In Chapter 15 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, Boxee co-founder and head of product Idan Cohen answers "When Are You At Your Best?" Cohen finds his personal best around people, enjoying brainstorming sessions and conversations with small teams. He notes the challenges he has working alone and how 2-4 person conversations increase his productivity and the results he can bring to a group.
This is Idan Cohen's Year 1 Capture Your Flag interview. Cohen is co-founder and head of product at Boxee Inc, an online video software company. Previous to Boxee, Cohen held telecom software innovation and developer roles at Comverse. He was a Captain in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and graduated from Tel Aviv University with a Bachelors of Science degree in Geophysics and Art.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: When are you at your best?
Idan Cohen: With people. I’m very social. And I enjoy just very good conversations and very good brainstorming sessions. So I think that, for me, it’s very important to have – not a too big of a team, but a small team that can just iterate very fast on ideas, and that’s when I see the best results from myself. By myself, it’s very hard for me to concentrate.
I think like a lot of people I have, you know, an undiagnosed ADHD or something. So I’m just jumping all over, even with people, I’m jumping all over, but it’s just something about like a 3 or 4—like a conversation between 2 or 4 people, just makes it much more productive for me.