Derek Sivers, Founder, president, and programmer - CD Baby and HostBaby
http://www.cdbaby.net
A professional musician since 1987, Derek started CD Baby by accident in 1998, when he was selling his own CD on his website, and offered to let his fellow musicians use his service, too. As this hobby grew, he refused all investors and advertising, choosing to grow slowly and quietly during the dot-com boom and bust. Now CD Baby is the largest seller of independent CDs on the web, with over $60M in sales for over 200,000 musician clients. (Note that while the rest of the industry moans about piracy, CD Baby's sales have doubled every year.) Esquire Magazine's annual "Best and Brightest" cover story said, "Derek Sivers is changing the way music is bought and sold... one of the last music-business folk heroes." Sivers is Winner of the 2003 World Technology Award.