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Two recent Ryerson graduates have been named two of Toronto's hottest young entrepreneurs.

And both are residents at Ryerson's Digital Media Zone (DMZ), a multidisciplinary workspace for students and alumni to innovate, collaborate and bring to market their digital products and services.

Justin Hein and Monica Mei were recently recognized by the Globe and Mail newspaper in their Report on Small Business. The two are the respective founders of budget-tracking application Spenz and WhatImWear.in, described as the "visual Twitter for fashion."

The criteria to make the list were simple: be young, talented and entrepreneurial. All ten finalists are under 30 and six of the nine profiled businesses (one business was headed by two entrepreneurs) were digitally based. Both Hein and Mei are Ryerson alumni, Hein from management/entrepreneurship at Ted Rogers School of Management and Mei from the School of Fashion's fashion communication program.

"It is a real honour to be recognized by the Globe and Mail as one of Toronto's hottest young entrepreneurs," said Mei. "WhatImWear.in is grateful to Ryerson's Digital Media Zone for supporting us in this place that cultivates cool, up-and-coming tech teams, helping us turn our vision into reality."
 
DMZ entrepreneurs are on a winning streak, having been honoured consistently since at least March of this year, when SoapBox (an online platform for community-based change) and TeamSave (a group buying site) were named by the City of Toronto as two of the city's emerging companies to watch. In April, DMZ company Shape Collage (founder Vincent Cheung) was named Best Startup at the 15th annual Chinese Canadian Entrepreneur Awards. Spenz was in the spotlight again in May, selected from 1,000 international applicants to pitch at the renowned TechCrunch Disrupt competition in New York City. In June, Spenz plus WhatImWear.in and DMZ grad social video startup LeanIn were among only 20 companies to be invited to C100's 48hrs in the Valley, a mentoring and pitch conference aimed at connecting Canadian companies with San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

"I once again have the pleasure of offering up congratulations to our DMZ companies," said Valerie Fox, DMZ director. "Our entrepreneurs are consistently being recognized as leaders and upcoming leaders in the startup space and for us there is no better indicator of success of the zone model. Both Spenz and WhatImWear.in in particular have recently shown incredible potential and should be as proud of themselves as we are." 

Spenz is currently available for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad via the App Store and WhatI'mWear.in will be beta launching in August.