Internet Pioneer Heidi Hsueh

Back when the Internet in Taiwan mainly meant college students posting on bulletin boards and fooling around with Mosaic, a 23-year-old graduate student at National Chengchi University named Heidi Hsueh and a graduate student at National Taiwan University named Lawrence Ho decided to form an Internet company together. They started with just NT$500,000.

Hsueh, who speaks with all the self-confidence of a prophet, recalls that she could early on see the tremendous impact that the Internet was going to have on people s lives. "We were riding that first wave," says Hsueh, who points out that deciding to strike at the right time is the first step to success.

Starting with books

In the early period, Inforian-or pAsia as it is known today-made money by publishing books and by localizing software for the Taiwan market. Hsueh, the co-founder and executive vice president, can't count how many times she stayed up all night at the office in those early days. Once, when their distributor for some reason refused to make payments, they had to endure two months without any incoming revenue. "When you're considering founding a company," she says, issuing a warning to the many youths throwing themselves into Internet startups, "you've really got to consider carefully the pressures you're going to be under."

The division of labor was clear from the start. Ho was responsible for product design, and Hsueh handled business development and marketing strategy. After two years, the company had its first success: the IQ97 (Inforian Quest) meta-search engine. It hit a homerun for their Internet dreams.

Not long after Ho finished IQ97, Hsueh sent it to the American website ZDNet, which awarded it five stars, its highest rating. Hsueh then used the Internet to find distributors around the world. Soon IQ97 had been translated into seven languages and plans were laid to step into the global market. Within a year of the product's release in October of 1997, it had sold three million copies worldwide.

Inforian followed by launching CICQ, a Chinese language instant messaging site that attracted 1 million members from around the world. Then in 1998 it focused on e-commerce, establishing the online auction site CoolBid, which has averaged quarterly sales of NT$60 million and has as many as 100,000 members.

Hsueh also made plans to forge alliances with world-famous companies. In 1998, after seeing Hsueh's strategic alliance plan, Intel joined Inforian as a strategic partner. Later, it decided to take a stake in the company. It was the first time Intel had ever invested in an Asian Internet company. Inforian, or pAsia as it is now known, has grown from four employees to a staff of several hundred, and has become a multinational with offices in the United States and on the mainland, as well as in Taiwan.

The Internet lifestyle

"At pAsia we emphasize that the Internet is a kind of technological art that allows people to improve their lifestyle," Hsueh says. "This is a work of art that requires creativity to be whole. The Internet is part software, part media, part databank, and part communications device. It's the best possible space for making the most out of creativity."

On the front door to the company's office on Hsinyi Road, Leonardo DaVinci, Albert Einstein and the pAsia logo grace each other with their respective presences. Hsueh notes that those two historical figures' hard work and creativity changed the way people live. This is also the spirit that pAsia wishes to project.

As far as Hsueh is concerned, the Internet is both a tool and a communications platform. Internet companies, she believes, should reflect that. As one such company, pAsia must be flexible, efficient and practice what it preaches. The intranet at pAsia, for instance, provides chatrooms, vacation request forms, work guidelines, business travel forms, and even a bulletin board for selling workers' second-hand stuff. The offices have neon decorations on the walls and a hallway that is no less stylish than a haute couture catwalk. The whole office is infused with a modern and technological sensibility.

Of course, success is never guaranteed. American Tech stocks took a tumble in April of this year, and people began to talk about an Internet bubble. Meanwhile, pAsia has had trouble obtaining new financing and has seen rapid turnover in its executive ranks, while rumors have circulated about its IPO application being rejected. Nevertheless, Hsueh holds that pAsia has a clear niche and is very adaptable, so that it will be relatively unaffected by the economic downturn.

When you see Heidi Hsueh's fresh young face and her no-nonsense approach to doing business, you quickly understand how members of the young generation are realizing their revolutionary ideas about lifestyle and career through the Internet.

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The office of Heidi Hsueh of pAsia is a showplace for the creativity typical of young Netrepreneurs. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

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