Damon Giglio and Colby Sambrotto

ForSaleByOwner.com was started by young Internet entrepreneur Damon Giglio.  In the late 1990s, Giglio worked for a venture capital firm that specialized in Internet companies.  Seeing the potential in an online real estate advertising business, Giglio convinced his firm to invest in a startup Internet company and later left and purchased ForSaleByOwner.com, which was little more than a web address at the time, from his former firm.  Giglio ran the company solo for roughly its first year of operation and then hired Colby Sambrotto, whom he had met while working in the venture capital firm, as ForSaleByOwner.com’s chief operating officer.  Together, the two young entrepreneurs capitalized on a growing network of local for-sale-by-owner magazines and built the company into one of the most successful Internet real estate advertising and information services in the nation.