Born and raised in Krefeld, Germany, former Phil Collins Bodyguard Ben Neumann, a dedicated martial artist (he holds 12 black belts in 3 different styles) studied Marketing and Business Administration at the
Gerhard-Mercator University before starting VWF, Inc.,
a business services company, which he sold in 1993.

After running two other successful ventures in
Germany, Ben and his wife Andrea relocated to
Southern California in 1994. In November, 1994,
while beginning to learn English, Ben founded
Magic Logo, a small Los Angeles-based design
company. At a time when only gurus knew
what a domain name was, Ben rented a small web
server and build the "Top Business Mall" which was
soon filled with virtual tenants. Magic Logo designed
web pages for a flat fee, hosted them on a remote
server and charged a very small monthly rent for
the web space at a time where web hosting still cost hundreds of dollars per month..

In March, 1996, the company incorporated into
B.N.Technology, Inc., dba Internet Communications
(iCom). As the company grew, Icom gained larger
server capacities and high-speed network
connectivity.Within only 2 years Neumann grew iCom to one of the twenty largest web hosting providers in the United States, signing 2,500 new accounts every month. Ben sold iCom to Interliant in a well publishized multi-million dollar cash and stock transaction. Today iCom.com is owned by the world's largest hosting company Interland (NASDAQ: INLD).