Greg Flores
Greg Flores (born 1964) is the co-founder and former SVP of MP3.com, which quickly became one of the most popular and controversial Internet music sites. Since leaving MP3.com in 2001, Flores has become involved with several different companies including Autospies, Animusic and the Art of Photography Show.
Career
MP3.com
A true testament that timing and innovation are key, directly prior to the discovery of MP3.com Flores joined Michael Robertson, while Robertson was focused on Filez.com, a file sharing technology that was emerging. Shortly after moving to San Diego from Texas in 1997, he spotted an insert in the San Diego Union Tribune featuring the “Top 25 Cool Companies of San Diego” and a little company called Filez.com was mentioned.
Flores found the number for the company, called and spoke to Robertson, and they met the next day for lunch to talk about Filez and some other ideas he had brewing. While Robertson couldn’t offer Flores compensation initially he was impressed enough with Robertson to work in exchange for an equity position in the company. Flores bought into the innovative thinking and vision for a different way of doing business on the Internet.
At Filez.com Flores was responsible for generating revenue and finding creative ways to drive traffic to the site. In order to generate traffic, he would keep an eye out for growing trends in site ranking charts. Instead of looking at the top of the heap and trying to copy what was at the top, he would watch what was climbing the charts and MP3 file sites had really started to move up the charts. He also looked at the search logs for Filez and noticed that MP3 searches were on the rise. He decided to explore the MP3 thing and downloaded his first MP3 file. Since he was on a cable modem, the download process was pretty fast but originally finding a song to actually download was more challenging.
From there Flores emailed an MP3 file to Robertson and he too was blown away by the file size and the quality of the sound. They found that MP3.com had already been registered but wasn’t live on the Internet. They e-mailed the owner and told him they were interested in buying the domain name. Shortly after, they offered the owner $1,000 for the domain name and after a little bit of haggling, Flores and Robertson purchased the domain for $1,500. Only a few days later after the ownership transfer had taken place and they purchased MP3shoppingmall.com to get a webmaster with MP3 experience, they turned on MP3.com. The shock hit quickly when in the first 24 hours, they had over 10,000 unique users, which was especially amazing because MP3.com wasn’t yet registered in any search engines.
People where solely finding MP3.com by typing the URL in the address bar of a browser. They knew immediately that they were on to something. Within the first 18 hours, Flores received his first call from a company wishing to purchase advertising and Flores sold them $5,000 in advertising. The name of the company was Xing Technology and they were later acquired by Real Networks. They more than paid for the domain purchase and the new webmaster purchase in the first day of the site. From there things took off, breaking down the barriers between artists and their fans forever shaking up the recording industry and not giving traditional record label executives the option to ignore the phenomenon any longer.
As the Senior VP and head of Business Development of MP3.com, Flores was responsible for managing the advertising sales team with Steve Sheiner. During his tenure, the net revenues of MP3.com saw rapid growth going from $1.1 million in 1998 (only a partial year) to $21 million in fiscal 1999. The company saw a 266 percent increase over net revenues in fiscal 2000, with $80 million in net revenues. In 2001, MP3.com was sold to Universal music for almost $400 Million.
Autospies
In 2001, Flores was one of the founders of Autospies (www.autospies.com), a premier automotive inside information site where he currently remains a partner in the company. Autospies is now one of the most recognized online automotive brands among automotive enthusiasts and insiders on the Internet.
Animusic
Flores also has worked with Animusic (www.animusic.com) since 2003. Animusic is a content creation company focused exclusively on computer animation of music. Flores is a partner and helps with business development. Since working with Animusic, sales of the Animusic 1 and 2 DVDs have gone from just over 100,000 to over 600,000. Flores was responsible for managing the company’s first foray outside of the US with the launch of Animusic 2 (Japanese version) to the Japanese market in March 2008.
Art of Photography Show
Flores remains rooted in his passion for empowering artists. Flores connected with Steven Churchill, the producer of The Art of Photography Show (www.artofphotographyshow.com) in 2008. It was apparent right from the start that Churchill’s passion for excellence in photography and his desire to promote the photographic artist and photography as an art form matched perfectly with Flores’ artist empowerment philosophy first developed at MP3.com.
Personal life
Flores lives in San Diego, California.
Flores and his wife have been actively involved with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) for over 15 years. In 2009, they co-chaired the Promise Ball Gala that raised over $700,000 for Diabetes research. Flores joined the JDRF Board of Directors on July 1, 2009. They also support the YWCA, San Diego Humane Society, Museum of Photographic Arts and the San Diego Zoo.
