30-second overview: In 1987, Ho Fei-peng founded Business Weekly, losing tens of millions annually for the first seven years. Today, the Cite Media Group he established is not only Taiwan’s largest publishing empire, but also one of the few traditional media companies to survive the digital transformation wave. His journey is a survival story of Taiwan’s print media industry in the face of digital disruption.
| 7 years | NT$100 million |
|---|---|
| Initial consecutive losses at Business Weekly | 2007 investment in acquiring Pixnet |
In 1987, at age 30, Ho Fei-peng made a bold decision: to launch Business Weekly in an era when Taiwan had no habit of reading business magazines. It was a disastrous start. For seven or eight consecutive years, the magazine lost tens of millions of Taiwan dollars annually.
“When I founded Business Weekly, I was eight years ahead of the market, but I also lost money for more than eight years.” — Ho Fei-peng (from a podcast interview with The News Lens)
📝 Curator’s note
The most fascinating aspect of Ho Fei-peng’s story is his “courage to admit mistakes.” In a society that idolizes hero CEOs, a founder who can say he “fired himself” to save his company delivers more impact than any success manual. This is why his later books in the Automaton series (which sold over 500,000 copies in Taiwan) resonated so deeply with readers.
Facing financial pressure like a bottomless pit, he made a decision that contradicted entrepreneurial instinct: he fired himself. After recognizing his blind spots in management, he relinquished control and stepped into the background. This shift in power allowed resources to be reallocated, bringing the magazine back from the dead, ultimately becoming Taiwan’s largest-circulation business magazine.
Buying the money-losing digital division
After the millennium, the real challenge began. The internet rose, and the print market shrank year after year.
In 2007, when many traditional media companies were still waiting to see, Ho Fei-peng decided to invest NT$100 million to acquire the blog platform Pixnet. At the time, this decision looked like throwing money into water—Pixnet initially lost up to NT$30 million annually and became the group’s biggest financial burden.
But he understood one thing: traditional media people cannot save traditional media.
“Traditional media workers are ‘digital immigrants.’ We need to bring in ‘digital natives.’” — Ho Fei-peng (from an interview with Digital Times)
Ho Fei-peng gave the young digital team tremendous autonomy. He allowed the group to invest up to 20% of its annual profits (about NT$80 million) in digital experiments, tolerating endless trial and error. After eight years, Pixnet finally turned profitable in 2015.
Generational value clashes at a turning point in eras
However, standing at the crossroads of a generational shift, Ho Fei-peng’s public statements repeatedly sparked controversy.
In 2014, he published an editorial titled “A Word of Justice for Business Owners,” attempting to explore Taiwan’s labor-management relations, only to face intense online backlash as “a mouthpiece for capital.” In recent years, his public praise for political figures like Audrey Tang has been questioned by PTT users as out of touch with reality. As a group leader who experienced Taiwan’s period of economic take-off, the shift from his audience being “readers who buy magazines for business news” to “netizens who command discourse” created a nearly inevitable collision of generational values.
But regardless of the controversy, in 2020, Ho Fei-peng received Taiwan’s highest honor in publishing—the Golden Tripod Award for Special Contribution. The English-language media Taipei Times reported that this recognition honored his long-term dedication to improving Taiwan’s publishing environment.
The magazine founder in 1987, worried over financial statements and even deciding to fire himself, perhaps did not imagine that his trial and error would become, thirty years later, the most important survival guide for Taiwan’s publishing industry facing the digital tide.
References
- Cite Media Group: CEO Profile (primary source)
- The News Lens: I was eight years ahead of the market when I founded Business Weekly—and I also lost money for more than eight years
- Digital Times: Seeing Pixnet's turnaround to profitability—an examination of Cite Media's digital transformation
- Taipei Times: Publishing industry honors its own at Golden Tripod Awards
- Ministry of Culture: 44th Golden Tripod Awards Winners List (primary source)