Lunch wid the kool katz

Ben Huh

This week I attended the MOHAI Innovation fundraiser luncheon as a guest of Gary Neumann, MOHAI Board President.  Also seated at Gary's table was my good friend, Susan Neumann, Lynn & Steve Johnson, King County Councilman Larry Phillips, and Mary Holmes and Kristie Lanum of ZINO Society.

The featured Innovator of the Year and speaker was Ben Huh, Founder and CEO of Cheezburger.  The huge success of Cheezburger is attributed to Ben's knowledge of memes, viral content and crowd sourcing.  What started with one website entitled "I Can Has Cheezburger" with crazy photos of cats that are captioned by the public that make people laugh, Ben has grown his company to over 50 individual websites including the very popular FAIL Blog.

MOHAI and the W Hotel did a great job of maintaining the theme with plastic cheeseburger stir sticks in the pre-function drinks, a menu that included three types of sliders and a chocolate chip cookie and ice cream dessert that resembled a cheeseburger also.

As Ben was interviewed by MOHAI Executive Director, Leonard Garfield, it was fun to hear his stories about his business and what he believes is most important.  When asked what he actually does now, Ben replied that it is no different than other successful companies.  He tries to hire the right people, give them the right tools and training and get everybody going in the same direction.  For the future, he is striving for consistency and to get a little better each year, better organized, and to plan better.  One of his core beliefs is that technology has the capacity to make communication more equitable.