Col Needham

Col Needham
Needham in January 2002
Born	Colin Needham (1967-01-26) 26 January 1967 (age 50) Denton, Greater Manchester, England, United Kingdom
Residence	Stoke Gifford, Gloucestershire, England
Occupation	Founder, CEO, and general manager of IMDb
Spouse(s)	Karen Needham (m. 1989)
Children	2

Colin "Col" Needham (born 26 January 1967) is an English entrepreneur who is best known as the founder and CEO of IMDb. He has served as general manager of IMDb since its acquisition by Amazon.com in 1998.

Needham was born in Denton, Greater Manchester, and grew up on Stockport Road. He attended Audenshaw School and Hyde Clarendon Sixth Form College. He graduated from the University of Leeds with a BSc(Hons) in Computer Science in 1988.

IMDb was started in 1990 while Needham was working as an engineer in Bristol at Hewlett-Packard (HP). The site evolved from what was initially his personal movie database, which became an internet bulletin board made from simple records, kept on a succession of early computers, and contributed to by several persons, all of whom Needham outlasted.

Needham continued adding information to this early IMDb by including every film he had seen since the age of 13, and with the help of the many volunteers, IMDb grew exponentially. By the summer of 1996, thanks to IMDb's first film-related advertising campaign (for Independence Day), Needham had quit HP to work on IMDb full-time as a paid employee. In 1999, he collected two Webby Awards for IMDb.

Needham married Karen in 1989. They have twin daughters and live in Stoke Gifford, Gloucestershire.