Fortune Takes a Look at Bram Cohen

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."

Comments

Ummm

[cached]

I don't mean to troll, 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 (in the sense that he can communicate exactly what people will want to hear), in an attempt to gain extra customers?

Re:Ummm

[Anonymous Coward]

"Also, I can't imagine why anybody would *want* to claim they're one of us if they aren't."

You'd be surprised.

While it may not be present (or at least prevalent) in your circles, it's rather "popular" for teens to claim to have some kind of disorder. Whether it's Aspergers, dyslexia, bipolar, depression, schizophrenia, OCD. I've seen threads on sites like deviantART dedicated to things like "What kind of mental problem do you have?" and the post numbers are in the thousands, with people claiming to have all sorts of problems but offering no information when asked about diagnosis. Some even claim to have combinations of disorders that would be impossible to have in reality. I'm guessing it makes them feel "special" or "different." Like this one.

Re:Ummm

[Anonymous Coward]

"..coherent conversations while maintaining eye contact.."

If, like me, he suffers from CAPD along with the Aspergers, he may have "good eye contact" because he is actually reading lips..

I was hyperlexic from the age of 15 months. I started speaking in full sentences, and to this day I am always coherent, literal and precise in speech.

Not many think I have Aspergers because of it, but I assure you that I was officially diagnosed at the age of 40.

Re:Ummm

[flazz]

The parent could not be more right, it is the fruits of the ideals and vision that attract the interest (including money).

Sadly the only legal responsability he has is to turn a profit, if and when it goes IPO (is it public already?). It is a twisted system that says if a company is allowed to be traded it must put profit as the highest priority.

It would be very cool if you could put a "share license" that could state upfront to the potential shareholder that a company might have other motives than that prescribed by traditional business practices and the SEC.

Re:Worth

[Thud457]

Stone soup.

He's the Russian soldier that comes into the village and coordinates everybody for the common good.

Re:Ummm - no! Not at all.

[King_TJ]

For one thing, I think Asperger's Syndrome is a very real condition, but the jury's still out on whether or not it just describes a variation of normal behavior, or whether it's something worthy of considering as a "mental illness" - implying a need for treatment.

The simple description of "a mild form of autism" leaves it pretty wide open to describe a whole spectrum of behaviors. But the condition interested me, personally, only because I realized that I probably have it myself after reading enough about it. In my case, I think I've partially "overcome" it as I've gotten older and forced myself to break myself of some of my older, more "anti-social" habits. But the side-effect? It seems pretty unlikely I'll ever accomplish any brilliant or great projects anymore, either.

In the case of BT's creator, it seems to me like the guy is following the same path I did - and I'd predict his days of intensely focused, marathon coding sessions are nearly over. (He got married, etc.)

He's the one who created BitTorrent, so he's the best choice to head up any company trying to market the technology. According to the article, he already hired on a guy to communicate his product to the recording industry execs, realizing he wasn't able to do that so well himself. He's smart enough to get the right people for those jobs, as needed.

They often suggest Bill Gates had Asperger's too, and he seemed to manage to make a semi-successful company out of Microsoft over the years as C.E.O.

Congratulations and ENCOURAGEMENT for all of us

[Work Account]

Bram Cohen, congratulations on your accomplisments.

May you continue to live a productive and happy life and continue offering innovative and hopefully open source software.

Let this serve as encouragement to all of us: with desire, dedication, brains, a computer, and Internet access, anything is achievable.

Do what you do best; for most of us this is coding!

Re:bittorrent as a business???

[alc6379]

I may be a good way to share files, but I'm afraid the investors are throwing their money away. It's like trying to make money off of FTP.

you mean like these people do?
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=%22ftp+client% 22&btnG=Search+Froogle
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=%22ftp+server% 22&btnG=Search+Froogle

People make money all the time by selling client/server software for FTP. I venture that some websites even make money by offering downloads of content via FTP. Maybe Cohen is going to offer some kind of licensed/authenticated Bittorrent protocol, or something along those lines, to give people a reason to pay him for his work.

Re:Good call on Bram's part

[Anonymous Coward]

And this gets modded +5 insightful with zero references and what sounds like barbershop gossip. Guess what guys, the sun's core is made of solid gold. No need to back up my facts. Now do I get -5 troll or +5 insightful? Choose quickly.

my problem is with the medicalization

[circletimessquare]

of aspects of personality that don't need to be treated medically

when you talk about "social anxiety disorder" instead of shyness

or you talk about "attention deficit disorder" instead of inattention

the next thing out of people's mouths is "how do i treat that?"

the language you use to describe something has meaning

watch fox news: instead of calling it suicide bombing, they call it homicide bombing

i don't really care about suicide bombing/ homicide bombing, i'm not trying to make an ideological point about that here, i'm simply trying to drive home to you the point that the LANGUAGE you use matters when describing something, it has meaning, the words you use matters

why prochoice versus prolife?

why not prochoice versus antichoice?

why not antilife versus prolife?

do you understand how it matters?

why speak about personality in terms of medical terminology?

newsweek

Aren't there enough sick people that the drug companies can target? Why try and convince others they're sick?

The marketing people and the sophisticated PR people who work for them are doing what shareholders demand of them. They're looking for ways to maximize markets. One way is to redefine more and more people as sick. There's an informal alliance between the drug companies and aspects of the medical profession and aspects of the patient advocacy world who all seem to have interests in defining more and more people as ill. We look at this condition by condition in the book, and what you see is a similar formula or process at work. Every time a panel of experts come together, they want to nudge the boundaries a little further out, whether it's mental illness, cholesterol or high blood pressure.

Re:Ummm - no! Not at all.

[Deluge]

"In the case of BT's creator, it seems to me like the guy is following the same path I did - and I'd predict his days of intensely focused, marathon coding sessions are nearly over. (He got married, etc.)"

Marathon coding sessions are not a symptom of Asperger's. If that were the case you'd hear a lot more people whining about being afflicted with this condition.

If anything, Coen is a hypochondriac, because let's face facts, anyone who can get married, have a kid, go out and meet some bigshot CEO for drinks and actually make a positive impression, and who can actually go out and do something big with his little project, is someone with "all the right stuff", and not Asperger's.

Now, if his sob story included things like the inability to speak coherently in the presence of a woman or an audience focused on him, an inability to deal with people one on one without offending them with unintentionally offending gestures, or just not impressing them in the slightest, then I might have a bit of sympathy.

Christ, the more I think about it the more it pisses me off, here's a successful guy in pretty much every way and he goes and whines to the world about how sick he his and how much of a hero people should consider him for battling his horrible ailment. Makes me sick.