It took about a year and a half before I could even begin to understand the I Can Has Cheezburger (or “LOLcats”) phenomenon online. The mundane yet bizarre cat pictures. The misspelled captions. The curious Internet-slang grammar. They were kind of funny, but mostly they were weird—and, at times, even a little annoying.

Yet millions of people flocked to these Web pages, submitting their own photos and captions and commenting on others. The Cheezburger Network, as the company behind it is now called (formerly Pet Holdings), has become a runaway success—an Internet sensation that has spawned a total of 26 humor sites, including FAIL Blog, GraphJam, Engrish Funny, and Emails From Crazy People. The original Cheezburger site hit 1 billion page views (10 billion cat images) earlier this month. And during the first half of 2009, the company raked in seven figures’ worth of revenue from advertising, licensing fees, and sales of merchandise, according to Time magazine.

So what’s its big secret? Why has the Cheezburger Network succeeded where so many other humor sites and blogs continue to toil in obscurity? It took me a while to realize it’s not about luck, or marketing, or the power of certain kinds of humor. There’s some good timing involved, sure, but mostly it’s about the drive and mentality of the company’s leader, Ben Huh.

Huh is often portrayed in the media as a jokester. Photos in articles show him wearing a funny hat or mask, surrounded by stuffed animals, or posing with a cheeseburger. That image is pretty far from the reality, as I understand from reading more about Huh and interviewing him recently. In a Q&A with Advertising Age earlier this week, for instance, Huh emphasized, “I am a business person.” And he shed some very interesting light on his approach to business: “We’ve gotten into situations where we’ve tried to acquire a blog for large sums of money, and they turned us down, and we’ve gone on to compete and we’ve won,” he said. “My final offer is, ‘If you do not do this, we will start a competitive blog, and we will not stop until we win.’”

Clearly, Huh has the killer instinct. He is deeply competitive, but not in an over-the-top way. He could turn out to be the Michael Jordan of consumer Internet startups, though we probably shouldn’t put him in the Hall of Fame just yet. Still, as a promising entrepreneur in his early 30s with a pretty big success already under his belt, his story—and his company’s strategy—is worth a closer look.

Huh first arrived in the Northwest in 2005 to work for Intava, an interactive media startup in Bellevue, WA. Before that, he had graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism during the dot-com bubble. “They were handing out bonuses to college grads because we’d used the Internet once,” he jokes. Huh worked for a number of startups in the Chicago area, including his own Web analytics firm. “I made all the mistakes they say you’ll make,” he says. “I raised too little money, and spent all my time fundraising and not making a product for the market.”

By the time he landed in Seattle, Huh had made it a priority to always work for a company’s CEO, or at least have a dotted-line connection to them, in any job he took. “That was going to teach me more about running a company,” he says. “This is for my career, not for [any particular] job.” Huh had also learned from his previous startups to have a “huge focus on staying profitable.”

In 2007, he came across the I Can Has Cheezburger site, which had been started by a …Next Page »

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Seattle-based Cheezburger Network (formerly called Pet Holdings) announced today it has served 1 billion page views, or 10 billion images, since its first user-generated humor site, I Can Has Cheezburger, was launched in January 2007. The company also said it has hired Todd Sawicki as chief revenue officer. Sawicki is a senior sales and marketing veteran of several online startups and media companies including Lookery, and is on the advisory boards of Seattle-based Wetpaint and BuddyTV.

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Seattle-based Pet Holdings, owners of I Can Has Cheezburger and other humor websites, has formed a partnership with Dogster, a San Francisco-based social networking site, whereby Dogster will sell ads for Pet Holdings’ animal-related sites. The news was reported by TechCrunch, which also notes that the Cheezburger network will hit one billion page views this week. Financial details weren’t given, but TechFlash reports it’s the first deal Pet Holdings has done with a premium ad network in a very specific niche. The deal makes sense, as Dogster will benefit from Pet Holdings’ greater traffic, and Pet Holdings will benefit from Dogster’s ad monetization expertise.

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After a scorching week of 90-degree temperatures, what could be better than kicking back with a nice cold one, catching up with friends and colleagues—and seeing five of Seattle’s top rock bands with tech affiliations duke it out for prizes and the adulation of the crowd?

It’s all happening this Thursday evening at Xconomy’s Battle of the Tech Bands, at WTIA’s summer celebration down at the Pyramid Alehouse in Seattle. The Battle will take place from 6-9 pm. Get your tickets online here, by Tuesday 5 pm, as they are going fast…

The bands (listen to their songs here) will be competing for two prizes—Audience Favorite (voted on by the crowd via SMS), which wins one year of band promotional services from Nimbit, and Most Innovative Band (voted on by our judges), which wins free studio time from The Hive Recording Studio. Both winners will also receive free press releases to promote their shows, tours, and albums with traditional and online media outlets, courtesy of Marketwire.

