From TechRepublic:
Ten years ago, Jon von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsoy were researchers at Norway’s largest telecom when management shut down their project.
But the two programmers successfully negotiated the rights to the browsing software they had developed at the company and then struck out on their own. And so it was that Opera Software got its start.
Opera never generated the buzz of one-time high-fliers like Netscape. But unlike many belonging to the class of 1995, von Tetzchner and Ivarsoy are still at the helm to celebrate their company’s 10-year anniversary–and this despite the challenges of surviving the Internet bust, a global IT recession and, of course, Microsoft.