Francisco Diaz-Mitoma

Francisco Diaz-Mitoma (born September 28, 1984 in Edmonton) is a Canadian entrepreneur and the founder of Titan Gaming, a consumer gaming company. The gaming company Xfire that was previously acquired by Viacom for $102,000,000.00 was acquired by Titan Gaming on August 2nd, 2010.
Early Years
Francisco Diaz-Mitoma was born in Edmonton, the second son of Dr. Francisco Diaz-Mitoma and Dr. Alejandra Ruiz. His parents met while attending medical school at the University of Guadalajara and moved to Canada in 1983. His father then earned a Ph.D. in Virology and a fellowship in Medical Microbiology from the University of Alberta. He was awarded the Ohtli, Mexico's highest award, by former Mexican President Vicente Fox. He is also the founder of Variation Biotechnologies, a company that specializes in thermostable vaccines. Diaz-Mitoma's paternal grandfather was from Asturias, Spain while his paternal great grandfather was from Japan explaining the hyphenated last name, where "Diaz" is of Spanish origin and "Mitoma" of Japanese origin.
Francisco Diaz-Mitoma lived in Edmonton for the first 8 years of his life and then moved east to Canada's capital city Ottawa. At the age of 12, on his first attempt skiing Diaz-Mitoma broke his tibia at Mount Pakenham and would require a cast for 5 months. During this injury Diaz-Mitoma found relief in playing video games for extended periods of time. Despite the skiing accident he continues to be an active skier and ski fan, attending the last two Winter Olympic Games to watch his childhood friends Ryan Semple and Erik Guay participate. As a teenager he was enrolled in competitive swimming with the GO Kingfish Swim Club, training alongside his Olympian team mate Yannick Lupien. This passion for swimming developed into his young adult years where Diaz-Mitoma would compete in various triathlons including the Los Angeles Triathlon where he ranked 5th on the swim portion in his age group.
At the age of 14, Francisco Diaz-Mitoma began attending Ashbury College a private boarding school in Ottawa, Canada. His first job in high school was working at the award-winning deli Nicastro's La Bottega in the ByWard Market. In September 2002 Diaz-Mitoma enrolled at McGill University and began working at Harry Rosen Inc. on Peel Street, Montreal. At this time Diaz-Mitoma also started building websites for local Montreal bands and even tutored business students at the Desautels Faculty of Management with lessons on Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop.
Titan Gaming
In December 2002 at the age of 18, Diaz-Mitoma started developing a programming script in that scheduled games for Counter-Strike players. This script was able to track attendance, launch game servers and provide basic game statistics outside of the game. Eventually Diaz-Mitoma saw a need for more gaming components and developed a business plan in his dorm room. One of the gaming components allowed players to enter into cash tournaments. To verify the legality of such a service, Diaz-Mitoma hired Morden Lazarus from Lazarus Charbonneau. Once Lazarus outlined the service as legal in most jurisdictions Diaz-Mitoma decided to continue developing the gaming platform. In February 2006 he pitched the business to Mark Donovan, a friend who was studying business at McGill University and was the President of McGill's Golden Key International Honour Society and they started working together.
Titan Gaming received funding from Eric Schmidt and Lady Gaga's investment vehicle Tomorrow Ventures and other notable investors in 2010.
Virurl Inc.
Diaz-Mitoma is a co-founder and investor in Virurl. A Santa Monica based company that develops a word-of-mouth marketing platform for online content. Virurl enables advertisers to pay web users to share media with their friends.

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