About Phil Santoro

Phil Santoro is an entrepreneur based in Miami, Florida. Phil is the Co-Founder of Wilbur Labs, a startup studio that turns bold ideas into market-leading companies. Phil is an expert on building and growing companies, with a proven track record of guiding companies from launch to exit.

Co-Founder of Wilbur Labs

Phil Santoro co-founded Wilbur Labs with David Kolodny in 2016. Wilbur Labs provides funding, shared resources, and hands-on operational support to build and scale businesses. Since inception, Wilbur Labs has built and invested in over 21 companies.

In 2018, Wilbur Labs built VacationRenter, which became the fastest-growing travel startup in history to reach $1 billion in gross bookings. Wilbur Labs also launched Barkbus in 2020, scaling the venture into the largest mobile dog grooming company in the United States. Today, the Wilbur Labs portfolio serves hundreds of millions of people across the travel, recruitment, pet care, and financial services sectors.

Thought Leadership & Media

Phil Santoro is an expert on building and scaling startups and shares his expertise to help other founders. He answers common founder questions on the Wilbur Labs Founder FAQ series. Phil is a frequent speaker on entrepreneurship and a contributing author for Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, and Entrepreneur Magazine.

Growth Strategist at Google

From 2013-2016, Phil Santoro served as a Growth Strategist at Google in Mountain View, California. While at Google, Phil met David Kolodny, who joined at the same time. After several years, Phil and David started brainstorming startup ideas and identified several problems they wanted to solve. Rather than leaving Google to launch a single venture, the pair co-founded Wilbur Labs, a startup studio designed to build and scale a portfolio of companies.

First Venture: FreeForums.org

In 2007, while still in high school, Phil Santoro founded FreeForums.org, a hosting platform that allowed people to create and manage their own online community forums. Phil scaled the platform to 125 million monthly pageviews, making it one of the most visited online destinations at the time. Phil led FreeForums.org to a strategic acquisition by the publicly traded company CrowdGather Inc. in 2010, marking his first major exit.

Education

Phil graduated from the Carl H. Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati in 2013 with a BBA in Finance.

Philanthropy & Mentorship

A lifelong technology builder, Phil Santoro built his first computer at age 12 and founded his first startup at 13. Committed to fostering the next generation of innovators, Phil speaks at schools to teach students the fundamentals of business building. In 2018, Phil established the Santoro Entrepreneurship Scholarship at Madeira High School, and in 2023 he created the Santoro Family Fund for Entrepreneurship at the University of Cincinnati Carl H. Lindner College of Business to support young entrepreneurs and cultivate a culture of entrepreneurship from an early age.