Team Bio

Eric Del Balso

Eric Del Balso is a business development and sales executive with more than 14 years of experience in the digital media and technology industry. As a major contributor to some of the leading companies in the industry, including Microsoft and Yahoo!, he has developed a solid track record of driving strategic product and marketing based alliances with Fortune 500 companies. In 2008, Del Balso founded Ignite Advisors LLC to bring together a brain trust of talent to help jumpstart early stage digital media businesses. The Ignite team has a deep passion for helping startup media companies realize their full commercial potential.

Prior to starting Ignite, Del Balso was the Senior Director in the Corporate Partnerships Group at Yahoo! Inc. There, he was responsible for making key strategic contributions to the company's big bets and key initiatives through the exploration of industry changing ideas and partnerships. Acting as the primary liaison to the VC and private equity community, he looked for new areas of innovation to jumpstart Yahoo's business and/or product roadmaps.

Previously at Yahoo!, Del Balso acted as Senior Director of Global Strategic Partnerships, where he helped launch a new business unit charged with developing large-scale commercial agreements with Fortune 500 companies including Philips, Intel, Blockbuster, Sony and others. Del Balso was the top revenue producer on the team, developing, planning, and executing numerous multimillion-dollar strategic partnerships.

Del Balso's pre-Yahoo! years in the media industry were spent with Microsoft's MSN internet division. At MSN, he led the telecommunications and technology advertising sales efforts. In this role, Del Balso was responsible for MSN's advertising sales, go-to-market strategy and key revenue producing marketing alliances in the group. He was one of the top revenue producers for the division, delivering over $112m in revenue for the company during his tenure. As the key evangelist for MSN within Microsoft, he pioneered many of the early strategic sales programs on behalf of Microsoft Small Business, Windows and Xbox.

Prior, Del Balso held a sales management position at Excite@Home and was a cable TV Advertising Sales Executive at AT&T Media Services.

Del Balso was born and raised in New York City. He enjoys live music, contemporary art and travel. He currently spends his time between New York City and San Francisco