Investor in events, media and data businesses, Opus Origin has appointed veteran operator and investor Greg Topalian as chairman of its North America operation, as the company accelerates its investment and growth strategy across the region.
Topalian has spent three decades building, scaling and investing in businesses across the events and media industry. During 17 years at Reed Exhibitions, he rose to senior vice-president, launched New York Comic Con and acquired Penny Arcade Expo, helping build one of the world’s leading portfolios of fan and pop culture events. He later co-founded LeftField Media, building a portfolio of experiential events before selling the business to Clarion Events in 2016.
As CEO and later chairman of Clarion Events North America, Topalian led the business through a period of significant expansion. More recently, he has returned to his entrepreneurial roots, investing in and working alongside founders through On Deck Ventures and EVG, where he has helped develop and scale a dozen emerging brands.
Topalian’s appointment builds on a four-year relationship with Opus Origin and longstanding relationships with Simon Kimble and Sam Jennings. Over that time, he has worked alongside the Opus Origin team across several of its investments and businesses, including Yotta – formerly part of the Opus-backed InfraXmedia platform – as well as RETCON and CloudFest Americas. As chairman of North America, he is now bringing that builder’s perspective to an expanded role with Opus Origin.
“I have always believed the future belongs to builders,” said Topalian. “The people willing to see a market differently, take a risk and create something that didn’t exist before are the people who move this industry forward. That’s what attracted me to Opus Origin, and has kept me close to the team over the last four years. The opportunity at Opus is bigger than building great events. It’s about building great hybrid businesses. We have the capital, operating expertise and entrepreneurial mindset to back exceptional businesses and build them into category leaders.”
Topalian’s appointment comes at a significant moment for Opus Origin. The company recently completed the successful sale of a majority stake in InfraXmedia to Bowmark Capital following a period in which the platform grew revenues by more than 40% annually. Built around the rapidly expanding digital infrastructure market, InfraXmedia combined DataCenterDynamics, Yotta, Data Center Nation and SDxCentral across events, media, intelligence and learning.
The transaction offered a powerful proof point for the Opus Origin model: identify high-growth markets and businesses poised to scale, invest behind them, and build across formats to create something significantly more valuable than the sum of its parts.
“Greg is a builder in every sense of the word,” said Sam Jennings, CEO, Opus Origin. “He has launched businesses from scratch, scaled organisations through extraordinary periods of growth, led major acquisitions and integrations, and backed entrepreneurs building the future. Very few people in our industry have that combination of operating experience and entrepreneurial instinct. His expanded role reflects the scale of our ambition in North America.”
“The industry is at an inflection point, and that creates an enormous opportunity,” Topalian added. “The next great B2B businesses aren’t going to look exactly like the ones we built 10 or 20 years ago. Events, media, data, technology and intelligence are converging. Opus Origin understands that, has the capital to act on it and, importantly, has a team that knows how to build. We’ve already shown what this model can do. We’re just getting started.”
For more information visit opusorigin.com
