Adam and Megan Schmidt were living in Kitchener and Waterloo, respectively, when they met at the Starlight nightclub in Waterloo. It was “Funk Night” in 2007, and Adam was with a college friend with whom Megan had attended high school. Adam and Megan talked for a while before he asked for her phone number. She was a physiotherapist; he was a commercial pilot who’d always dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur. 

Eighteen years later, they share a home in Winnipeg, three children, and 41 locations of Activate, Canada’s fastest-growing active gaming company, combining physical activity with technology-enhanced environments. With locations across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Dubai, this year, Adam and Megan have plans to double the number of US locations and expand across Europe in partnership with entertainment giants Hadrena (France), VRex Entertainment (Germany), and Realinvest (Scandinavia). In this How I Made It, Adam and Megan discuss their entrepreneurial journey, their love of gaming, and what it’s like to run a business as a married couple.

Adam: I became a pilot because I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Flying allowed for a flexible schedule and time to build a business. I’d launched a few small ones—my first being buses to take kids to Canada’s Wonderland and Six Flags when I was in high school—but none of them turned into a career. After dating Megan for four years, I got a job flying with the RCMP in Winnipeg, and we moved there together. 

One weekend, we were back home visiting Kitchener, and Megan dragged me to an activity I’d never heard of—an escape room. It didn’t initially appeal to me, but we ended up having the time of our lives. We looked at each other in the parking lot on our way out and completely agreed: we needed to bring this to Winnipeg.

Megan: When we told our friends and family our new business would consist of locking people in a room, they thought we were nuts. But after we opened our escape room in November 2014, it immediately took off. Six months in, we were so busy that we moved to a larger facility that could incorporate eight different escape rooms in one location. Before we knew it, we had 40 employees, so we quit our day jobs, pursued the business full-time. We then started to think about how our business could expand. 

Our escape rooms were too intricate and complex to rebuild around the country: all their props were super niche, and once people visited, they knew how they worked and wouldn’t come again. If we wanted to create a new room, we had to tear it down and begin the months-long process of replacing it. We wanted to build something unique that could host new activities without requiring a change to the physical space. We came up with what would become Activate: an indoor gaming facility where friends and families can play physical interactive games with a digital component.

Adam: Unlike escape rooms, which are not replayable, an Activate room has the technology to host 500 to 700 games in each location. The games are digital, meaning they include projectors that display visuals on a wall, and LED touch screens allow players to interact with the game directly. Because these digital games are always changing, people can come back several times before Activate starts to feel repetitive. 

While still running our escape rooms, we spent every day and night for two years conceptualizing Activate. Our business partner, Derek Fairley, led a team of engineers and programmers that built all the rooms in a giant warehouse we rented. We signed leases on a few locations in Winnipeg and were ready to open to the public when COVID hit. Luckily, we were able to get government business subsidies to keep employees on and use that time to accelerate our manufacturing. We thought that when people came out of the pandemic, the entertainment industry would thrive as everyone would seek the chance to go out and be together again. We were right—when lockdown ended, we opened Activate to the public with great success.

Megan: Later that same year, we opened our first American location in Louisville, Kentucky. We began forming partnerships with well-established entertainment brands in both the UK and Dubai, where we opened locations in 2024. The global expansion forced us to learn how to navigate regulatory landscapes in different countries, abiding by different legal requirements, zoning laws, and safety standards that must be met before opening a location. We’ve also learnt how to adapt to each new culture: though we elected for our gaming rooms to be identical around the world, we may switch up how the lobbies look in different countries.

Adam: We chose not to franchise Activate in order to maintain full control over our brand identity and ensure consistency in quality, innovation, and customer experience. We take great pride in our hands-on site selection process, during which we visit different locations before signing leases to gain valuable insights into foot traffic, local demographics, and overall suitability for the brand. From these visits, we also assess the vibrancy of the surrounding community, scout out competitors, and ensure that each new location aligns with our vision for success.  

Today, Activate has 41 locations across North America, the UK, and Dubai, with 15 more under construction across Norway, Denmark, Germany, and Kuwait. We have licensing agreements in over 20 countries and plan to open 200 additional locations globally over the next decade. Our first venue in France is scheduled to open this summer and will kick off our continued European expansion into Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Portugal.

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Megan: When we started Activate, many people showed concern for us: of course, running a business can break up a marriage, and it hasn’t always been easy. The most challenging thing for us is keeping the separation between work and home: when we’re sitting at the dinner table with our three kids, it can be hard not to talk about work. But because Adam and I work on different parts of the business—Adam dreams up the ideas for our games and activities, and I deal with all the daily business operations—we don’t usually spend all day together, and it sometimes feels almost like we have two entirely different careers.

Alongside keeping a strong marriage, we’re proud of the concept we’ve created: an interactive gaming facility with leaderboards and reward systems that has enticed customers to return upwards of 600 times. What other Canadian business has an entertainment concept with stats like that that exists all around the world?

—As told to Samantha Fink