Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner
| Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner | |
|---|---|
Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner in January 2008
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| Born |
29 August 1967 Reykjavík, Iceland |
| Occupation | Businessman |
Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner or, in Icelandic, Jón (born 29 August 1967 in Reykjavík, Iceland) is an Icelandic programmer and businessman. He founded the company Vivaldi Technologies and launched a community site called Vivaldi.net. Tetzchner is also a co-founder and the former CEO of Opera Software.
Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner is the son of the Icelander Elsa Jónsdóttir and the Norwegian Stephen von Tetzchner, a professor of psychology. Tetzchner grew up around Skólabraut in the Reykjavík suburb of Seltjarnarnes with his grandparents, the doctor Jón Gunnlaugsson and Selma Kaldalóns, the daughter of the doctor and composer Sigvaldi Kaldalóns. Tetzchner went to secondary school at the Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík before continuing his studies in Norway, where he made his career.
Tetzchner holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of Oslo.
Tetzchner worked at the Norwegian state phone company (now known as Telenor) from 1991 to 1995. There, he and Geir Ivarsøy developed browsing software called MultiTorg Opera. The project was abandoned by Telenor, but Ivarsøy and von Tetzchner obtained the rights to the software, formed a company named Opera Software in 1995 and continued working on the Opera browser.
On the 21st of April 2005, Tetzchner proclaimed at an internal meeting of Opera Software that if the download numbers of the browser's new version Opera 8 reached one million within four days, he would swim across the Atlantic Ocean from Norway to the United States. Two days later, on the 23rd, the downloads reached 1,050,000 and Tetzchner had to fulfill his challenge. The Opera site covered the swim and his quick failure.
In January 2010, Tetzchner stepped down as Chief Executive Officer of Opera Software, but he continued to serve Opera as a strategic adviser.
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