Janus Friis (; born 26 June 1976) is a Danish entrepreneur best known for co-founding the

file-sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include re ...

application

Kazaa Kazaa Media Desktop ( ) (once stylized as "KaZaA", but later usually written "Kazaa") was a peer-to-peer file sharing application using the FastTrack protocol licensed by Joltid Ltd. and operated as Kazaa by Sharman Networks. Kazaa was subsequ ...

, and the

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node ...

telephony application

Skype Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...

. In September 2005, he and his business partner Niklas Zennström sold Skype to

eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...

for $2.6 B. Friis has maintained ownership interest in Skype through

Silver Lake Partners Silver Lake Technology Management, L.L.C., is an American global private equity firm focused on technology and technology-enabled investments. Silver Lake is headquartered in Silicon Valley and New York, and has offices in London, Hong Kong, and ...

, which sold Skype to

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

for $8.5 billion (~$ in ), in May 2011. Friis and Zennström also developed Joost—an interactive software application for distributing TV shows and other forms of video content over the Web. The assets of this service were sold to Adconion Media Group in November 2009. Independently, Friis founded video streaming startup Vdio in 2011. Friis and Ahti Heinla founded Starship Technologies in 2014, to develop small self-driving delivery robots.

Career

Friis had no formal higher education, dropping out of high school before starting a job at the help desk of CyberCity, one of Denmark's first

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

s. He met Zennström in 1996. At that time, Zennström headed Tele2 in Denmark, and Friis was hired to run its customer support. Friis and Zennström worked together at Tele2 to launch get2net, another Danish ISP, and the portal everyday.com. After this, the partners decided to leave Tele2. Friis moved into Zennström's small apartment in Amsterdam in January 2000 where they started developing

KaZaA Kazaa Media Desktop ( ) (once stylized as "KaZaA", but later usually written "Kazaa") was a peer-to-peer file sharing application using the FastTrack protocol licensed by Joltid Ltd. and operated as Kazaa by Sharman Networks. Kazaa was subsequ ...

, the company responsible for the most popular software for use with the

FastTrack FastTrack is a peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol that was used by the Kazaa, Grokster, iMesh and Morpheus file sharing programs. FastTrack was the most popular file sharing network in 2003, and used mainly for the exchange of music MP3 files. The ne ...

file sharing network protocol. Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström developed the FastTrack protocol in 2001. From the success of KaZaA's peer-to-peer technology the duo co-founded Joltid, a software company developing and marketing peer-to-peer solutions and peer-to-peer traffic optimization technologies to companies. Friis is also co-founder of Altnet, a network that sells commercial music to KaZaA users. Friis founded the online music streaming service Rdio with Zennström in 2010. It filed for bankruptcy in November 2015 and announced the sale of assets to

Pandora Radio Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by the broadcasting corporation Sirius XM that is based in Oakland, California in the United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the " Music Genome Proje ...

for $75 million (~$ in ). In 2012, Friis co-founded

Wire file:Sample cross-section of high tension power (pylon) line.jpg, Overhead power cabling. The conductor consists of seven strands of steel (centre, high tensile strength), surrounded by four outer layers of aluminium (high conductivity). Sample d ...

, a secure collaboration platform that uses end-to-end encryption to protect digital assets. Friis and Ahti Heinla founded Starship Technologies in 2014, to develop small self-driving delivery robots. In September 2016, the robots took the streets in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

in a test authorized by the city.

Awards

Friis was named in ''

Time Magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps as ''TIME'') is an American news magazine based in New York City. It was published weekly for nearly a century. Starting in March 2020, it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York Cit ...

s list of 100 most influential people in 2006. In 2006 Janus Friis got the prestigious award “IT-prisen” ("The IT Prize") in his home country, given by the Danish IT industry and IDG, for his work and innovation. He and Zennström were also the co-recipients of the 2006 Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award, given to business and individuals who have used information technology in a way that changed an industry or society as a whole.

Personal life

He was engaged to Danish

recording artist A musician is someone who composes, conducts, or performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general term used to designate a person who follows music as a profession. Musicians include songwriters, ...

Aura Dione but the couple split up in April 2015.

Notes and references

External links

Atomico Ventures - Friis' venture capital firm

Wire - new project by Janus Friis
{{DEFAULTSORT:Friis, Janus 1976 births Living people Skype people Danish technology company founders