Janus Friis

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 providers. 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, the company responsible for the most popular software for use with the FastTrack file sharing network protocol. Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström developed the FastTrack protocol in 2001.

Friis was named in Time Magazine'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.

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 for $75 million.

In 2012, Friis co-founded Wire, 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 in a test authorized by the city.

He was engaged to Danish recording artist Aura Dione but the couple split up in April 2015.

Janus Friis | Biography, Skype, Joost, KaZaA, & Facts

Janus Friis, Danish e-commerce entrepreneur who, with Niklas Zennstrom, created various Internet businesses, notably KaZaA, a peer-to-peer file-sharing application; Skype, a communication software; and Joost, a video service. Learn more about Friis’s life and career, including his other business ventures.