There’s something intriguing about a media-savvy Harvard MBA who sports black-rimmed computer-nerd glasses while engaging in badboy antics. It’s an advanced form of cultural judo that kept the American media world off-balance and intrigued. The intrigue has deepened now that — nearly two decades after his departure from Fox — Chao has morphed into an internet geek-mogul. By email and phone we sought to find out if there’s some grand design behind it all or just a profoundly quirky personality.
Goldsea: What was the inspiration behind WonderHowTo and when did you begin working on it?
Stephen Chao: Certainly I love video, so video on the web became an intriguing idiom once YouTube started. More interestingly for me was the fact that there could be so many voices expressed. I started WonderHowTo in 2006, developing and coding. It launched January 2008.
GS: Give us a picture of your typical day’s routine?
SC: Right now we have two important initiatives: building our community, specifically getting users interested in creating ‘worlds’; and syndicating our front page content to media outlets, like the Huffington Post and Business Insider. So I will make calls and beg and yell and whisper to get these initiatives to get some further traction.
GS: Does cataloging and contexting how-to videos provide you enough creative stimulation?
SC: Good question. Making WonderHowTo a great site editorially and traffic wise is difficult. I happen to find it very stimulating. Mind you, i got overdosed with television having made it for so many years.
GS: Are you planning an IPO for WonderHowTo?
SC: Not successful enough yet.
GS: What do you see as the ultimate goal of WonderHowTo?
SC: Becoming the home to every great DIY (do-it-yourself) community out there, be it origami birds, or building replica sherman tanks. That would be a great achievement IMO. And a view into all interesting sub cultures.
GS: Please share a couple of your most memorable moments from early childhood?
SC: Apparently when I learned to ride a bike, back in Michigan, I then decided to try no-hands. I guess I ran into our house mailbox and was knocked out cold. The post office delivery man delivered me to the house. I have no recollection of the incident. But my mom told me.
GS: What kind of teen were you?
SC: I studied pretty hard at Exeter in truth. In NH, as a teen, with no girls to talk to, homework became a compulsion.
GS: Your July 28, 2008 essay in HufPo suggests you don’t feel racism is much of a real issue. Did you have any racial issues growing up in Ann Arbor?
SC: Back in a suburb, Birmingham, well, I do recall being called many things very occasionally, from chink to…..nigger. The latter was a bit surreal. But kids are cruel, and that was that. Since 6th grade, however, I really have not felt any kind of racism in my life.
GS: How did you manage to get a scholarship to Exeter when your parents were professors?
SC: Profs do not earn much money.
GS: Tell us a bit about your Exeter experience?
SC: Hated it at the time. So lonely and without females. But the Protestant work ethic of the school was really quite useful in later life. Harvard was summer camp by comparison.
GS: What made you pick Harvard?
SC: It had a good reputation. In my era you had to suffer from mental retardation not to get into a good school from Exeter. Fortunately, I was not retarded. It is more competitive today. Next
