Chapter 219 Skype
"Do you know Lady Emma?"
In the morning, Barron returned to the bedroom and saw that Julia Moore had just woken up. He sat on the edge of the bed, pressed a kiss on her forehead, and asked about the name he just heard.
At the beginning, when faced with the Devonshire family's involvement in the "London Star" investment, in addition to other reasons why the family needed funds, he had always been doubtful, that is, these known reasons, It was not enough for the previous Duke, who had always been cautious, to decide to invest so much money into the "London Star".
And just this morning, in the briefing sent from the Munger base on the further interrogation of Soslan Digiev and others, Barron received a new piece of news.
That is, in the original "London Star", the original investment of the old Duke of the Devonshire family was brokered by a woman named Lady Emma.
"Lady Emma?"
Hearing this name, Yulia stood up and recalled it, forgetting for a moment her beautiful love affair at this time.
When she noticed Barron's gaze lingering, she pulled up the quilt belatedly, her face flushed:
"I met her twice when I was in London, both times when I was with the old Duke. She was an elegant and noble lady, but..."
She glanced at Barron and said:
"It seems that she and the old Duke must be old acquaintances. Why do you suddenly ask about her?"
"Nothing, I just heard a friend mention this name."
Barron made an excuse to Yulia and couldn't get any more information from her. Barron was still going to find someone to investigate this clue when the time came.
"Let's go have some breakfast together. I'll let the kitchen prepare it now."
Yulia came to London yesterday. Today, the Cavendish King Hotel in King's Cross is about to open. As the manager of the family trust fund of the Cavendish Hotel Group, she will also be present.
After dinner, Barron received a call from Amber Sheehan, CEO of DS Industrial Investment Company.
He told Barron's that he had found the Skype team in Estonia and had secured the investment.
They will invest 10 million pounds in the Skype team and obtain 60% of the shares of the startup.
Of course, the only way to convince the other party to sell so many shares was that Amber Sheehan, on behalf of Barron, assured them that she could help them resolve the lawsuit brought against them by the United States due to infringement of the software Kaaza they had previously launched.
Skype is an Internet phone that was officially launched at the end of August this year. However, when the test version of this Internet phone was launched, it had already attracted Barron's attention and he immediately sent Amber to Estonia. Discuss with the other party's team about investing in the company.
Because they were guaranteed to solve their big trouble of being sued by the United States at this time, and DS Capital had given such a high valuation not long after it was launched, the Skype team, including Zennstrm and Friis, finally agreed to DS Capital’s investment. Require.
This starts with their last business venture.
As early as 2000, when the Internet trend swept the United States, Everyday.com, a European entertainment and news portal, was preparing to go online.
The founder of this website is the CEO of Swedish telecommunications company Tele2.
When recruiting relevant technical personnel, the marketing director of Tele2’s Estonia office suggested looking for Estonians.
As a result, Tele2 published a recruitment advertisement in the newspaper, offering a salary of 5,000 Estonian krona (approximately equivalent to US$300) per day, which is equivalent to a month's salary for ordinary people.
The three people who successfully applied for the position are Jaan Tallinn, Ahti Heinla and Priit Kasesalu.
All three are passionate about technology and are alumni.
They mastered the PHP language in a short time and completed the tasks delivered by Tele2.
In addition to the above three people, the people responsible for the website also include old Tele2 employees Niklas Zennstrm and Janus Friis, and new employee Tovio Annus.
Two old employees work in Luxembourg and Amsterdam respectively, and new employees Tovio Annus and Jaan Tallinn work in Tallinn.
It is worth mentioning that these six people later became the founders of Skype.
Everyday.com eventually failed.
Two of the company's employees, Niklas Zennstrm and Janus Friis, left the company and began to think about a new way out.
At a time when Napster in the United States was under siege from the music and movie industries, two people wanted to do the same thing, but they hoped to cooperate with the entertainment industry.
They went to Tallinn and found the Jaan Tallinn technical trio.
Then Kaaza was born.
Kaaza is a peer-to-peer file sharing software that eliminates the need for an intermediary server, thus solving Napster's problems.
It quickly became the most downloaded software on the Internet.
But on the business side, Zennström and Friis have no deals with American film and music companies.
Kaaza was sued for encouraging piracy and distributing pornography, and the entrepreneurial team became the target of American lawyers.
This resulted in everyone on the team having to evade court summons for a long time, even after they sold Kaaza.
For example, one time when Zennstrm went to the theater to watch a play, a stranger handed his wife a bouquet of flowers and then took out a summons...
Zennstrm immediately got up and ran away.
Another time, he was chased by a motorbike in London, but again escaped.
When Zennstrm went to Tallinn to meet the team, he was nervous.
Sometimes when strangers came in, he would hide under the table.
In their previous lives, Zennström and Friis refrained from going to the United States for many years out of fear of arrest.
In the end, they paid $100 million in damages to the American music and film industries to get out of the lawsuit.
But that was only after they sold Skype at a sky-high price and became super rich.
But now, this matter does not need to be so troublesome for Barron. After all, the Kaaza software has been sold. With his connections in the United States, solving this matter is not only a piece of cake, but also does not require so much money.
The reason why Barron worked so hard to get so many shares of Skype is because he knew that in two years, eBay would acquire the company for a sky-high price of US$2.6 billion.
And this is not the end, because after eBay acquired Skype, the integration with it was not very good. In 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype for a sky-high price of US$8.5 billion.
After DS Industrial Investment Company acquired Skype for 10 million pounds this time, in addition to Estonia, the company will also set up a branch in the King Cavendish Building in London - becoming a neighbor of Woaw Company.
And Skype's entrepreneurial team will still have the main subsequent management rights of the company.
In addition, being able to obtain cooperation with O2 Telecom is also the main reason why the Skype team is willing to accept DS Capital investment.
In many subsequent articles introducing Skype, it will be mentioned that this company that provides Internet phone services has been suppressed by many telecommunications companies because Internet calls infringed on the interests of telecommunications companies.
In fact, overall, the growth of Internet phone users will indeed reduce some of the revenue of telecommunications companies.
But this part of the business is mainly focused on international communications. After all, before smartphones, the reason why Skype users used this software to sit in front of computers and make calls was mainly because this method could save expensive international phone calls.
The impact on mobile communications is not huge.
And unlike many people's inherent impression, in fact, after this, many telecommunications companies even took the initiative to launch their own Internet phone services in order to promote their broadband services.
Within this year, American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT\u0026T), Time Warner and other companies will launch their Internet phone services, while British Telecom (BT) will also launch similar services.
O2 Telecom itself has mobile communication business and broadband business. Therefore, after cooperating with Skype, it will not affect its own revenue, but will expand the scope of users.
And in terms of the future development of Skype, in terms of technology, this company does have a better user experience than the Internet phone services launched by telecommunications companies.
