Col Needham Net Worth

What is Col Needham's Net Worth?

Col Needham is an English computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur who has a net worth of $20 million. Cole Needham is best known as the founder and former CEO of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). The site contains records of over 10 million titles, from films to television series and video games, and has more than 80 million registered users. Needham stepped down as CEO of IMDb in 2025, with Nikki Santoro as his successor.

Early Life and Education

Colin Needham was born on January 26, 1967 in Denton, England. He was educated as a youth at Audenshaw School and Clarendon Sixth Form College. For his higher education, Needham went to the University of Leeds, from which he graduated in 1988 with a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science.

IMDb

In 1990, while working as an engineer in Bristol for the information technology company Hewlett-Packard, Needham made a computer post about actresses with beautiful eyes. This attracted the interest of others, who responded with their own lists of media. By late 1990, the lists included nearly 10,000 films and television series. To make the lists as accessible and inclusive as possible, Needham launched the entity that would eventually become the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Over the subsequent years, the database expanded to include such information as celebrity biographies, plot summaries, and trivia. In the summer of 1993, it moved onto the nascent World Wide Web, and in 1996 it was incorporated in the United Kingdom. IMDb extended its reach in 1998 when it was purchased by Amazon.

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In the decade after its acquisition by Amazon, IMDb grew substantially, adding the subscription service IMDbPro in 2002 and acquiring the sites Box Office Mojo and Withoutabox in 2008. However, despite the popularity of IMDb's message boards feature, the boards were shut down in early 2017 due to Needham's insistence that they were "no longer providing a positive, useful experience" for the site's users. This led to a major uproar from many users, who created an online petition to keep the boards going. Some other sites, such as MovieChat.org and Archive.org, were able to preserve the entire contents of the IMDb message boards. By 2022, IMDb had over 10 million titles in its database, and more than 83 million registered users. Needham remained CEO of the company until 2025, when he was succeeded by Nikki Santoro.

Amazon Sale

Cole Needham sold IMDb to Amazon in 1998. While the exact sale price was never officially disclosed, it's widely reported that it was a seven-figure deal, likely in the range of $5-10 million.

At the time, IMDb was already a well-established and popular movie database online, but it hadn't been monetized at the scale it could be. Amazon acquired it to bolster its then-nascent Amazon.com Movies section, using IMDb's rich database to enhance movie sales and eventually digital content.

Personal Life

In 1989, Needham married Karen Gaskin. Together, they have twin daughters and reside in Filton, England.

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