50,000 TV Channels! The Skype Guys Strike Again

YouTube stirred enormous buzz with its growing video community last year, and Zennstrom and Friis, who had no formal business plan, faced a quandary early in the project's development. Should they chase the user-generated-content train or go after video of a different kind? They chose the latter path, despite the dollar signs dangling from YouTube. Given the fortunes Zennstrom and Friis had already accumulated, they could afford to gamble on the venture, which they have largely funded on their own. "They're cutting edge, passionate and aggressive," says Lucas Mann, co-founder of MusicNation, an artist-development company with a music-video-contest channel on Joost. "They're cyberpunks."

Whether entrepreneurs or rebels, they're certainly not idle rich, though Friis confesses he has started eating at nicer restaurants, ordering good bottles of wine and traveling business class instead of economy. And the Joost team isn't afraid to let loose. Friis admits the gang got "fairly intoxicated" celebrating the long-awaited release of their test software just before Christmas. Now, as they polish their software for its summer debut, the founders say they're juiced up about opening Joost to the world. From time to time, the billion-dollar question tugs at Friis. "I do ask myself sometimes," he says, "why I'm not sitting on some island on the beach relaxing. When this works, though, it'll all be worth the work."