Ben Huh currently has 18 life goals. He’s already crossed seven items off his list. And he’s only 32.
Huh ticked off the first one in 1999 by graduating with a B.S. in Journalism from Northwestern’s Medill School. He paid off his debts in 2004. That’s item number two. He started a startup in 2000. The startup failed, but the experience struck item number three from his list. In 2001, he married Emily Huh, whom he describes as his “perfect woman.” That’s four.
In September 2007, Huh bought the I Can Has Cheezburger Blog. This blog, featuring images of cats with funny captions (called “lolcats”), jumpstarted a network of 47 humor websites known collectively as The Cheezburger Network. After this investment, Huh crossed off items five and six from his bucket list: turning an annual profit and investing in other startups. At this point, he had enough leisure time to take care of number seven: learning how to sail.
Huh is now the CEO of a business with 40 full-time employees, just over a decade after graduation.
As Cheezburger Network’s head honcho, Huh describes himself as the founder of a proverbial playground — a playground that consists of 47 college staples such as FAIL Blog, This is Photobomb and Daily Squee.
“You know, it’s about finding something that you enjoy,” he says. “I find happiness in seeing the number of people happy everyday, the people who come to the site to have their five minutes of happiness.”
So there’s EpiCute for foodies, Poorly Dressed for fashionistas and Graph Jam for the mathematically-minded. While most of these ideas were adapted from already existing sites, Huh consolidates these sites into a larger network.
“Part of the last few years has been the dominance of mass media, and if you wanted to laugh here’s a sit com, or a comedy,” Huh says. “Well with the Internet you can be a lot more diverse. You can find happiness in a lot of different things, and you can find happiness in a million different things, and what we want to do is concentrate on the things that our users have told us is important to them.”
It’s been a long road for Huh. As a journalism student at Northwestern, Huh focused on newspaper publishing, serving as the photo editor at the Daily Northwestern. And while this photo may seem to prelude his future business in the Network, Huh just learned to take photos of his dog, a “big, fluffy white pillow” of a mixed poodle. Nevertheless, newspaper didn’t cut it for Huh.
“The problem I had with newspapers — and I was on the newspaper track at Medill — was that I would go at a newspaper and I would have a lot of fun working in this environment, yet at the end of the day when a newspaper showed up at my doorstep [...] I wouldn’t read it,” Huh says. “I actually used the web to get all my news. So there was a disconnect.”
So after graduation, Huh decided to shift his focus. After his startup went down, he moved through several jobs in the tech industry. After starting a pet blog with his wife and watching the trends, he compiled a group of angel investors and bought I Can Has Cheezburger. The Cheezburger Network now gets about 340 million page views a month.
But fame often comes with notoriety. Gawker recently claimed that Huh underpays and overworks his employees, but Huh notes that the positions at his company are mostly entry-level jobs with entry-level wages.
“To be honest publishing online is not a glamorous position,” Huh says. “You’re not going to get rich doing this. So people here, we have to compensate them on the idea that it’s a lot of fun working here.”
Nevertheless, it seems like Huh has been doing pretty well since his days of skipping class in Tech. Had the Cheezburger Network existed back in the ’90s, he may not have been as studious.
“I’d probably spend even less time in class,” Huh says. “I’d probably goof off a little bit more which may not have been possible.”
With the Cheezburger Network’s success, however, Huh can start checking off more life goals. After his current gig gets old, he may be able to sell his company for profit (number 11), write a book (number 18) and learn to fly (number 8). He’s not going to be the Cheezburger guy forever, but he’s good for now.
“I feel like I have a job I haven’t finished yet,” Huh says. “I don’t know when I would know when I’m done [with the Network], but I’m pretty sure like a lot of things in life, it’ll just happen.”
And even after three years of managing and creating websites, Huh’s favorite is still the original “I Can Has Cheezburger” mother of the Network.
“You know there’s something about kittens,” Huh says. “I don’t even have a cat, but I love these kittens.”