Jon interviewed at Slush

[Ayespy]

This was posted by the Vivaldi team on Facebook today and deserves wider distributon - http://videondo.com/detail/building-a-browser-company-by-the-founder-of-opera-vivaldi-slush-2015/

[arnymars]

I like the interview. What it says to me, Jon moved to the US and was looking for ways to utilize broad experience accumulated while running Opera for 17 years. Obviously, being an investor can be a profitable business itself, but it doesn't allow to utilize your own skills at full scale. He basically started Vivaldi to make something useful for the public himself, and that looks like the best decision for Opera fans. When the host asked "Why do you run it yourself rather then investing into a Vivaldi startup", I smiled: "who can run a small innovative browser company better than Jon given his background?"

Another thing I like from that interview is notably different Jon's personality compare to traditional US grown execs, like those who years ago thrown Steve Jobs out of Apple, and then couldn't do anything at all to bring the company back to profit and popularity. Apparently, good looking resume and headhunters is not everything, these hunted heads moved from business to business every 3 years, living behind nothing accomplished in any of them. Jon appears to show more humanistic and also more European approach to business.

What is obvious, having 100+ mln former Opera users in the background, set by Vivaldi 2mln users for profitability goal seems absolutely real in the next 2 years or earlier. At the same time, looking at long list of features expected by former Opera fans, one realizes again and again how big and difficult such job is to bring such tool as a web browser to the masses. It looks like a web browser becomes the most popular universally accepted software tool now, overpassing world processors and such. And fast developing internet world makes it even harder to catch up and keep up.