Santo is a co-founder and General Partner of Spark Capital.
He led Spark Capital’s investments in Adap.TV (AOL), Admeld (Google), CT-100/CNET (CBS), IPWireless (General Dynamics), KickApps (KIT Digital), Lexity(Yahoo), Oculus (Facebook) and OneRiot (Walmart). He served as a board member of 5Min (AOL) and thePlatform (Comcast). Santo was previously a Partner at Charles River Ventures (CRV) where he led investments in BigBand Networks (NASDAQ: BBND), Broadbus Technologies (acquired by Motorola) and Groove Mobile (acquired by LiveWire).
Prior to Charles River Ventures, Santo served as President of New Media for Blockbuster Entertainment (NYSE: BBI). Santo also previously co-founded BT Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm affiliated with Bankers Trust where he led successful investments in Aether Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: AETH), DigitalThink (NASDAQ: DTHK) and Novatel Wireless, Inc. (NASDAQ: NVTL).
Santo has held various engineering and management positions at Matsushita Electric Industrial, Panasonic and Weston Instruments.
Santo holds an M.B.A. in Finance from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from NJIT and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Physics from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey.
Dan has been involved in the ecommerce and fintech sectors for more than 20 years, and before turning to the world of venture investing was Chairman and CEO of Shopping.com, one of the world's largest online comparison shopping sites. Dan led the company from zero to $100M+ in just five years and took it public in 2004, after which it was acquired by eBay in 2005 for over $600mm. Dan was also chairman of the Internet Lab, a US-Israeli incubator for early-stage consumer Internet startups, as well as Senior VP of MasterCard International, where he managed all online global debit products.
At Canaan, Dan has an abiding interest in all things ecommerce and fintech, with a special love for marketplaces. He sits on the board of Lending Club (NYSE: LC), the world's leading marketplace for peer-to-peer loans with a mission to fundamentally transform consumer credit and banking. He's also a board member for ShopKeep, the complete POS cloud-based platform which enables any merchant to have a register and manage their entire business simply by purchasing an iPad; CircleUp, which provides equity based crowdfunding for high-growth consumer companies; and Orchard, which seamlessly allows any investor to plug into any marketplace lender in the world. Dan also joined the board of Joor, a company that sits at the intersection of luxury brands and retailers by operating one of the largest wholesale luxury apparel marketplaces in the world.
Dan doesn't stop there - he's also focused on the incredible ecommerce opportunities represented by his board seats at OpenSky, a social shopping marketplace that is cracking the code for social commerce, and Gemvara, a revolutionary leader of custom-made, fine jewelry shopping online. Finally, Dan wants to ensure that anyone who is short on cash but long on assets never has to worry about accessing credit again, through his work with borro, a global personal asset lending platform.
Dan earned an AB from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and an MBA from Yale University. He also spent two years running a UNHCR program on the Thai-Cambodian border, where in order to get to his work at a refugee camp he learned to ride motorcycles and dodge water buffalo.
This has proven to be a useful skill in his current work as well.
Michael was most recently chief executive officer and president at Millennial Media (NYSE:MM), a leading independent mobile ad technology company. In October 2016 AOL/Verizon acquired Millennial Media in an all cash deal. Previously he has served as president and founder of Ichabod Farm Ventures LLC, a private investment firm he established after working as executive vice president and chief revenue officer of Yahoo.
He earlier worked at Google, where he led integration efforts following the acquisition of Admeld Inc., where he served as CEO. He has also served as executive vice president and chief revenue officer at Fox Interactive Media, as executive vice president of sales and partnerships at AOL Media Networks and in senior sales positions at GeoCities and Disney Online. He majored in economics at The College of the Holy Cross and serves on the boards of MediaMath , Hooklogic, and The College of the Holy Cross.
He and his wife, Cheryl, have three children, Stephanie, Anne and Christine.
