Janus Friis

Writing this it is probably out in the open that we have negotiated an early settlement of the earn out that was part of the deal when we sold Skype to Ebay in September 2005.

Skype has been an incredible adventure and I am proud to have been part of it. Looking back at 2003, at two guys running around with a crazy idea of building a global phone company purely on the Internet, moving from one rented apartment to another, still battling a major lawsuit from our Kazaa days, 2003 seems a long time ago. It is amazing to think that it is only four years!

So it is with a touch of nostalgia that we bring one chapter to a close (well almost – Niklas will continue as chairman of Skype for some time).

Earn-outs are inherently difficult creatures, but we are happy with the result of this one. We are approximately half way into the earn-out period and the settlement amounts to one-third of the total possible earn-out amount.

Looking at the future, the excitement does outweigh the nostalgia.

Niklas and I are both entrepreneurs at heart, and this allows us to move on to our next projects – and we are fortunate to have two ambitious projects in front of us.

One is Joost. The ambition for Joost is still to create the first truly global TV platform for high quality programming. Joost is different than anything we have tried before. For whereas with Skype and Kazaa you just had to create a great product and let it loose, with Joost we have to satisfy three groups – users, content owners, and advertisers. So it is inherently more complex and ambitious, the curve is more steep in the beginning – and the potential is enormous.

Joost was made availability on a small scale in the beginning of the year and since then more than 1.3 million people have tried it out while we have tested and tuned the complex underlying technology.

Today Joost is going from a limited, invitation only trial, to open availability - everyone can now download Joost.

The other project is Atomico. Atomico is our new risk capital group where we invest our own capital. We have already, quietly, invested in many companies such as Technorati, FON and Last.FM, and now we are going to take it to the next level.

All in all today is one of the more interesting mondays.. :)

Coming up with a new name for a new company can be a quite strange experience - it takes a totally disproportionate amount of time, it is hardly scientific and it inspires some very heated, emotional debates. But there you have it. And while it does not mean anything now we think it will come to mean great quality Internet TV the way it should be.

As the first Danish stand up comedian, Storm P, said:

“The longest road in the world is that between promising and keeping.”

The promise is still not fully realized, but we’ve come a long way, and – Venice is looking pretty darn cool!

We set out to try to merge the best of TV and the best of the Internet and I think we have just taken a big step on a long journey. For a few months we have been quietly testing with a small circle of people. Now, we’re going to expand that circle – with more and more people getting invited. If you want to take it for a spin, get an invitation from an existing beta tester.

The next months will bring many additional product features both on the end user and content provider side of things. And, importantly, more and more content. What you’ll see now is a preview of some of the categories of content you will find.

Stay tuned!

Today the focus has been on The Venice Project that so far has been under cover (will post links when they break).

Venice is still in limited beta and God knows there is a lot of bugs to be ironed out and plenty of missing features. But we feel now is the time to start telling a bit about it.

What are we trying to do with Venice?

It’s simple, really — we are trying to bring together the best of TV with the best of the Internet. We think TV is one of the most powerful, engaging mass medias of all time. People love TV, but they also hate TV. They love the (sometimes…) amazing storytelling, the richness, the quality itself. But they hate the linearness, the lack of choice, the lack of basic things like being able to search. And wholly missing is everything that we are now accustomed to from the Internet: tagging, recommendations, choice, and so on… TV is 507 channels and nothing on and we want to help change that!

Stay tuned…

Oh and no, it won’t be called the Venice Project forever :-)

I am a serial entrepreneur, co-founder of Skype, Joost, Atomico and Kazaa.

I grew up in the suburbs of Copenhagen but left Denmark in the late nineties, spent some time working for Tele2 in Amsterdam and now live and work in London.

I currently divide my time between Joost and Atomico.

I blog because I can…

I have been wanting to for a long time. Meanwhile my life — like most entrepreneurs’ — has been a bit of a rollercoaster. Well, it still is, but now blogging is part of the ride.

I see blogging as a chance to speak my part directly without interpretation from anyone. But mainly I want a personal platform where I can share my experience, some views, sounds and a few visual bits.

Finally I intend to take an occasional ride down memory lane…

These photos are from an article in Euroman, a Danish lifestyle mag, last year.

Janus Friis photo 1
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Janus Friis photo 2
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