Jordan Ritter

Jordan Ritter Biography

Jordan Ritter is one of the most popular and richest Software Architect who was born on February 1, 1978 in Northridge, California, United States. As of June 1, 2023, Jordan has a net worth approximately $5 Million. In 1999 Netect acquired by BindView. Ritter was retained as part of the deal.

Jordan Ritter (born February 1 Jordan Ritter (born February 1, 1978) is an American serial entrepreneur, software designer and an angel investor. He is most well-known for his work with Napster which is a file-sharing platform that he co-founded together with Shawn Fanning and others. His experience at Napster was covered in the book by Joseph Menn All the Rave: The Rising and the Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster and Alex Winter’s film Downloaded.

As Fanning initially refused to permit access to the code source members saw the challenge as an opportunity and began to reverse-engineer various parts that comprised the server. Ritter along with fellow member of w00w00 Seth McGann focused on the protocol and backend software, finding bugs and suggesting possible fixes to Fanning and w00w00 participant Evan Brewer managed the system that the server operated on. In the beginning of the month of June, 1999 Fanning requested Ritter to completely take over the creation of Napster’s server, while Fanning concentrated in his Windows client. A few months later, Yosi Amram invested $250,000 in Napster and demanded that the Napster’s operations be relocated out of Massachusetts into California. Ritter relocated into Silicon Valley in September 1999 and initially shared his apartment Fanning along with Sean Parker at the San Mateo Marriott Residence Inn.

As a worker for BindView, Ritter met Shawn Fanning on the internet via the IRC channel for hackers on computers known as #!w00w00. It was in the month of May, 1999 that Fanning was able to start asking Ritter along with other members of w00w00 to help.