EVER heard of Eyeball Man?

Nope, he is not one of the more than 150 Pokemon characters, and you won't find him among the many anime icons.

A real person, Eyeball Man is proudly made in the Philippines. He is Paul Leonides A. Ambas, a civil engineer turned technopreneur.

Paul is currently the managing director of Client Server Technologies Inc. (CSTI) and Spider Networks Inc., as well as president of Compuconsult International Inc and IP.Com Inc. He is also a lecturer at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business for the Leadership and Management Development Program.

In the Philippine Internet circle, Paul is most remembered as the Netscape man.

Back then, Netscape Navigator was "the" web browsing technology, until Bill Gates entered the Internet arena.

To this date, despite competition from Microsoft Internet Explorer, Paul's Spider Networks Inc remains the authorized reseller of Netscape Communications Corp. of the United States, now a company under America Online.

Recently, Paul was recruited to direct the Hatchery Program of HatchAsia.com Inc. This is why people can expect to see him play the role of Eyeball Man to the hilt.

Anyone who wants to succeed in conducting business in cyberspace must have a solid plan for eyeballs, Paul says, adding that what matters is the number of eyeballs one has.

In the language of Internet geeks, eyeball refers to a Web page hit and impression, including visual contact on any image appearing on the computer screen. Among chatters, an eyeball means a face-to-face meeting at an agreed upon venue and time.

At HatchAsia, Paul is responsible for identifying and initiating contact with the company's potential hatchlings or wannabe technopreneurs.

"I am in charge of the selection process, getting them through the development and growth process and in the exit strategy," he explains.

Paul stresses that HatchAsia is not a dot.com organization, but instead is in the business of helping dot.com companies, particularly start-ups.

"I look at the eyeballs these hatchlings would generate," he replies when asked what are some of the important things a hatchling shouldn't overlook.

Since the Internet market is customer-centric, he says that you should know "how many people you own." The eyeball is a measurement standard.

Paul joined HatchAsia because he wants to help fellow would-be entrepreneurs. It pains him to see them closing shop. He believes it is good for him to be at HatchAsia "to be useful to other people."

As Eyeball Man, his expertise is in databases, application software development and Internet technologies.

At HatchAsia, Paul says they are looking for techno-savvy entrepreneurs.

"A technopreneur can be a business person. He is somebody who has a great idea on what to market in a dot.com environment. He has passion for it. Definitely he has to be bitten by the Net bug. He knows the potentials of the dot.com industry," he says.

As the country's first Internet incubator, HatchAsia seeks to catalyze the Internet economy initially in the Philippines and later in the rest of Asia.

"We believe there is a gold mine of good ideas within Asia. The major stumbling block is the scarcity of founder-friendly funding and management assistance to help technopreneurs compete in the Net economy," Paul states.

Quick execution of ideas to rapidly compete in the global Internet community--that is the challenge, Paul says.