Benjamin "Ben" Chiu (; born December 27, 1970) is a

Taiwanese-American Taiwanese Americans () are Americans who carry full or partial ancestry from Taiwan. This includes American-born citizens who descend from migrants from Taiwan. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, 49% of Taiwanese Americans lived in the state of Califo ...

and Canadian computer programmer and internet entrepreneur. He is the founder of killerapp.com, a popular comparison shopping site for computers and consumer electronics that was acquired by CNET Networks Inc. in 1999 for $50 million.

Early life

Born in

Taichung, Taiwan Taichung (, Wade–Giles: ''Tʻai²-chung¹'', pinyin: ''Táizhōng''), officially Taichung City, is a special municipality located in central Taiwan. Taichung has approximately 2.8 million residents and is the second most populous city of Tai ...

, Ben who is an only child, moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina at eight months of age with his mother (Hsiu Lan) and father (Sheng Dien) where they lived for six years before moving to

Toronto, Ontario Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

, Canada. He attended high-school a
Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute
in

Scarborough Scarborough or Scarboro may refer to: People * Scarborough (surname) * Earl of Scarbrough Places Australia * Scarborough, Western Australia, suburb of Perth * Scarborough, New South Wales, suburb of Wollongong * Scarborough, Queensland, su ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

and graduated with honors and awards in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

and

Visual Arts The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile art ...

. In 1993 he received his

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

in applied science,

industrial engineering Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information a ...

from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 ...

. When he was 11, Ben began to take an interest in programming. One summer, Ben's father assigned him to write a database system (using DBASE) for their family business. With help from his father, Ben started Linguasoft Corp. and sold his system to bookstores and libraries. To this day, the Royal Ontario Museum is still using his software. Barely a teenager, Ben Chiu played

table-tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

for the provincial (Ontario) team. Under the relentless training of renowned

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

n coach Zoran Kosanovic, Ben won the Canadian National Championships (junior singles), Formosa Cup (men's singles) and took 2nd place at the 1984 U.S. Open (junior doubles). In addition to high school, Ben also attended school for the gifted in visual arts. His art teacher once offered to buy one of his oil paintings but Ben declined. Some of his wildlife paintings have been displayed at th
McMichael Gallery
in

Kleinburg, Ontario Kleinburg is an unincorporated village in the city of Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. It is home to the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, an art gallery with a focus on the Group of Seven, and the Kortright Centre for Conservation. In 2001, the vil ...

. At the time, his style was inspired by Robert Bateman, Glen Loates and

Andrew Wyeth Andrew Newell Wyeth ( ; July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009) was an American visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century. In his ...

Career

In 1994 while the Internet was still in its infancy, Ben moved to Fremont, California to help manage his father's publishing business
Pan Asian Publications
While buying computer hardware for the company, he discovered it was tedious to browse through thousands of magazine listings for the best deals. Instead, he cut the spines off publications like '' Computer Shopper'' and '' PC Magazine'' and keyed all the specs and prices into a database, page after page, one page at a time. After e-commerce sites began to appear on the Internet, Ben developed a

web crawler A Web crawler, sometimes called a spider or spiderbot and often shortened to crawler, is an Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web and that is typically operated by search engines for the purpose of Web indexing (''web spid ...

that would automatically gather and update prices around the clock. This was to form the foundation for his new company. Ben formally incorporated KillerApp, Corp. in 1995 and went on to pioneer the concept of online comparison shopping (also known as the

price engine A comparison shopping website, sometimes called a price comparison website, price analysis tool, comparison shopping agent, shopbot, aggregator or comparison shopping engine, is a vertical search engine that shoppers use to filter and compare produ ...

). This paradigm shift proved devastating to the computer publication industry. "Print" simply could not compete with the timely content and convenience of these specialized

search engines A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

. The web crawlers at KillerApp ran 24/7, updating 1.5 million prices daily. Within two years,
killerapp.com
' was receiving 14 million

page views In web analytics and website management, a pageview or page view, abbreviated in business to PV and occasionally called page impression, is a request to load a single HTML file ( web page) of an Internet site. On the World Wide Web, a page request ...

per month and 1/2 million monthly users. The site was also generating 150,000 leads per month for its base of 360 merchants. In order to sustain the growth of its business, Ben raised two rounds of funding from angel investors that included: C.S. Ho (founder of

Mitac MiTAC Holdings Corporation, formerly MiTAC International Corp. () is a Taiwanese electronics company established 8 December 1982. It is a subsidiary of MiTAC-Synnex Group. Through a 100% stock swap from MiTAC International Corp., MiTAC Holdings ...

