Mark Skapinker

Mark Skapinker has been an entrepreneur and seed investor in the Canadian

software industry since the inception of the personal computer in the 1980’s.

In the ’80s, his involvement spanned the early Commodore and Atari consumer

software industry to the first PCs in the banking industry.

In 1988, Mark co-founded Delrina Corporation, makers of WinFax, one of the most

popular Windows programs of all time. Mark was president of Delrina until it

was acquired by Symantec in November 1995. Delrina grew to over 600 people,

with offices in six countries, and a public listing on the TSE and NASDAQ. In 1995,

Skapinker anticipated the growth and impact of email and the Internet, and sold

Delrina to Symantec Corporation for over US$400 million.

In 1997, Mark founded Balisoft / Servicesoft Technologies, makers of Internet

customer service software. In 2008, Mark founded iStopOver.com, a Toronto based

Internet business focused on peer to peer travel with online ecommerce.

In 2000, Mark co-founded Brightspark Ventures in Toronto. For over 12 years,

Brightspark has managed early stage and seed Venture Capital funds, with over

$135 million under management. Mark is a Managing Partner at Brightspark, which

has invested in over twenty Canadian software startups. Brightspark Ventures has

twice won the Canadian Venture Capital Association “Deal of the Year Award”, for

the sale of ThinkDynamics to IBM and for the sale of Radian6 to Salesforce.com.