Overview

Gender

male

Investor Type

Angel

Investor Stage

Seed

Mr. Thomas R. DiBenedetto has 40 years’ experience in the investment business, having worked as an investment banker in New York with Morgan Stanley & Co., Salomon Brothers, Inc. and Allen & Company, Incorporated. He is the founder and principal stockholder of two investment firms, Boston International Group and its affiliate, Junction Investors, Ltd.

Mr. DiBenedetto has been active internationally for over 30 years. He is Chairman of Jefferson Waterman International, a Washington, D.C. based business intelligence and government relations firm, and a major shareholder of Moscow based Infotecs International, LLC, a telecommunications and internet security firm. He has also been an active investor in several exploration stage mining companies in the U.S., South America and Africa.

An avid sports fan, Mr. DiBenedetto has been a partner in the Boston Red Sox baseball club since 1978. In 2011, he led a group in the acquisition and control of AS Roma, one of the leading global football clubs, where he is currently a Director.

At Morgan Stanley and Salomon Brothers in the 1970’s, he worked with many of the largest developers in North America. During his career, he has been involved in financing, developing and investing in real estate; and since 1984, he has been a director of Alexander’s, Inc. where he assisted in the company’s transition from a retail and merchandising business to a real estate investment trust. An affiliate of Vornado Realty, Inc., one of the largest real estate companies in the United States, Alexander’s is the owner/developer of the highly acclaimed mixed-use development which houses the Bloomberg world headquarter offices in New York City.

Mr. DiBenedetto began investing in private technology companies in 1978 when he was at Allen & Company, Incorporated. Since then, he has developed and sold two cellular telephone companies and has been a founder/director of several technology companies including Voice Signal Technologies, Inc., the worldwide leading mobile voice recognition business which was sold to Nuance Communications in 2007; Fortelligent, Inc., a predictive modeling firm which was sold to WPP, Inc. in 2007; and Shaser, Inc., a consumer personal products company whose first product i-LIGHT, Remington licensed and began selling in Italy in early 2010.

Mr. DiBenedetto also serves as Chairman of Burst LLC. Burst is a leading mobile video technology company that helps content creators unlock the power of mobile video. The Burst platform is utilized by media companies, publishers and brands who want to leverage the power of both user-generated and “controlled” content.

Mr. DiBenedetto is on the board of directors and an early investor in Likeable Local Inc. which offers scalable, integrated social media software solutions for small businesses to build, engage, and grow their online presence. In addition Mr. DiBenedetto is an advisor to Back9 Network, a new golf lifestyle television network and media company Mr. DiBenedetto is a member of the Board of Trustees of: Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut; the Boston Biomedical Research Institute, Inc.; Kents Hill School in Kents Hill, Maine; the Nahant Preservation Trust in Nahant, Massachusetts; and the Ted Williams Museum in Florida. In addition, he is a member of the international advisory board of Perkins School for the Blind; and is an incorporator of the Massachusetts General Hospital; and the Joslin Diabetes Center. He has also served on the Leadership Council at the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Center for Business and Government at Harvard University. Mr. DiBenedetto graduated with honors in Economics from Trinity College, has an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, and was a research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. DiBenedetto and his wife Linda have five sons and reside in Ft. Myers, Florida and Nahant, Massachusetts.