Cross Your Fingers: Zennstrom and Friis Might Buy Back Skype From eBay (ReadWriteWeb):
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype, are trying to pile up enough cash from investors and their own bank accounts to buy the company back from eBay, according to an admirable scoop of a report by Brad Stone at the New York Times today. Zennstrom and Friis sold Skype to eBay for roughly $3 billion in 2005 but no one was quite sure why. The remaining Skype team has done a fair job continuing to innovate inside the much slower moving eBay, but we’ve got our fingers crossed: a buy-back by the founders would likely put innovation in the driver’s seat again at Skype. When the original sale was made, everyone waited to find out about some ingenious integration of the two companies. Skype caught fire, growing 8X since the acquisition, bringing in $500 million a year in revenue and even getting a regular spot on the Oprah show and other mainstream media. According to Stone’s write-up, there are now 400 million Skype users - that’s twice as big as Facebook. In fact we wrote last month that (Skype might be the biggest winner of the web 2.0 era.) More news on this topic: eBay May Finally Be Able To Unload Skype AND
KKR, Warburg, Providence and Elevation Surface in Skype Bid
Cooliris raises $15M for (improved) 3d wall (VentureBeat):
Cooliris is launching a new version of its 3D wall today, one that makes it easier to explore images and other media on the web, on social networking sites, and now, even on your computer desktop. The Palo Alto, Calif. company is also announcing a $15 million second round of venture funding from previous backer Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and others…As a reporter, the new feature I’m most excited about is the improved interface for browsing news media in Cooliris’ Discover service, which is basically the startup’s equivalent of Google News. Previously, you just looked at images and videos from news sites, but once the new interface (which isn’t part of tonight’s release, but is coming soon) goes live, you can actually bring up the article, too, in what looks like a newspaper floating above the 3D wall. I haven’t really played with this feature, but it seems like a nice way to read the news — and, more important for newspapers struggling to make money from online ads, a richer environment for advertising. Let’s just hope news organizations are smart enough to see Cooliris as an opportunity, not a parasite.
Currently In Trouble: After Pulling Its IPO, Current TV Loses CTO (Techcrunch):
Current Media, the peer-to-peer news and information company famously co-founded by former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore , appears to be facing stormy weather lately. After two of its reporters were detained by North Korea in a relatively high-profile incident last month, the startup got criticized (whether justified or not) for remaining deafeningly silent over the matter even when it became clear the arrested journalists were not going to get off easily. Only last Friday we reported that the state of the economy forced Current Media - often referred to as Current TV - to pull its $100 million IPO.
How Bad Was Google’s Quarter? (Techcrunch):
As investors wait for Google to announce first quarter earnings later this week, the question is how bad will it be? J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan put out a note this morning predicting that revenues will actually decline 2 percent from last year and will be down 13 percent from last quarter . (His prior estimate was for 5 percent growth). Khan also revised his pro forma EPS estimates down 5.5 percent from $5.04 to $4.76.
Decision Time For Facebook: Term Sheet Received At $2 Billion Valuation (TechCrunch) :
Facebook has been pitching for a new round of funding these last few months to bridge itself to an IPO sometime in the future. We’ve known that since October, when (former) CFO Gideon Yu was in Dubai. In December CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company was open to raising new money but only at the previous $15 billion valuation set by Microsoft. But we’ve heard more recently that the company has been pitching hard for new cash at a much reduced valuation, hoping for at least $4 billion. And some investors are biting, but perhaps not at that price. A source with knowledge of the possible transaction tells us that General Atlantic may have submitted a term sheet at “around a $2 billion” valuation.
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