Kvamme returned to the States in 1982 and graduated from Berkeley with a degree in economics and French literature. He got his start in comedy in 1986 by launching a company that sold dummy cell phones to wannabe yuppies. His slogan was “Status without the static.” The joke wasn’t on Kvamme: He sold 80,000 Cellular Phonies and pocketed $110,000 in profits.

Three years later, he co-founded CKS Group, one of the first interactive ad agencies. He guided CKS into a merger with USWeb Corp., an internet-services company. In 1999, Kvamme resigned as chairman of the combined company to become a partner in Sequoia. There, his investments include the professional networking site LinkedIn and Imeem, an online social and media service.

Kvamme got the idea for Funny or Die from his teenage son, Michael, an aspiring stand-up comic. The younger Kvamme complained that it was too hard to find comedy on YouTube. (Michael, by the way, posted four of the original 12 Funny or Die videos, one of which has the dubious honor of being the first consigned to the crypt.)

In 2006, Kvamme senior pitched Funny or Die to Creative Artists Agency, which represents Ferrell. C.A.A. dispatched Kvamme to the set of Blades of Glory to see if he could persuade Ferrell to join the new venture. After some initial reluctance, both Ferrell and his director, McKay, succumbed to Kvamme’s charm and persistence.

A deal was brokered by C.A.A. and Ferrell’s tenacious manager, Jimmy Miller. The founders of Funny or Die are Kvamme, his son Michael, Henchy, Miller, Ferrell, McKay, site programmer Randy Adams, and C.A.A. The agency hasn’t invested in the site but has put time and brainpower into the operation and is anticipating its standard 10 percent commission on future profits of the Funny or Die partners it represents. C.A.A. also uses the site to promote clients, from prizefighter Oscar De La Hoya to actor Danny DeVito. A scabrous teaser for DeVito’s FX sitcom, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia—he invokes a clause in his contract obligating the show’s executive producer to perform oral sex on him—has played more than 250,000 times and is widely credited with helping the show nearly double its ratings over the previous season opener.

Will the site become prime real estate for advertisers? Sony Pictures, ABC, and the CW have signed up as sponsors. “We should gross a few hundred thousand dollars in 2007,” Kvamme says. In 2008, “we should gross a few million.” If all goes well, Funny or Die will even consider product placement. “My hope would be that we’d do it in a way that didn’t disenfranchise our audience,” says Henchy. “I think visitors to the site probably have a tolerance for that sort of thing.”

Kvamme says he wants Funny or Die to be much more than just a great place to sell Doritos. “Ultimately,” he says, “we want the site to be one of the five or six destination portals that visitors come to and hang around on a regular basis, like Facebook or MySpace.”

That will not be an easy goal to achieve: According to Nielsen Online, Facebook’s 18 million unique monthly surfers go through the Facebook site at the leisurely pace of an hour and five minutes, about half the time of MySpace’s 58 million users, whereas the typical Funny or Die fan changes channels after five minutes and 40 seconds.