Tony Hsiao: From Game Product Manager to INSIDE Founder, the Mayor of Taiwan's Internet Scene

30-second overview: Tony Hsiao (internet handle: fOx) is the co-founder of INSIDE (硬塞的網路趨勢觀察, "INSIDE: Hard-Packed Internet Trend Watch") and iCook (愛料理). In 2009 he and five friends launched one of Taiwan's earliest opinionated tech media outlets; in 2011 they simultaneously launched Taiwan's largest recipe platform. The two companies sold in 2018 and 2022, respectively, to the same buyer: The News Lens Media Group (關鍵評論網媒體集團). He remains active today as an internet observer, one of the most frequently invited voices in Taiwan's tech scene for commentary on trends.

The Collaborative Blog of 2009

November 26, 2009 — the year Facebook exploded in Taiwan thanks to FarmVille (開心農場). Six internet people with diverse professional backgrounds decided to write a blog together.^inside-wiki

They called it "INSIDE 硬塞的網路趨勢觀察." The six founders were: Tony Hsiao (蕭上農), Richard Lee (李致緯), Sting Tao (陶韻智), Lawrence Lin (林宜儒), Yu-Che Wang (王佑哲), and Chuan-Hsing Li (李全興). No office, no investors — just a collaborative writing tool and one shared conviction: they didn't want to just translate foreign tech news; their articles needed their own opinions and perspective.^{inside-article}

Tony Hsiao (fOx) was one of them.

In October 2011, INSIDE was formally incorporated as a company. Taiwan gained a tech media outlet that positioned itself around commentary.^inside-wiki

📝 Curator's Note
Before 2009, most tech news in Taiwan was translated directly from foreign wire copy. INSIDE's emergence was one of the rare early experiments in giving Taiwanese readers access to "opinionated tech analysis" — something that seems obvious today but wasn't at the time.

Game PM Background, Observer's Instinct

Tony Hsiao's career starting point was the same as many in Taiwan's early internet generation — it began in the games industry.

He started as a game product manager at Songgang Technology (松崗科技), handling multiple Blizzard titles including StarCraft: Brood War. He then moved to Yam (蕃薯藤), a leading Taiwanese internet portal, crossing from games into portal operations, simultaneously managing channels for gaming, stock finance, fortune-telling, and horoscopes. After that, he went to NHN Taiwan, handling dictionary services.^{inside-article}

This career path gave him a particular way of working: cross-domain operation, but always observing "where people are gathering on the internet."

He later wrote in INSIDE's tenth-anniversary retrospective: "You don't need to deliberately be close to or distant from anyone — life always has its ups and downs, just do your best. You can collaborate with most people."^{inside-article} Read as life philosophy, the line stands. Read against his career trajectory, it also sounds like the hard-won insight of someone who has navigated every transition without burning bridges.

Meanwhile, He Was Building a Recipe Website

During the same period as INSIDE's founding, Tony Hsiao, Lawrence Lin, and Richard Lee noticed Japan's Cookpad.

"Cookpad went public, with annual revenue of NT$2 billion — we could probably try this too."^{gvmcookpad-correction}

That line became the seed of iCook.

In August 2010, the three incorporated Bolishi Company (寶利拾公司). In November 2011, iCook officially launched.^gvm The division of labor was clear: Lawrence and Richard handled software development; Tony took care of everything non-technical — finances, business development, taxes.^gvm

He described that period: "Since founding the company, we've never worried about money."^gvm

✦ "Since founding the company, we've never worried about money." — Tony Hsiao (from a Global Views Monthly interview)

That claim is unusual in Taiwan's startup scene. From 2011 through the 2020s, iCook grew into Taiwan's largest recipe platform — two engineers building on the technical foundation laid at NHN, with Tony holding down the business side, producing a solidly scaled operation.

The Same Buyer, Twice

In January 2018, INSIDE was acquired by The News Lens Media Group (TNL Media Group). This was the first formally documented internet media acquisition in Taiwan.^buzzorange

In September 2022, The News Lens Media Group announced the acquisition of iCook.^bnext

Two companies, one buyer, four years apart. Tony Hsiao and Richard Lee participated in both transactions. Tony wrote when the second sale was announced: "This is the second time, more than four years apart, that we've merged a self-founded internet company with another company."^inside-icook

📝 Curator's Note
The exit paths for independent Taiwanese internet media and platforms converged sharply between 2018 and 2022 toward "integration into a larger group." The two INSIDE and iCook sales can be read as individual choices — or as a collective structural story of an entire generation of Taiwanese internet entrepreneurs. The scale to operate independently became harder to sustain under advertising and subscription competition; a larger ecosystem was needed to continue.

The "Li-Chang-Bo" (Neighborhood Chief)

"Li-chang-bo" (里長伯) — the "neighborhood chief" — is a title that has circulated in Taiwan's internet scene for many years.

It describes fOx's role in the industry: connections so broad that "everyone knows him, and he knows everyone." When you need to meet someone, or need someone to make an introduction in between, he might just be the one who can help. This role is rare in the tech scene — technical background without being an engineer, media perspective without being a pure journalist, operational feel for business while also observing the industry as a whole.

The li-chang-bo's work is connecting people to people. That's also what Tony Hsiao does.

This network partly explains why he could simultaneously run INSIDE and iCook, and why, after selling both, he continues to remain active as an observer — in other words, "Taiwan's internet scene knows him" as a fact that doesn't disappear just because his companies were acquired.

On AI: The Voice That Says "Don't Worry"

In May 2023, six months after ChatGPT launched, iCook released an AI recipe-assist feature.^wazaiii Around the same time, Tony Hsiao used AI tools to build a business-card-scanning app he put on the market, consistently earning over NT$10,000 per month.^tnl

He said: "I'm a tech optimist — of course I think technology makes our lives richer and more convenient."^wazaiii

He also said: "The control knob is completely not in our hands, so worrying is useless, and I tend not to worry."^wazaiii

This is his consistent posture facing each wave of technology: observe, experiment, then tell everyone not to worry too much. The same posture across the crypto era and the AI era.

He currently appears regularly on the "Reading Trends" segment of CBS (中廣流行網) host Lan Hsuan's program, hosts the podcast "Side Chat" (塞掐 Side Chat), and continues his regular work of translating trends for Taiwan's tech scene.

The collaborative blog of 2009 now belongs to someone else. The recipe platform from 2011 does too.

Tony Hsiao is still here. The observation continues. He has turned "keeping observing" itself into the next thing.

Further Reading:

• INSIDE 硬塞的網路趨勢觀察 — the tech media Tony Hsiao co-founded, now part of The News Lens Media Group, continuing to report on Taiwan and global tech industries
• iCook — the recipe platform Tony Hsiao co-founded, now part of The News Lens Media Group
• Audrey Tang — Taiwan's first Minister of Digital Affairs, another figure who has defined their career by "crossing multiple domains"
• Taiwan Startup Ecosystem — the broader context of Taiwan internet entrepreneurship; INSIDE and iCook are representative cases

References