Von Techner Jón (Jon von Tetzchner)

Von Techner Jón (Jon von Tetzchner)

Biography

1995: Founding Opera

Opera was founded by Techner with his colleague Geir Ivarsoy in 1995 after they bought the right to their own web browser project, developed as part of the Telenor telephone company. Von Techner became the chief executive officer of Opera, in this post he remained until 2010. Ivarsoy died in 2006.

In early 2010, he handed over the duties to Lars Boylsen, saying that this decision was "the result of long thoughts." After that, Techner became a strategic consultant to Opera, continuing to work at the company at a full rate.

2011: Leaving Opera

In June 2011, it became known that Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder and former executive director of Norwegian Opera Software, was leaving the company.

"In the beginning, we were a tiny team in a small office. Now Opera's activities cover the whole world. The company employs more than 740 employees, and the number of users of our products exceeds 200 million people. I am incredibly proud of what we managed to achieve and plan to be next to the company in the future, "von Techner said in an open letter, adding that the decision to leave the company was not easy for him.

"To say that Techner created a great company means that there is nothing to say," added Lars Boilesen, current executive director of Opera Software. He noted that Techner chose an innovative path of development and clearly adhered to it, adding one new function after another to his web browsers, while others only copied innovations.

Meanwhile, Techner sent a letter to Opera employees with different content than in an open message. A copy of it was at the disposal of the publication TechCrunch. This is what the former director writes: "I am sad to send this message. Next week will be my last at Opera. It became obvious that the board of directors, management and I do not share the same values ​ ​ and have different views on how to continue the development of Opera. So my board and I decided that I would leave. "

It seems that Techner does not share the desire of Opera management to concentrate on profiting. "I have always worked to build a strong company with great prospects in the future," he shares. "Management is more concerned than I am about quarterly results."

Techner will resign on June 30, 2011. Where he plans to work further is not reported. But it is known that he has some ideas about new projects that he is not yet ready to discuss.

Despite the fact that Techner's departure as a whole came as a surprise to the market, this could well have been expected, and the change of leadership in 2010 was the first step. While Techner was an engineer in the soul, replacing him Boylsen - "a salesman." Since the arrival of Boylsen, Opera's web browser share in the global market has changed slightly - from 2.2% in January 2010, it grew to 2.4% in May 2011. The company significantly loses to Google Chrome, which over the same period was able to increase its share by about 2.5 times - from 10.8% to 25.9%. However, financial affairs went better. For example, in the first quarter of 2011, Opera's profit grew by 661% compared to the same period in 2010 to NOK 41.4 million (about $7.5 million).

2013: Foundation of Vivaldi Technologies

In December 2013, Jon von Tetzchner founded Vivaldi Technologies.