It was real in the sense that ben174 was in fact working at LowerMyBills.com at the time, 2003-2004: http://www.bugben.com/ (His resume)

However, most likely that was not his CTO. Its more likely that someone ran the command

/whois ben174

and it returned the hostname associated with his IP, which on IRC was typically public at the time. Then this person trolled ben174 by claiming to be from his company.

though, consider that the user's nick was "ChrisLMB", where "LMB" very possibly stood for "Lower My Bills" :)

Exactly, and he was online before ben posted his original message.

I have so many questions...

Is it that hard to find out who the CTO of Lower My Bills was?

I always imagined ChrisLMB looked at his hostname and was making a joke :)

on irc (unless the server hides it) your hostname is always visible.