About Us

Chairman of the Board: Berge Garabedian

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We only live once, why not try to make the world a happier and better place?

I am the son of immigrants to Canada. My dad was born in Lebanon and my mom was born in Damascus, both of Armenian descent. They got married two weeks after meeting one another (and lasted 40 years) and moved to Amsterdam, Holland where my two siblings and I were born and raised (in the playground is where I spent most of my days). My parents, JANET and VIKEN, moved us to Canada when I was 8 years old. I’m grateful to my parents for the life they allowed me to have and for that reason (and many others), I decided to name my holding company after them.

After completing my M.B.A. at McGill University in Montreal as well as my Certificate of International Business at Erasmus University in Rotterdam (was great to go back), the origins of JANVIK HOLDINGS began in 1998, specifically inside my parents’ garage where I taught myself to code so that I can take part in this new invention called…the “World Wide Web”.

I started to write movie reviews under the pseudonym of ‘JoBlo’ and it wasn’t long before I expanded it to the JOBLO MOVIE NETWORK and my first book entitled “JoBlo.com presents the 50 Coolest Movies of All-Time”. The site was visited by tens of millions of fanboys over the years and remains one of the pioneers in the online entertainment space today. It is well-known in Hollywood and frequented by such cinematic luminaries as director Steven Spielberg who once said that he “loves JoBlo.com” and Academy Award winning director Guillermo del Toro. TIME magazine also featured the site as part of their “Boys Who Love Toys” article in 2005, which made my dad take it seriously after that, lol.

JOBLO was also one of the first online entities to cover the Cannes Film Festival back in 2004 and renowned for covering the San Diego Comic Con for every year since 1998. The company expanded its reach to YouTube in 2011, where we were one of the first official “movie trailers” channels on the platform and ultimately graduated to 12 channels by 2024, including over 16 million subscribers and over 12 billion lifetime views today.

During that time, I also started to invest in actual movie productions such as my good friend John Fallon’s directorial debut in “The Shelter” and further expanding that film repertoire to documentaries during the pandemic, with “Arcade Dreams”, “1982: The Greatest Geek Year Ever” and “Across the Tracks: A Las Vegas Story”.

It’s at this point that I decided to create JANVIK HOLDINGS in order to create a hub for the rest of my investments which include real estate (BG REALTY), leisure and technology (NORTH STAR PINBALL, LIQUID VIEW, RIPPLE and NEUREALITY) and of course, charity and philanthropy.