In Depth October 16, 2008, 5:00PM EST

BitTorrent's Bram Cohen Isn't Limited by Asperger's

(page 3 of 3)

Cohen in San Francisco, where his quirks aren't seen as a big deal Eric Millette

BitTorrent President Navin (left) worked with Cohen to make peace with Hollywood Markham Johnson

Cohen said he wanted to run the company, mostly because he didn't trust anybody else to, but promised he'd one day bring in a more experienced leader. Navin would be president. Chao agreed to invest $8.75 million. At the first board meeting, Cohen worked on a Rubik's Cube while he was talking, recalls Chao. "He wasn't distracted, though. His hand was solving it." With someone else, Chao says, he might have said, "Please don't play games while we're having a board meeting," but he didn't.

As Cohen and Navin began hiring employees, issues emerged. Ross, who was in charge of the engineers, didn't seem suited to the more structured environment being created. Bram fired him. "He just didn't work out," says Bram. The brothers haven't spoken much since, and Ross didn't return phone calls and e-mails.

Then there was Bram himself. He could be disruptive. He likes to talk and play with his puzzles. "We have to keep him contained so others can work," says Navin. "New employees didn't know they could tell him they had to get back to work." And his overly blunt but rarely ill-intentioned comments didn't always go over well. Ivy Hsu, the office manager, was the first person Cohen and Navin hired. One day Cohen said to her: "I don't understand the point of being detail-oriented. Only the dumb people in this world focus on small details." Hsu has since learned how to deal with him. "You have to communicate according to the rules he understands," she says. "You can cut him off, you can walk away. There is no point in sugarcoating things, because if you do, he may miss the whole point. You just tell him: 'Bram, you're wrong. Bram, don't say things like that.' Usually you would never do that to your boss."

By the end of 2006 it was clear that Cohen's days as CEO were coming to an end. Some founders unprofitably delay this rite of passage. For Cohen, it couldn't come soon enough: "Do I look like a CEO to you? Just saying." BitTorrent was ready to sell a commercial version of the software to media, gaming, and tech companies and to launch a consumer site with licensed content. Navin and Cohen had also interested another investor, Ping Li, a partner at venture capital firm Accel, an early backer of Facebook. Li agreed to put in nearly $20 million to help BitTorrent expand. There would be accounts to supervise, strategies to devise, performance reviews to conduct, meetings to attend. Cohen was bored just thinking about it all.

Giving up the post of chief executive to become chief scientific officer wasn't hard for Cohen, but the nine-month search for his replacement, led by the recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles (HSII), was full of frustration. After BitTorrent found a new chief executive, Cohen dissed the process and some of the other candidates in his blog: "Just because you were approached about being BitTorrent's CEO doesn't necessarily mean that I'd ever heard of you. If I had ever heard of you, it doesn't necessarily mean that I thought you had the necessary experience . . . . Even if I did think you had the necessary experience, it doesn't mean I wouldn't have gotten fuming mad at your name being suggested for any of a number of other reasons, including in some cases widely known lack of competence and morals." Heidrick doesn't talk about its clients and declined to comment about its work for BitTorrent.

The executive BitTorrent hired is Doug Walker, who had led graphics software company Alias Technology in Toronto. He is circumspect when it comes to Cohen but does say: "You're always going to have an honest conversation with Bram. To me that's fair, even if you may not always like it."

So does Bram Cohen's creation have a future? Some wonder if BitTorrent has missed its moment. Gaming companies are using the software to more swiftly and cheaply distribute their wares. Hollywood studios? Not so much. The company's reputation for piracy may be part of the problem. But media companies also are finding ways to deliver entertainment themselves. All of which has left Cohen & Co. retrenching—in mid-August they laid off 20% of 60 employees—and struggling to find a way forward.

Still, Cohen's original brainstorm has carried him far. And even if his company falters, or his attention is diverted to solving a different problem, his software will be used by millions of people around the world.

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In Defense of Piracy

In an essay in The Wall Street Journal, Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig argues that our copyright laws are confusing, inefficient, and sometimes nonsensical. Lessig, who is on the board of Creative Commons and author of the forthcoming book Remix, believes that the war on peer-to-peer file sharing is a failure. "After a decade of fighting, the law has neither slowed file sharing nor compensated artists," he writes. "We should sue not kids, but for peace."

To read Lessig's essay, go to: http://bx.businessweek.com/online-video/reference

To learn more about how BitTorrent's Bram Cohen manages with Asperger's, watch a video interview at www.businessweek.com/go/tv/autism

Business Exchange related topics:
Leadership
Software Startup
Venture Capital
Digital Rights Management
Employee Engagement

Berfield is an associate editor at BusinessWeek .

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