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

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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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Max Kalehoff

Frank: thanks for setting the record straight.
Rafat: thanks for acknowledging, and congrats on your deal.

- Max Kalehoff, VP-Marketing, Clickable

Rafat Ali

Hey Frank
Thanks for clarifying…will append to the story.

Frank Addante

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We need to exist because today's market has money (ad spend) being fragmented across these 300+ (and growing) networks. Clickable is focused on the opposite side of the market, helping advertisers spend their money more efficiently.

I'm a big fan of the Clickable service, it is much needed. In a market where 33% of consumer time is spent online, yet only 8% of advertising budgets, services like Clickable will help advertisers move more of their money online. It's good for the industry as a whole. However, for publishers, this furthers the challenge of money being fragmented to multiple ad networks - but that is where we at the Rubicon Project come in to help publishers. the Rubicon Project and Clickable are complementary businesses.

Both are helping to automate the online ad market, a market that has primarily been driven by people powered by excel spreadsheets.