Chris Tolles

Chris Tolles is a Silicon Valley executive, entrepreneur & three time co-founder; building products and companies that have championed individual agency and freedom on the Internet.

Working at the intersection of technology and media, Chris is currently advising companies and investment funds in a variety of areas.

In his most recent executive role as CEO, Chris led the sale of Topix to Publishers Clearing House after pivoting from a community news site to a publisher of original content, driving revenues 10x from $5M to $50M. Topix built a set of technologies that merged the creation, marketing and monetization of content, which enabled the company to achieve over $1.8M in revenue per employee & over 20M monthly unique visitors.

Chris started his career at Sun Microsystems, after graduating from the University of California at San Diego with degrees in Computer Science and Economics, notably running marketing for the cryptography and network security products group, spearheading efforts around the Simple Key IP (SKIP) encryption protocol & SunScreen firewall marketing efforts.

Post Sun, Chris has co-founded and launched three startups, helped raise over $20M in Venture Capital, and been integral to the successful exits of those companies.

Chris has substantial experience in the areas of Internet Search, Online Community, Social Networking, New Media, News, User acquisition, Adtech, programmatic advertising & Network Security. Chris has run product, engineering, sales and marketing organizations as well as running Topix as the CEO.

Along with his professional advising roles he has previously served on the neighborhood advisory committee for the San Francisco Port Commission and the advisory board of the Dean of the School of Social Sciences at the University of California at San Diego.