What’s Next for Skype Founder Niklas Zennstrom?

By Mark Evans
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

If Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom is looking for guidance on how to spend his eBay windfall, he might want to have lunch with eBay founder and chairman Pierre Omidyar, who has a growing investment portfolio being done through Omidyar Network. His latest investment is Digg.com, which recently raised $2.8 million, according to Silicon Beat. Omidyar’s other investments include Feedster, Socialtext, ex-San Jose Mercury columnist Dan Gilmour’s Grassroots Media and search guru John Battelle’s FM Publishing. Zennstrom may want to follow the path taken by eBay’s first employee, Jeff Skoll, who has become very involved with philanthropic work. With eBay CFO Rajiv Dutta poised to become Skype’s new president, perhaps Zennstrom should start looking for his next gig.

We Say: The world is Zennstrom’s oyster. When he walks away from Skype - and you have to believe it has to be fairly soon given he’s a rebel working for a global goliath - there will be no lack of offers to back what he wants to do next.

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