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Fortune Takes a Look at Bram Cohen

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the if-you-can't-beat-em-join-em dept.

jackstack writes "Fortune has an interesting article about bittorrent creator Bram Cohen. 'Right now I'm the CEO because I don't trust anyone else to be the CEO,' Bram says. The article goes into some interesting detail about Bram's state of mind, his poor history in college, and gives a glimpse of what it's like to go from being an unknown, brilliant geek - to the CEO of an $8.75 Million startup company."

4 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. It's all about the community by Red_Foreman · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's all about the community - what Bram did was to unify the community into donating bandwidth through BitTorrent, and that's what makes it so special.

    Bandwidth costs money, and offering, say, Linux ISO's is expensive. But, if people opt in (BitTorrent) each person is joining a community and helping out with the cost of bandwidth - especially those who are accessing via an ISP and not through work.

    It's the same level of cooperation that makes OSS so special.

  2. Re:Worth by mochan_s · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How can this company be worth 8.75 million

    When Fortune magazine runs a story on the CEO.

    The name BitTorrent is alone worth that. This is a name millions and millions of people know - it would take more than $8.75 million dollars to achieve that through advertising.

  3. Re:Ummm by Karma_fucker_sucker · · Score: 5, Insightful
    but given that he has Asperger's Syndrome, should it not be in his best interest to give the job of CEO to somebody who is more charismatic

    The job of a CEO is to provide direction and strategy for an organization. I would say that maybe he needs a PR person. He seems to be doing quite well as the CEO.

    The other thing that has me thinking - who diagnosed his illness?
    I've met quite a few people who said that they had various illnesses. When I asked them about the diagnosis and what the physician (or some other qualified expert) said, they don't say anything about an expert diagnosis: just something vague. I don't know about him, but I think a lot of folks use popular illnesses as an excuse for their own shortcomings or as an excuse for not doing something that they're not interested in doing.

    Forgive my spelling, but I have spellexia.

    --
    Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
  4. Or the Web. by PCM2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I mean, after all, anybody can set up a Web site. How could a company possibly make money doing that??

    --
    Breakfast served all day!