Milan Vrekic has carved his own path as an entrepreneur in Canada since he immigrated in 2005. He left his home in Serbia with nothing but his technical talent and a desire for a thriving career.

After he co-founded TitanFile, a secure file sharing application, Milan acted as Volta Labs’ first executive director. He has ingrained himself in the Canadian startup ecosystem through mentorship, based on real founding experience.

Milan’s current venture is Zora, a Halifax and Las Vegas-based startup that scores prospective tenants, organizes leases and manages maintenance for landlords.

After a six-month residency with Communitech in Waterloo, Milan returned to the East Coast and established roots in the Halifax community, while also investing. “I ended up buying some real estate,” he says. “I thought it would be a good idea to generate a side income, but it turned out to be the worst idea ever.”

Milan admits that real estate can be a risk. “One out of 10 tenants will default on their rent. If you have more than 10 tenants, you are bound to run into some problems.”

The risks of real estate for landlords became the inspiration behind Milan’s next project. Milan left his lead position at Volta to found Zora – a platform that uses behavioural, demographic and social patterns to simplify the rental process for landlords.
Since its conception in 2014, Zora has grown to be a promising endeavor, accumulating interest from investors and participating in programs such as The Mill, an accelerator program in Las Vegas. Zora has nearly 10,000 landlords that use their software and has cut their average users’ rental defaults in half.

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