BlogMORTGAGE BLOG

Search

Red Hat's co-founder was unemployed and working in a closet when he started the company IBM is buying for $34 billion

Blog posted On November 09, 2018

In 1993, Bob Young was unemployed and working out of his wife's sewing closet on a new company he co-founded. This week, that company sold to IBM for $34 billion in the tech giant's largest acquisition ever.

"It's, no question, an out of body experience," Young tells CNBC Make It.

Young, the co-founder and former CEO of Red Hat, the open-source, enterprise software provider IBM is using to expand its cloud computing business, is now 64. He stepped down as Red Hat CEO after the company went public in 1999. He also left the company's board in 2005 to launch Lulu.com, an online self-publishing company, where he is still the CEO.

But it was Young who first started the company that would become the multi-billion dollar Red Hat roughly 25 years ago. At the time, Young tells CNBC Make It, he had no job and was out of money after selling his previous business, a computer leasing company.

 

Read more at CNBC.com