Who founded IRefer Club?

IRefer Club was founded by Dean Jessop and Mark Bryan. Dean serves as Founder and CEO, while Mark serves as Co-Founder.

Why did Dean Jessop start IRefer Club?

Dean Jessop built IRefer Club because he believes all businesses deserve a fair opportunity not just to be found, but to be chosen. He wanted modern business visibility to be simpler, understandable and affordable.

What does Mark Bryan do at IRefer Club?

Mark Bryan brings technical, systems, infrastructure and scalability thinking to IRefer Club, helping build the foundation required for the company to grow while keeping the experience straightforward for business owners.

IRefer Club is a business visibility platform designed to help businesses provide clearer information about what they do, where they operate and how customers can reach them, giving them a better opportunity to be found, understood and chosen.

Where was IRefer Club founded?

IRefer Club was founded in Barrie, Ontario, Canada.

Meet the Founders

Two perspectives One simple idea

Dean came from the business side. Mark came from technology and operations. IRefer Club grew from a shared decision to use those skills to help small businesses.

Why IRefer Exists

Small businesses were being asked to do too much

Dean had spent years working with small businesses and saw a common problem. Many were good at what they did, but keeping up with the way customers found and evaluated businesses online was becoming increasingly complicated.

Search was changing quickly. Websites, Google, maps and AI were all becoming part of the picture, but most small business owners did not have the time, staff or budget to become experts in all of it.

That became the starting point for IRefer Club

Founder & CEO

Dean Jessop

Dean is an entrepreneur and business owner who leads IRefer Club's vision, strategy, customer experience and communication.

Years spent working with small businesses, contractors, professionals and entrepreneurs shaped his view that technology should make business easier, not give owners another profession they need to learn. His focus is keeping IRefer practical, understandable and affordable for the businesses it was created to help.

Dean asks How do we make this useful, affordable and understandable for the business owner?

Dean on LinkedIn →

Co-Founder

Mark Bryan

Mark brings the technology, operations and systems perspective to IRefer Club, with a focus on implementation, infrastructure, reliability and growth.

His role is turning ideas into working systems and practical processes. He focuses on what has to happen behind the scenes so IRefer can grow without making the experience more complicated for the small business owner.

Mark asks How do we turn the idea into something that works reliably today and can grow tomorrow?

Barrie, Ontario

IRefer Club was founded in 2026

Web Summit Vancouver

Selected for the 2026 ALPHA Startup program

2026 Recognition

Global Recognition Awards for Innovation and Startup of the Year

The Common Ground

We built IRefer Club to help small businesses

We understood the problem, we had the ability to do something about it, so we did.

Get Found. Be Chosen.