Ever wondered how IMDB got started? A dude just loved movies!

A chance e-mail encounter in 1989 with a film fan in California prompted Mr Needham to publish his own personal database online. The list was published once a month and fellow fans could log on and download it to their own computers. The first set of software was published in October 1990 and IMDb was born.

And when and how much did they get when IMDB was sold to amazon?

The sale was part of three buy-ups by Amazon that year including Bookpages and Telebook, which totalled $55million but the separate figure for IMDb has stayed secret. Asked if the sale had made him and his group of volunteers rich, he said at the time: “Given that this was 1998 and it involved shares of Amazon, we did very well.”

Read the rest of the details here.