Career
MP3.com
A true testament that timing and innovation are key, directly prior to the discovery of MP3.com Flores joined Michael Robertson, while Robertson was focused on Filez.com, a file sharing technology that was emerging. Shortly after moving to San Diego from Texas in 1997, he spotted an insert in the San Diego Union Tribune featuring the “Top 25 Cool Companies of San Diego” and a little company called Filez.com was mentioned.
Flores found the number for the company, called and spoke to Robertson, and they met the next day for lunch to talk about Filez and some other ideas he had brewing. While Robertson couldn’t offer Flores compensation initially he was impressed enough with Robertson to work in exchange for an equity position in the company. Flores bought into the innovative thinking and vision for a different way of doing business on the Internet.
At Filez.com Flores was responsible for generating revenue and finding creative ways to drive traffic to the site. In order to generate traffic, he would keep an eye out for growing trends in site ranking charts. Instead of looking at the top of the heap and trying to copy what was at the top, he would watch what was climbing the charts and MP3 file sites had really started to move up the charts. He also looked at the search logs for Filez and noticed that MP3 searches were on the rise. He decided to explore the MP3 thing and downloaded his first MP3 file. Since he was on a cable modem, the download process was pretty fast but originally finding a song to actually download was more challenging.
From there Flores emailed an MP3 file to Robertson and he too was blown away by the file size and the quality of the sound. They found that MP3.com had already been registered but wasn’t live on the Internet. They e-mailed the owner and told him they were interested in buying the domain name. Shortly after, they offered the owner $1,000 for the domain name and after a little bit of haggling, Flores and Robertson purchased the domain for $1,500. Only a few days later after the ownership transfer had taken place and they purchased MP3shoppingmall.com to get a webmaster with MP3 experience, they turned on MP3.com. The shock hit quickly when in the first 24 hours, they had over 10,000 unique users, which was especially amazing because MP3.com wasn’t yet registered in any search engines.
People where solely finding MP3.com by typing the URL in the address bar of a browser. They knew immediately that they were on to something. Within the first 18 hours, Flores received his first call from a company wishing to purchase advertising and Flores sold them $5,000 in advertising. The name of the company was Xing Technology and they were later acquired by Real Networks. They more than paid for the domain purchase and the new webmaster purchase in the first day of the site. From there things took off, breaking down the barriers between artists and their fans forever shaking up the recording industry and not giving traditional record label executives the option to ignore the phenomenon any longer.
As the Senior VP and head of Business Development of MP3.com, Flores was responsible for managing the advertising sales team with Steve Sheiner. During his tenure, the net revenues of MP3.com saw rapid growth going from $1.1 million in 1998 (only a partial year) to $21 million in fiscal 1999. The company saw a 266 percent increase over net revenues in fiscal 2000, with $80 million in net revenues. In 2001, MP3.com was sold to Universal music for almost $400 Million.
Autospies
In 2001, Flores was one of the founders of Autospies (www.autospies.com), a premier automotive inside information site where he currently remains a partner in the company. Autospies is now one of the most recognized online automotive brands among automotive enthusiasts and insiders on the Internet.
Animusic
Flores also has worked with Animusic (www.animusic.com) since 2003. Animusic is a content creation company focused exclusively on computer animation of music. Flores is a partner and helps with business development. Since working with Animusic, sales of the Animusic 1 and 2 DVDs have gone from just over 100,000 to over 600,000. Flores was responsible for managing the company’s first foray outside of the US with the launch of Animusic 2 (Japanese version) to the Japanese market in March 2008.
Art of Photography Show
Flores remains rooted in his passion for empowering artists. Flores connected with Steven Churchill, the producer of The Art of Photography Show (www.artofphotographyshow.com) in 2008. It was apparent right from the start that Churchill’s passion for excellence in photography and his desire to promote the photographic artist and photography as an art form matched perfectly with Flores’ artist empowerment philosophy first developed at MP3.com.
Personal life
Flores lives in San Diego, California.
Flores and his wife have been actively involved with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) for over 15 years. In 2009, they co-chaired the Promise Ball Gala that raised over $700,000 for Diabetes research. Flores joined the JDRF Board of Directors on July 1, 2009. They also support the YWCA, San Diego Humane Society, Museum of Photographic Arts and the San Diego Zoo.
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