Greg Flores
Advisor - Business Development

Best known for catapulting the revolution of the recording industry with the launch of MP3.com, Greg Flores remains rooted in his passion for empowering artists. Greg connected with Steven Churchill, the producer of the Art of Photography Show, in 2008. It was apparent right from the start that Steven’s passion for excellence in photography and his desire to promote the photographic artist and photography as an art form matched perfectly with Greg’s artist empowerment philosophy first developed at MP3.com.

A true testament that timing and innovation are key, directly prior to the formation of MP3.com Greg joined Michael Robertson, co-founder of MP3.com, while Michael was focused on Filez.com, a file sharing technology that was emerging. At Filez.com Greg was responsible for generating revenue and finding creative ways to drive traffic to the site. He noticed that MP3 searches were on the rise. After some research, together, they decided to purchase MP3.com and found it was owned by another individual. They e-mailed the owner and told him they were interested in buying the domain name. After a little bit of haggling, Greg and Michael purchased the domain for $1,500. Only a few days later after the ownership transfer had taken place and they purchased MP3 shopping mall, 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.

Within the first 18 hours, Greg received his first call from a company wishing to purchase advertising and Greg sold them $5,000 in advertising. From there things took off, breaking down the barriers between artists and their fans forever shaking up the recording industry and not giving tradition record label executives the option to turn their heads.

As the Senior VP and head of Business Development of MP3.com, Greg 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 $372 million.

After leaving MP3.com in 2001, Greg was one of the founders of Autospies, 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.

Greg also has worked with Animusic since 2003. Animusic is a content creation company focused exclusively on computer animation of music. Greg is a partner and helps with business development. Since working with Animusic, Greg has been instrumental in taking sales from just over 100,000 DVDs to over 600,000. Greg was responsible for managing the company’s first foray outside of the US with the launch of Animusic 2 to the Japanese market in March 2008.

Greg’s wife Heather Finlay is a real estate developer and current CEO of the YWCA San Diego. Heather was the volunteer development manger for Becky’s House II and moved from the Board of Directors to CEO in March of 2009.

True philanthropists, Greg 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. Greg joined the Board of Directors on July 1, 2009. They also support the YWCA and San Diego Humane Society.