- Category:
- Richest Business › Richest Billionaires
- Net Worth:
- $1.3 Billion
- Birthdate:
- Jun 26, 1976 (47 years old)
- Birthplace:
- Copenhagen
- Gender:
- Male
- Profession:
- Entrepreneur
What is Janus Friis' Net Worth?
Janus Friis is a Danish entrepreneur who has a net worth of $1.3 billion. Janus Friis earned his net worth through the many software companies he has co-founded, including Get2net and Joltid. Born on June 26, 1976, in Copenhagen, Denmark, Friis is best known for co-founding the file-sharing application Kazaa, the peer-to-peer telephony application Skype, as well as the Internet TV service Joost. Together with his longtime partner, Niklas Zennstrom, whom he met at Tele2 in Denmark, Janus Friis created some of the most talked about companies on the Internet. They first set up Kazaa in 2000, thus bringing the wrath of the entire music establishment. Then in 2002, the duo went on to found Skype, with which they poked the entire telephone industry in the eye.
Even though Janus and Niklas sold Skype to eBay in a deal worth $2.6B in 2005, Friis has kept an interest in the app via Silver Lake Partners. But only until they sold Skype to Microsoft Corporation for $8.5 billion in 2011. The business partners also created Joost in 2006, moving television (along with other forms of video content) to users' PCs. The assets of this service got sold as well, this time to Adconion Media Group in November of 2009. Individually, Friis founded his own video streaming start-up called Vdio in 2011.
