Chris Petrovic

A strong, creative leader can shape an organization and ensure its profitability in a challenging and rapidly changing economy. As a new media veteran with over 10 years of management and industry experience, Chris Petrovic has the training and entrepreneurial passion to provide the leadership that is necessary to drive the success of new ventures and growth-oriented businesses.  Chris currently serves as an advisor to early stage companies and spends what free time he has writing for his blog - Brave New Media World.

Prior to this, Chris was the Vice President of Digital Media for Playboy Enterprises, where he managed the daily operations of multiple online and mobile initiatives, while also guiding new product and digital media business development efforts – both domestically and internationally. His innovative ideas and focused management style resulted in the expansion of Playboy as a lifestyle brand and has spearheaded content creation and distribution initiatives, as well as the deployment of new business models (mostly around advertising) for new and emerging platforms – including but not limited to the burgeoning social media space.  Chris was the architect of the Playboy Audience Network, the company’s first ad-supported video syndication initiative, including partnerships with leading video sites.  In addition, Chris has spearheaded the brands’ foray into the social media space, both through internal initiatives (PlayboyU.com) as well as through integration efforts with external properties.

Chris was responsible for doubling the size of Playboy’s international digital brand and distribution footprint, spending a good part of the last 18 months expanding the Playboy brand into over 50 markets on 4 continents, and spearheading other high-impact projects that fueled worldwide visibility and multimillion-dollar revenue potential. He also recently served as Executive Producer of a new digital series, in partnership with Spike Digital Entertainment, called “Playmate Show and Tell”, and was an integral part of the task force responsible for overseeing the current re-design and technological overhaul of Playboy.com.

Prior to joining Playboy, Chris served as Vice President of Business Development for AG Interactive, the new media division of American Greetings. In this dynamic role, he helped spearhead all partner management, customer acquisition and new business activities for the company’s content-centric online, mobile and instant messenger businesses both domestically and internationally, and managed a team of 5 people.

He made it his priority to align a product vision across all the various entertainment verticals and generated new products, partnerships and revenues. During his tenure, Chris successfully cultivated tent-pole relationships with companies, brands and talent (AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Boost, Univision, Sports Illustrated, Def Jam) while helping double the size of the company’s online subscription customer base and resulting advertising-related revenue.



Before his role at AG Interactive, Chris served as Head of Strategy & Business Development for theglobe.com.  During his time there, he helped manage the company’s diverse business portfolio, which included: a consumer-facing, Web-based VoIP product (GloPhone) that, at one point, was second only to Skype in number of customers; a games division, which included both online and offline publishing properties; and a direct response marketing division (SendTec).  During his tenure, Chris managed a team of 10 people.

In the years prior to his tenure with theglobe.com, he demonstrated his competency as an entrepreneurial business leader and strategist through his involvement with a then leading venture capital firm, Prime Ventures.  Chris started his career as CEO of a Prime Ventures portfolio company in the online greetings space (BannerGreetings.com) and from there merged the company with another Prime Ventures investment (Buzztone), where he served as COO of the company’s online marketing business.  And from there he was brought on board at Prime Ventures as an Associate for the firm as well as Vice President of Business Development for one of its flagship investments – drkoop.com.  During his time within the Prime Ventures ecosystem, Chris was responsible for managing teams ranging in size from 5-25 people.

Chris holds a JD from the Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. He graduated cum laude with a BA in International Relations from Columbia University in New York, and is currently enrolled in UCLA’s Professional Designation in Business program.