We’ll also be giving out raffle prizes throughout the evening, including a Seattle harbor cruise for four from Argosy Cruises, museum passes and a gift certificate from the Experience Music Project, Guitar Hero III courtesy of Guitar Center, and Seattle Mariners gift packs (see the event site for a complete list). All raffle ticket proceeds are going to our charitable partners, Technology Access Foundation and Jack Straw Productions. Thanks to all for their generous donations.

And last, but not least, check out Paul Allen and Bill Gates in cartoon-land, as they prepare to compete in the Battle. I’m actually starting to believe they might be there, although I don’t know about the costume (that puts it over the top). It’s the latest installment of Protingent Man by David J. Locher, courtesy of Donn Harvey at Protingent Staffing:

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We are in the final stages of selecting the five finalist bands who will perform on July 30 at the Xconomy Battle of the Tech Bands, to be featured at the Washington Technology Industry Association’s Summer Celebration at the Pyramid Alehouse across from Safeco Field in Seattle.

We will announce the finalists very soon, but suffice to say that our esteemed judges were suitably impressed by the quality and diversity of the bands who entered. It is going to be a really rocking show, with a great mix of musical styles and companies represented.

The WTIA has also secured two Seattle-based charitable partners for the event, who will receive the proceeds from all raffle tickets sold. They are Technology Access Foundation, a nonprofit that prepares children of color for academic and professional success through a rigorous K-12 curriculum (Luke profiled TAF here), and Jack Straw Productions, a multidisciplinary arts center that fosters communication of art and ideas to diverse audiences through audio media and artist residency programs. To register for the event, click here.

In the meantime, here’s a quick behind-the-scenes look at Bill Gates and Paul Allen’s exploits in cartoon-land, as they prepared to send in their band demo to the contest. It’s the latest installment of Protingent Man, courtesy of Donn Harvey and David J. Locher:

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Alas, the deadline has come and gone. Finis. At the stroke of midnight on Friday night, the doors officially closed on any new band submissions for Xconomy’s Battle of the Tech Bands. The big event is happening on July 30, at the WTIA Annual Summer Celebration at the Pyramid Alehouse in Seattle.

You can beg, you can plead, but even if you are Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix resurrected to form a startup that’s reinventing the Web or curing cancer, we still won’t accept your submission… OK, well, maybe we would in that case.

Now it’s off to the judges for deliberations. Good luck to all of the entrants. We’ve got a great mix of bands from small startups and big companies, and a nice range of musical styles, and we’re looking forward to making some tough decisions. We’ll keep you posted on our progress in whittling the list down to the five finalists who will perform on July 30.

Meantime, in cartoon land, Bill Gates and Paul Allen have been on the ball. Having both been laid off from their temp jobs, they’ve had the time to record a killer demo for the Battle. Yes, it’s the newest installment of the “Protingent Man” comic, courtesy of David J. Locher and Donn Harvey (see the previous installment here and the full strip here):

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Here at Xconomy, preparations are in full swing for our Battle of the Tech Bands, which is happening at the WTIA Summer Celebration on Thursday, July 30, at the Pyramid Alehouse in Seattle. If you or anyone you know plays in a band with at least one member from a Northwest tech, life sciences, or tech investing firm, please submit your band’s stuff to techbands@xconomy.com (full details and event info here).

The deadline for submissions is coming up fast—next week, June 12—so don’t delay. We’ve already got a bunch of worthy competitors, but a few more bands from the tech powerhouses (Microsoft? Amazon? Real?), as well as the gaming cluster, certainly wouldn’t hurt. We know you’re out there.

We’ve lined up a team of stellar judges, and are working on a few more, as well as some great music-related prizes. Stay tuned for details on those.

Meanwhile, in cartoon land, Bill Gates and Paul Allen have some extra time on their hands to devote to getting their musical act together in time to participate in the Battle. It’s the latest installment of the Protingent Man comic, courtesy of David J. Locher and Donn Harvey (see the last installment here and the full strip here):

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Are you ready to rock? We’ve already received quite a few submissions from Seattle-area musicians in the tech and life sciences community who want to compete in the Xconomy Battle of the Tech Bands. The big competition is happening at the WTIA Summer Celebration at the Pyramid Ale House on July 30. (Event details and band application info is here; the deadline for applicants is June 12.)

But we also got a submission we didn’t expect. It looks like tech luminaries Bill Gates and Paul Allen, a known music buff, are planning to enter the competition—at least in one alternate reality. Donn Harvey, the president of Bellevue, WA-based Protingent Staffing (and bass guitarist with Hettel Street Blues), sent us a rather unusual e-mail. It seems his company has a comic-strip superhero who works with Gates and Allen.

I’ll let the cartoons, drawn by David J. Locher, tell the rest of the story (see below):

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(To be continued…)

OK, so it’s a little self-promotional (for both of us), but we laughed out loud when we received it. Besides, it’s all in the spirit of fun and a great cause, right? We’ll be announcing the judges and prizes for the Battle soon. In the meantime, please help us spread the word, and e-mail us at techbands@xconomy.com if your band would like to enter.

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