| Website | BenSun.net |
| Blog | BenSun.net |
| Birthplace | New York |
Benjamin Sun is an internet entrepreneur and angel investor. Mr. Sun’s first venture was Community Connect Inc. where he served as President & CEO for 12 years. Mr. Sun co-founded Community Connect Inc. in 1996 and grew the company to be a leading online publisher targeting various niche markets. According to comScore, Community Connect’s sites – AsianAvenue.com, BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com (pronounced mee-hen-tay), FaithBase.com and GLEE.com collectively generated over 500 million page views each month. This made Community Connect not only the leader in reaching Asian Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Christians and the LGBT community but also positioned their network of sites as one of the Top 50 highest trafficked sites on the Internet based on page views. Mr. Sun started Community Connect in his Manhattan based apartment with a small team of friends and a business plan. He was responsible for growing the company by raising over $20 million from notable investors including Comcast and Sandler Capital and using those resources to build powerful new media brands. In April 2008, Community Connect Inc. was acquired by Radio One, Inc. the fifth largest radio company in the U.S.
Mr. Sun has been recognized as playing a major role in bringing social networking into its modern day popularity while paving the way for advertisers and marketers to reach and engage niche market consumers online. Additionally, he has been responsible for developing the largest online diversity recruiting service in partnership with Monster Worldwide Inc. to allow corporations to source a more diverse candidate pool. Mr. Sun has been profiled by Crain’s New York Business as one of the top under-40 executives to watch.
Prior to helping launch Community Connect, Mr. Sun worked in Merrill Lynch’s Technology Investment Banking Group where he was involved in numerous corporate finance and merger and acquisition transactions in the technology industry. He executed over $500 million in equity financing transactions for Internet, enterprise software, and wire and cable industry companies. Mr. Sun holds a BA degree in Economics from the University of Michigan.
| Company | Date | Round | Size | Participants |
| Kontagent | 4/10 | Angel | $1M | 8 |
Business Week Interview
Added: 8/2/10
