Marc Canter is an American internet entrepreneur, speaker,
technology evangelist and early pioneer of online software,
[LEFLER, LUKE (2015)]
The New Stack Makers: Marc Canter and the Days Before Macromedia — Part One
". ''The New Stack''. Retrieved April 13, 2016. and is often called the "godfather of
multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...
".
Canter is a CEO of Instigate, Inc. Marc is best known for being the co-founder and CEO of MacroMind, the company that became
Macromedia
Macromedia, Inc. was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Adobe Flash, Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its riv ...
.
Early life
Canter grew up in a political environment.
His father was a Democratic politician and organizer of a
meat packers union in Chicago, and a mentor to political consultant
David Axelrod.
His grandfather, Harry Canter, was leader of the
Communist Party of Massachusetts, a translator for the
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, and later, a publisher of communism-related books as well as a leftist weekly, the
Chicago Star, that he bought from
Frank Marshall Davis.
Canter recalls marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. and being heavily involved in Chicago political campaigns as a child.
A singer in childhood, Canter enrolled in
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational lib ...
intending to become an opera singer, and was exposed there to synthesizers, computer music, and building and coding computers.
Career
After college, Canter travelled to New York City to help his friends build a music studio called "Noise New York." During this time Canter learned about laserdiscs, laser light shows,
NAPLPS
NAPLPS (North American Presentation Layer Protocol Syntax) is a Vector graphics markup language, graphics language for use originally with videotex and teletext services. NAPLPS was developed from the Telidon system developed in Canada, with a s ...
, pro audio and video equipment, and a then-new technology called
videodisc
Videodisc (or video disc) is a general term for a laser- or stylus-readable random-access disc that contains both audio and analog video signals recorded in an analog form. Typically, it is a reference to any such media that predates the mainstr ...
s. Canter has also worked as a taxi driver.
Canter dropped out of graduate school to work for
Bally-Midway, programming music and graphics for video games. He coded one of the earliest pieces of licensed music content ("Peter Gunn" for Spyhunter).
Canter co-founded
MacroMind
MacroMind was an Apple Macintosh software company founded in Chicago in 1984 by Marc Canter, Jamie Fenton and Mark Stephen Pierce. The company's first product was SoundVision, a combined music and graphics editor. Before the release, the graphic ...
in 1984, the company that later became Macromedia, and began developing for the newly launched
Apple Macintosh
Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
.
[MACMANUS, RICHARD (March 29, 2004)]
"Interview with Marc Canter"
. ''Read Write'' Retrieved April 13, 2016. Canter launched MacroMind with the idea of it being a "software rock and roll band",
[ and the company created the first multimedia player, the first cross-platform authoring system and the world's leading multimedia platform. Partly due to his work with the company, Canter is considered one of the founders of multimedia. In the 1990s, he was the chairman of virtual technology company Canter Technology.
At MacroMind, Canter was involved in one of the first known cases of a ]virus
A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living Cell (biology), cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Viruses are ...
being distributed via commercial software. According to the March 16, 1988 edition of the ''Toronto Star
The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part of Torstar's Daily News Brands (Torstar), Daily News Brands division.
...
'', several MacroMind products shipped with virus infected media. Analysis later revealed that Canter's computer was infected with the virus while he was working on training material for the software products. MacroMind and Canter moved to San Francisco, California, where the company received venture capital
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...
funding and was the third software-related investment of the firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...
.[ Through the 1990s, Canter was a "fixture of the local tech scene", described as a technology provocateur and advocate, part of a social and business technology community that included ]Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble (born January 18, 1965) is an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. Scoble is best known for his blog, ''Scobleizer'', which came to prominence during his tenure as a technology evangelist at Microsoft. He later work ...
, Ron Conway
Ronald Crawford Conway (born March 9, 1951) is an American venture capitalist and philanthropist. He has been described as one of Silicon Valley's " super angels". He is co-founder of SV Angel.
Early career
Conway graduated from San Jose State ...
, Dave Winer
Dave Winer (born May 2, 1955, in Queens, New York City) is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web service ...
, Sean Parker
Sean Parker (born December 3, 1979) is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, most notable for co-founding the file-sharing computer service Napster, and was the first president of the social networking website Facebook. He also co-foun ...
, Mark Pincus, and Michael Arrington, among others.Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...
operating system was released.[Gillen, Marilyn A. (September 2, 1995), "High-RAM CD-ROM music video's future." ''Billboard''. 107 (35):74]
In the 1990s and 2000s, Canter was involved in various startup
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to ...
s in the formulative stages of product development and design. He was an early participant in Tribe.net and helped develop its "tribes" system, and early social network 'groups' technology. He consulted for Ruckus Network
Ruckus was a free ad-supported online music service available to students at all American colleges.
The service was founded in 2003 by Vincent Han and David Galper. It was acquired in 2008 by Total Music, a joint venture between Sony and Unive ...
an
Visual Media
Broadband Mechanics has also collaborated with Avid Technology
Avid Technology, Inc. is a global technology company headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, and was founded in August 1987 by Bill Warner. It develops software, SaaS, and hardware products used in media and entertainment.
History
Avid wa ...
.
Canter and JD Lasica founded a video sharing website, Ourmedia in March 2005. Canter was founder and CEO of Broadband Mechanics,[Soder, Chuck (March 28, 2011), "So, tell us what you really think, Marc?". ''Crain's Cleveland Business''. 32 (13):23] a digital lifestyle aggregator (DLA) company. Broadband Mechanics built tools and environments, including "People Aggregator", to enable online communities
An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members engage in computer-mediated communication primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, on ...
.
Burnt out on venture-funded companies, and described as having burned all of his bridges in Silicon Valley,Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–United States border, Canada–U.S. maritime border ...
in 2009. Intending to get out of the technology business. There, he became involved in economic development
In economics, economic development (or economic and social development) is the process by which the economic well-being and quality of life of a nation, region, local community, or an individual are improved according to targeted goals and object ...
projects involving teaching multimedia coding skills to unemployed workers.Internet of things
Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...
-related mobile applications. The company was later renamed Interface.
In 2015 Canter, along with four other executives, cofounded Cola, a company that launched a messaging application designed to serve as a platform for messaging-based mobile applications. Canter described the company as "Slack for the rest of us."
In 2017 Canter co-founded Instigate, an AI company that is a new way for Creators to tell stories with interactive features and real engagement. Instigate is available as a download. Canter is the CEO of Instigate based in Silicon Valley.
Internet policy and culture
Canter is a contributor to many open standards
An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to ...
efforts and advocates for end-user controlled digital identities and content - being a co-founder of the "Identity Gang", and a co-signer of the Social Web Users' Bill of Rights. He has consulted with global corporations including PCCW
PCCW Limited (formerly known as Pacific Century CyberWorks Limited) is a Hong Kong–based information and communication technology (ICT) and telecommunications company.
The company is the major owner of telecommunications company HKT Limited, ...
and Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
and has written on the multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...
industry, micro-content publishing and social networking
A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...
.
References
External links
Video interview with Marc Canter (English language, German intro and German subtitles)
* ttps://archive.org/details/DougKayeOurmediaslaunchwithMarcCanterandJDLasica Ourmedia.org launch interview with Marc Canter and JD Lasica
{{DEFAULTSORT:Canter, Marc
Businesspeople from Chicago
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
21st-century American Jews
American technology executives
Berkeley Macintosh Users Group members