Last week the founders of Skype settled their suit(s) against eBay and a host of others. Thus, the sale of Skype can now proceed. Here are the highlights:

• The new owners will acquire 56% of Skype, with eBay retaining 30%. The original founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, will get  14%, plus 2 board seats for giving up the core technology behind Skype.

• Skype is valued at $2.75 billion.

• EBay will get about $2 billion from the sale when it closes sometime at the end of this year.

• One of the partners to the sale, Index Ventures, has been shoved out of the deal because of bad blood between partner Mike Volpi and Zennstrom and Friis.

The NY Times is pondering the 3 lessons from the Skype War:

1. When you buy a company, buy all of the underlying technology.
2. Litigation can create valuable leverage in deals, even if its merits are questionable.
3. Silicon Valley is a small place. Watch out for conflicts of interest (and claims of conflicts).

To which I’d add, given the sort of hardball that Zennstrom and Friis like to play, “Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.”

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on November 09, 2009 - 10:09 am

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