Santosh Sankar

Santosh Sankar is a Co-founder & Managing Partner of Dynamo Ventures. Prior to Dynamo, Santosh spent time on Wall Street with experience covering both the insurance and technology sectors.

Santosh started his first company, Razor Studios, when he was 13 years old, which provided IT support to small businesses in his hometown in Maryland. His most recent business was a bootstrapped financial media publication he co-founded and sold in college. He got his first taste of fund management when he oversaw approximately $1M of technology investments through the Great Recession for the Nittany Lion Fund, outperforming his benchmark by 6.37%.

Santosh loves the outdoors, staying active, cooking, playing with his kids, and rooting on the Penn State Nittany Lions. He is passionate about supporting efforts to improve education, nature conservation, and open source software. He currently serves as a Commissioner for the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport Authority.

Santosh calls the hills of Chattanooga home with his wife, three children, and rambunctious golden retrievers, Barley and Rye.

What is the one technology you wish existed today?

There’s a Sanskrit quote that roughly translates to “The journey is more beautiful than the destination.” While that’s important to embrace as builders, leaders, and investors, the road warrior in me would love the practicalities and benefits afforded by teleportation.

Teleportation becoming a reality will allow me to see faraway people in the flesh but I can return home to my family and sleep in my bed. On that note, transportation would truly become a problem of moving atoms, and last mile delivery will be about the nuances of teleporting a parcel to the right room in your house.

Who is the most influential person in your life?

My great-grandmother has to be the single most influential person in my life. Widowed at a young age with two children, she put herself and her two sons through college in an environment that was unfriendly to single mothers. She passed away about 18 years ago with a variety of accolades: Sanskrit scholar, math teacher, expert seamstress, and more.

However, the most notable achievement and one she likely never considered herself was angel investor. Even today, you’ll hear merchants, artists, and others from her community share their stories about her commercial smarts and support as they were trying to get off the ground. Her tenacity, intelligence, work ethic, and ferocity is something I look to the model.

Describe your investment style or approach using only three words.

1. Demanding
2. Consigliere
3. Do > Talk