. Prior to joining us, Chris was Chief Operating Officer, Digital and SVP Digital Ventures at Torstar and prior to that was the President of Torstar Digital. Chris has successfully completed over 50 acquisitions of online communities and digital properties both while with us and prior to joining our team. Chris led Torstar’s investment in VerticalScope in 2015, and was a member of our Board of Directors from 2015-2017. Prior to Torstar, Chris practiced corporate and M&A law with Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP. He has a B.Sc. from Queen’s University, a law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School and an MBA from the Rotman School of Management.

Vincenzo Bellissimo

Chief Financial Officer

Vincenzo has been our SVP Finance since 2017 and joined VerticalScope in 2012 as the VP Finance after spending 12 years in the film distribution industry with a focus on independent start-ups and systems implementation. Prior to joining us, Vincenzo held a Controller position at Alliance Films where he assisted in launching a self-directed solution for Home Entertainment which included the implementation of a new enterprise resource planning system, by title reporting and electronic data interchange connectivity for order and inventory management. He also previously worked for Maple Pictures as its Controller. Vincenzo holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree with a specialty in Accounting from the University of Toronto.

Diane Yu

Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary

Diane Yu has been our Chief Legal Officer since 2013 and our Corporate Secretary since 2015. Diane brings over 19 years of legal experience in domestic and cross-border M&A, strategic partnership and joint venture transactions, corporate finance, corporate governance, and corporate, commercial, securities and regulatory matters. Prior to joining our team, Diane was Senior Legal Counsel in the Transactions and Corporate Operations groups at TD Bank. Before that, Diane was in private practice at Proskauer Rose LLP and Gowling WLG specializing in M&A and Corporate Finance. Diane received her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ottawa, and her Honours Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Toronto (Trinity College). Diane is admitted to the bar in both New York and Ontario. Diane is a past member of the Board of Directors of Women in Capital Markets and the Heather L. Main Scholarship Committee. Diane was awarded the M&A Advisor’s 40 Under 40 Emerging Leaders Award in 2015 and the Lexpert Zenith Award for Mid-Career Excellence in 2018.

Brandon Seibel

Chief Technology Officer

Brandon Seibel has been our Chief Technology Officer since 2019. Brandon brings over a decade of experience building and managing scalable technology platforms and teams. Prior to becoming our Chief Technology Officer, he served as our Chief Architect and our Operations and Systems Architecture Manager. He has led the technology vision and engineering teams working on our Fora platform, led an R&D team focusing on natural language processing and architected and implemented the companies technology platform that hosts and serves our millions of users per month. Before VerticalScope, Brandon was a key contributor to the web hosting and email platform at Network Solutions LLC, which built a pre-cloud horizontally scalable computer platform that powered hosting and email services.