Castles Media was founded in 2006 to pursue a vision of building leading media properties in distinct vertical categories. These market leading properties (or "Castles"), will distinguish themselves from the mass media landscape by their depth of information and content in a specific category. Castles Media launched its first vertical business in the vacation rental industry in 2007, and has made several investments in exciting online media businesses.
Castles Media is led by Julian Castelli, a tenured senior executive with a successful track record of both leading large public companies and building and developing smaller start-up organizations. Mr. Castelli has a deep network of leading online media executives that share his vision, and will bring world class capabilities to the companies that Castles Media acquires and develops.
Mr. Castelli is the founder and CEO of Castles Media. Mr. Castelli brings 18 years of senior level executive operating experience and a world class institutional background to Castles Media. Mr. Castelli actively manages Castles Media's portfolio Company -Castles Travel Inc. (d/b/a VacationRoost), serving as the Company's President & CEO.
Prior to founding Castles Media, Mr. Castelli served as the Chief Financial Officer of Primedia, a $300 million revenue media company that owns and operates leading targeted media brands: Apartment Guide/Apartmentguide.com, New Home Guide/Newhomeguide.com, Auto Guide/Autoguide.com, and Rentals.com. (www.primedia.com) Mr. Castelli also led many of Primedia's operational efforts, including serving as President of the Auto Guide business-building it into an $18 million business in less than 2 years, and helping to launch the Rentals.com business. Prior to joining Primedia, Mr. Castelli was a founder and managing director of Cabrillo Advisors, a boutique financial advisory firm. Prior to that, Mr. Castelli served as Chief Financial Officer of PageNet, a $1 billion revenue public telecom company.
Mr. Castelli began his career as an investment banker with Goldman, Sachs & Co. in 1990,and later served as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company. Mr. Castelli has an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BA from Amherst College.
George Trevino is a founding member of the Castles Media team and brings over 19 years of senior level executive experience in finance, accounting, operations, and sales and marketing. Mr. Trevino is currently serving as the COO and CFO of Castles Travel Inc (d/b/a VacationRoost).
Most recently Mr. Trevino was Director of Finance with Nokia Inc.?s Enterprise Solutions (ES) business group based in Irving, Texas. In this position Mr. Trevino had global financial responsibility for the ES Sales & Marketing group which included short-term sales planning and reporting, strategic and long range planning, credit risk, financial systems, and Sarbanes Oxley compliance. While at Nokia, Mr. Trevino was an Assistant Controller for Nokia?s Internet Communications group and led a Six Sigma project that won national and global awards and in the process became a Certified Green Belt in Six Sigma.
Prior to Nokia Mr. Trevino held several senior level Controller, Director or Manager positions at both large and start-up companies including GTE (Verizon) and ILD Telecommunications. His experience includes IPO filings, SEC filings for public debt, private offering memorandums, and accounting for acquisitions. Mr. Trevino also has extensive international business experience having traveled and worked in Europe, Latin America, South America, Africa, and China.
Mr. Trevino has an MBA from Southern Methodist University, a BBA in Accounting from the University of Texas at Austin and is a Texas Certified Public Accountant.
Evan Kramer joined Castles Media in August, 2007 to lead the Company?s online product strategy and build the beach division of Castles Travel Inc. Mr. Kramer is a veteran online media executive who has built category-leading commercial web properties at several different companies.
Prior to joining Castles Media, Mr. Kramer served as Vice President, Autoguide.com at Consumer Source, Inc. Kramer successfully launched the Autoguide site from inception and grew it to a ?network? with over 5.5 million monthly unique visitors, and 100% year over year conversion rate growth. Prior to that, Kramer was Director of Strategy for Cox Enterprises, where he initiated and launched the ajcjobs.com, Dent Wizard Service Drive, and Kudzu.com online media properties.
From 1998 to 2000, Kramer worked in the private investment community as an Analyst at Equity-South and then Venture Capital Analyst at Kinetic Ventures. Mr. Kramer began his career as an accountant with Price Waterhouse Coopers, and remains a Certified Public Accountant. He holds a BBA from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Emory University.
Mr. Hansen is a financial partner with Castles Media helping to provide access to capital and financial advisory services to the Company?s portfolio Companies. Mr. Hansen is the founder of and Managing Director of Cabrillo Advisors, a Southern California based investment banking firm.
Prior to founding Cabrillo Advisors, Mr. Hansen was a founding Principal at both MHT Partners, a Dallas based middle market investment bank, and Dell Ventures in Austin Texas. While at Dell Ventures, Mr. Hansen led investments of over $300 million in such companies as Sina (Nasdaq: SINA), Navisite (Nasdaq: NAVI) Neoforma (Nasdaq: NEOF), and webMethods (Nasdaq: WEBM), and played a significant role in developing key strategic partnerships with these and other public and private companies in support of Dell?s corporate strategy initiatives. Prior to joining Dell Ventures, Mr. Hansen was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company.
Mr. Hansen has an MBA with distinction from Northwestern?s Kellogg Graduate School of Business and graduated from San Diego State University with a bachelor?s degree in Accounting summa cum laude, and is a licensed CPA in the State of Texas.
