Zoltán Petres

About

Scientist by training. Operator by choice.

Portrait of Zoltán Petres
Zoltán Petres, PhDPhoto: R. Kooskora

I build product organizations that make a business better, measurably. For fifteen years that has meant marketplaces, recommendation systems and, increasingly, AI that has to earn its place in the P&L.

My path started in research. I did my PhD in computer science between the University of Tokyo and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, working on AI-driven sensing, control and virtual spaces, then led multi-country research projects at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Venture work followed: building the investment case for a recommendation start-up, Gravity R&D, which I then joined to build its products and partnerships until it served 400 million recommendations a day.

Since then I have led product at metasearch and marketplace businesses: liligo.com at eDreams ODIGEO, trivago, OLX Group across seven European markets, and Bolt, where I was Vertical CPO for Bolt Delivery across 16 countries. Most recently I was SVP of Product at CEEZER, a climate-asset procurement platform, where I authored the product strategy that repositioned the company as an AI-native, tech-enabled services business.

The thread through all of it: strategic differentiation for sustainable growth, and the shortest path to profitability. I am comfortable stopping well-liked projects to protect that, and I measure myself by the leaders I leave behind.

Education & languages

The foundations.

  • 2007PhD, Computer Science & ITUniversity of Tokyo · Budapest University of Technology and EconomicsSumma cum laude. Werner von Siemens Excellence Award for the thesis.
  • 2009MSc, Business AdministrationCorvinus University of Budapest
  • 2004MSc, Computer Science & ITBudapest University of Technology and EconomicsSumma cum laude. Thesis on AI timetable optimization, written at TU Delft.

Languages

  • HungarianNative
  • EnglishFluent
  • GermanIntermediate
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