Shawn Fanning Net Worth | Celebrity Net Worth

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What is Sean Fanning’s net worth?

Sean Fanning is an American computer programmer, serial entrepreneur and angel investor who has a net worth of $70 million dollars. Sean Fanning is probably best known for creating Napster, the file-sharing platform that was very popular at the turn of the century. Since then, he has invested in several other tech start-up companies, most notably Uber.

early life

Sean Fanning was born on 22 November 1980 in Brockton, Massachusetts. In 1994 at the age of 14, Sean Fanning met future collaborator Sean Parker on the Internet. The two initially bonded over subjects like hacking and physics and then met in real life when Fanning began attending Northeastern University.

In 1998, while he was attending Northeastern University, Sean wrote the code that became one of the first popular peer-to-peer (“P2P”) file sharing platforms. He called it Napster. Parker raised initial funds to produce the program.

napster

Once the initial beta program became available on June 1, 1999, hundreds of college students from across the Northeast stood up and traded music fiercely. Shortly after, Sean and Sean moved the company from Hull, Massachusetts to a more expansive location in San Mateo, California, and even hired new employees to improve the Napster program. Napster was so popular that it landed a spot on the cover of Time magazine. Millions of users were soon downloading all kinds of files through the program.

However, its success was not without trials and Napster was eventually sued for oblivion. The Recording Industry Association of America strongly opposed the stage, as did many bands and performing groups. Although it was one of the fastest growing businesses of all time, it was eventually closed due to massive litigation. However, despite its quick demise, Napster had a lasting impact on the music industry, and some even credit it with being one of the early inspirations for services like iTunes. Fanning’s success with Napster helped her to appear on a list of the world’s top 100 innovators under the age of 35 by MIT Technology Review.

later venture

After Napster, Sean Parker became an early advisor to Facebook and eventually earned a multi-billion personal fortune.

After Napster, Shawn Fanning joined and invested in several early-stage technology startup companies including Snowcap, Rapture and Path. He co-founded Snowcap with Jordan Mendelson, who previously served as Napster’s chief architect, in 2003 with funding from investor Ron Conway.

Within a few years, the company laid off more than half of its employees. Fanning left Snowcap before Snowcap officially combusted, going on to develop Rupture in 2006. He had a good time, as Snowcap was bought at a fire sale in 2008.

Sean officially became the CEO of Rupture on October 2, 2007. Rupture’s future looked bright as it was soon acquired by Electronic Arts for $15 million, but Fanning’s team at Electronic Arts was sacked in November 2009 in a round of layoffs. A few months later, he started a new company called Path.com.

Path operates as a social network platform focused on photo sharing and messaging. A year later, in 2011, he again joined Sean Parker and founded Airtime.com, a group video chat app. However, the company’s launch was disastrous. Despite the star-studded event, the app kept crashing repeatedly during the June 2012 public launch event.

A year later, Fanning started the company Helium Systems with Amir Halim and Sean Carey. Since then, he has continued to invest in other projects, mainly still focusing on the tech and start-up space.

Uber Invest

Uber launched in San Francisco in June 2010. It was a huge hit with customers, but investors weren’t hitting Uber’s doors to invest in the fledgling startup at the time. In late summer 2010, Uber raised a $1.25 million seed round from First Round Capital, investors Chris Sacca and Sean Fanning. Sean paid $25,000. Fast forward to May 2019 and Sean’s stake, assuming he hasn’t sold any of his shares, was worth $125 million following Uber’s IPO.

other public appearances

Due to the success of Napster, Fanning has been featured in several films and media. He was a presenter at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards and wore shirt form that read “Metallica v. Napster, Inc.”, representing the lawsuits in which Napster was embroiled. He has also made a cameo appearance as himself in “The Italian Job”. In which he is accused of stealing ideas from Seth Greene’s character while Greene is taking a nap. He also appeared in a 2008 Volkswagen advertisement that references his past with file-sharing platforms and was the subject of the 2013 documentary “Download”.