Santo Politi

An engineer by training, Santo follows a force in his work that will never be found in any engineering texts: passion. He is passionate about the areas he invests in and he looks for entrepreneurs who burn with the same intensity. His success has been built on combining this intensity with an equally strong drive to eliminate, as much as possible, risk from the picture. His unique approach has taken him around the world pursuing opportunities. And his approach has been very successful. Santo has led Spark’s investments in Admeld, Inform, CT-100/CNET (acquired by NYSE:CBS) Genie, KickApps and OneRiot. He has also participated in Spark’s investments in thePlatform (acquired by NASDAQ:CMCSA) as a board member. Santo most recently was a Partner at Charles River Ventures (CRV) with an investment focus on media and entertainment infrastructure. His investments at CRV include BigBand Networks (NASDAQ:BBND), Broadbus Technologies (acquired by NYSE:MOT) and Groove Mobile (acquired by NASDAQ:LVWR). Prior to joining CRV in early 2001, Santo served as President of New Media for Blockbuster Entertainment (NYSE:BBI), where he was responsible for establishing a new operating division focused on extending the company beyond its brick-and-mortar retail stores into digital broadcast and video on demand. Santo Politi holds an MBA in finance from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, an MS in electrical engineering from NJIT and a BS in electrical engineering and a BS in physics from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. He is fluent in Japanese, conversational in Spanish and French and is a native Turkish speaker.