Skype Co-Founders Raise $165 Million For New Fund—Short Of Initial Goal

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Skype Co-Founders Raise $165 Million For New Fund—Short Of Initial Goal

Skype cofounders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis have raised $165 million for their second venture fund which will mainly back European high growth tech startups. Zennström and Friis—who also started Kazaa and Joost—had initially aimed to raise $266 million for the fund a year ago but downplay the shortfall telling the Financial Times, “when we started we had a flexible number” and “we think we have exactly the right amount of money.”

Zennström and Friis started their investment comapny—Atomico Ventures—four years ago. Over the last year, it has backed several startups, including mobile gaming firm Zattikka, music service Rdio, and social games site Playfire.

In its announcement, Atomico loosely lays out the criteria for how it will use the new cash. Zennström: “We will seek to invest in exceptional entrepreneurs who are building exceptional businesses. We will target companies that we believe have the potential to generate significant growth, transform their industries, and deliver strong returns.”

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Joseph Tartakoff

@josephtartakoff Mar 21, 2010 11:05 PM ET

Photo: Corbis

Posted In: Money, M&A & Venture Capital, Venture Capital

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Dfactor

Ah, Jimmy, you're missing the point. The Police were there to draw ratings. Who the heck would wanna watch that stupid show anyway? Plus, The Police summer tour will likely be among the top concert moneymakers for the year (if the bandmembers keep it together for the course of it).

And Glenn's right about the catalog action - older artists are the cash cow of the record industry.

Glenn

From your tone I sense you think it's a bad idea to sell older artists. (Actually, your tone suggests its flat out idiocy.) In some ways I'm in agreement. Those Michael Bolton oldies cover albums were probably a bad idea. But kids are listening to a ton of classic rock these days, and there's a good reason why labels are currently emphasizing older artists: They are purchased by older consumers with more cash and a greater propensity to actually buy music. How is that anything but a good strategy when sales are hard to come by?

There are other strategies in the works. paidContent covers them just about every day. The next ten years has more in store than Norah Jones CD sales at Starbucks. Unfortunately for the labels, the market is not ready to shift its full weight behind MySpace, iTunes, YouTube, etc. You should know this. These deals you write about have a small impact compared to what Wal-Mart can move in a few weeks. While labels are finally getting around to planning for the future, there are going to be a lot of earnings releases between now and then. Lots to worry about here and now.

Even if content owners make every licensing deal that crosses their desks, we're years away from anything truly substantial coming from them. The next generation's infrastructure—who actually deal with consumers, take their money, do the credit card transactions, run the ads—is not currently in a position to do much for the content owners. In the meantime, those Norah Jones albums will make a few bucks and the Police reunion will move some catalog units.