Synnex Synnex was an American multinational corporation that provides information technology (IT) services to businesses. It merged with competitor Tech Data to form TD Synnex. It was founded in 1980 by Robert T. Huang and based in Fremont, Cali ...

and honorary chairman of

Computex COMPUTEX Taipei, or Taipei International Information Technology Show (), is a computer expo held annually in Taipei, Taiwan. Since the early 2000s, it is one of the largest computer and technology trade shows in the world. The last COMPUTEX wa ...

); Charlene Wang (president of FIC and daughter of tycoon Y.C. Wang); Ming Chien (chairman of FIC) and Cher Wang (chairperson of

VIA Technologies VIA Technologies Inc. (), is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory. It was the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. As a fabless semiconductor company, VIA ...

and daughter of Y.C. Wang). In 1998,

Ziff-Davis Ziff Davis, Inc. is an American digital media and internet company. First founded in 1927 by William Bernard Ziff Sr. and Bernard George Davis, the company primarily owns technology-oriented media websites, online shopping-related services, an ...

approached Ben with a buy-out offer. He declined but instead brought in

Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...

to produce competitive bids. A long M&A roadshow ensued. Ben held due diligence discussions with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

ZDNet ZDNET is a business technology news website owned and operated by Red Ventures. The brand was founded on April 1, 1991, as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication. His ...

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

, CNET,

Excite Excitation, excite, exciting, or excitement may refer to: * Excitation (magnetic), provided with an electrical generator or alternator * Excite Ballpark, located in San Jose, California * Excite (web portal), web portal owned by IAC * Electron ex ...

Lycos Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Walth ...

and

Inktomi Inktomi Corporation was a company that provided software for Internet service providers (ISPs). It was incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. Customers included Microsoft, HotBot, Amazon.com, eBay, ...

. On March 23, 1999 he sold his company to CNET in a stock swap valued at US$54 million and joined CNET as the Director of Commerce Services.

In the media

Ben Chiu is the second

Taiwanese American Taiwanese Americans () are Americans who carry full or partial ancestry from Taiwan. This includes American-born citizens who descend from migrants from Taiwan. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, 49% of Taiwanese Americans lived in the state of Califo ...

(since Jerry Yang co-founder of

) to appear on the cover of ''

Wired Magazine ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fr ...

''.

Po Bronson Po Bronson (born March 14, 1964) is an American journalist and author who lives in San Francisco. Early life and education Bronson was born in Seattle, Washington. After attending Lakeside School in Seattle, he graduated from Stanford Univer ...

chronicled Chiu's rags-to-riches story in his best-selling novel ''The Nudist on the Late Shift ()''. His story has also been recounted in Chinese by Peggy Teng () in her book
華裔網路英雄傳奇
' (translation: Unique Passages of Overseas-Chinese Internet Heroes).

References

External links

CNET Acquires KillerApp Corp.KillerApp.com is now CNET Shopper.com
* ttp://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-123001yearpo,1,4909595.story?ctrack=1&cset=true LA Times Follow-up Article: Heading to Greener Pastures When the Valley Turns Brown {{DEFAULTSORT:Chiu, Ben 1970 births American computer programmers American computer businesspeople American emigrants to Canada American publishers (people) American male table tennis players American technology chief executives American technology company founders Businesspeople from California Businesspeople from North Carolina Businesspeople from Taichung Businesspeople from Toronto Businesspeople in information technology Businesspeople in software Canadian computer businesspeople Canadian computer programmers Canadian people of Taiwanese descent Canadian publishers (people) Canadian male table tennis players Canadian technology chief executives Canadian technology company founders Living people Naturalized citizens of Canada People from Chapel Hill, North Carolina People from Fremont, California Sportspeople from Taichung Taiwanese emigrants to the United States University of Toronto alumni

Early life

Career

In the media

References

Further reading

External links