By Mark Hachman - ExtremeTech - Mon May 11, 2009 7:53AM EDT
The brains behind Skype are attempting to raise the equivalent of $266 million for a new venture capital fund, according to an SEC filing.
The filing, effective May 6, names Niklas Zennström and Janus FriisDegnbol, the co-founders of Skype, as the top names on the application. Mark Dyne, Ronan Guilfoyle and Roger Hanson are also named as directors. Geoffrey Prentice, the first employee at Skype, as well as Mattias Ljungman, a Swedish VC, also will serve on the company.
The minimum investment by an outside company is $13.3 million. The money will apparently be raised in euros; the filing lists a conversion rate of 1.33 euros to the dollar.
The sitr already lists several companies in the investment portfolio, including Aliph, the creator of the Jawbone Bluetooth headset;Joost, which switched from an app to a Web site in December;Last.fm; Seesmic; blog network Technorati; and Xobni.
"We are entrepreneurs with a global perspective who invest in passionate entrepreneurs with disruptive, powerful ideas," Atomic says on its Web site. "Through our experience building Skype, Joost and Kazaa, we understand the value of game-changing business models and have created a worldwide network to help accelerate the growth of the companies in which we invest."
Both Zennström and Friis are most well known for founding Skype in 2003, which eBay purchased for about $4.1 billion in 2005 in 2005, as well as Joost, a Web site that was designed to be a disruptive force for video on the Web.
Zennstrom stepped down as chief executive in 2007, shortly after a Windows Update glitch took out the entire service for about two days. Amid reports that bothZennström and Friis wanted to buy Skype back, eBay finally decided last month to spin off Skype by mid-2010.
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