With the latest buzz on lincked ..  and their stock taking off… i went on Google today to see about one of my favorite services… SKYPE…. i honestly think everyone should have SKYPE.. and have ON STAR…HA!   what great services… and what great businesses….. and by reading  about the company… Skype.. I luv it even  more!   a Swedish company…  I loved visiting Sweden and  met the best people… made  two friends ages ago from Sweden when i went to school in France.. Thomas and Claes…   so i  thought I’d post the info on the company….  but guess there ae no stock options… darn… and  such a great company… oh well…..

Here is the info i am posting on skype…. just  copied and pasted: 

Hi all you Skype Pioneers!

Happy to tell you all that the service works great for me too!

Skype needs very little money which is the great thing about the company!
The financing so far has been achieved through only one outside
investor. The investor (known to date) is Draper Investment Company.,
established by American venture capitalist William H. Draper III.

I agree though that the company idea is just great
We all must realize that the way we can make money
from Skype is by using the service and tell our friends to use it too.
Over time we will save thousands of dollars.

Other interesting facts:

Skype is founded by Niklas Zennstrom from Sweden. The whole management
team is swedish. Sweden is also the home of Ericsson, the largest
manufacturer of mobile phone systems in the world. Zennstrom started his
career within the media conglomerate Kinnevik which operates a fixed
and a mobile phone network in Sweden, the rest of scandinavia and the
baltic states.

Through his work on the webportal Everyday.com, Zennstrom came in touch
with the brilliant estonian software developers that have developed
Skype. First they did it with KaZaa and now they do it with Skype!

Sweden, and particularly Stockholm, was (in the boom-days)called
“Wireless Valley”. The bubble, blew but it is still definitely a good
description of Stockholm and Sweden except it may have to be extended to
“Telecom valley” in order to fully reflect that the innovation such as
the worlds first cell-phone network and the knowledge to create Skype
was created in the swedish research environment.

*World no 1 acclaimed telco quality expertise
*Low-cost expertise
*Abundant access to expert resources since Ericsson has been cutting back in their workforce.

Just too bad that it had to be an american investor that put all the money into Skype…

Skype (or Skyper as originally called) was founded in july 2002 with the
company description: “Developing software focused on next generation
resource sharing for mobile communications”. The seed round of financing
was completed on Oct 2, 2002. Geoffrey Prentice is the one in charge of
financing issues.

I am afraid that that the Telcos (including Sweden’s Ericsson through
its traditional customers ) should be really shaken up by this TRULY
DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY!!!
Read the bestselling books of Harvard Professor Christensen and you know what I’m talking about.

Myself, I just love this kind of entrepreneurship!

Keep up the good work guys

Kick Mr Gates’ ass.
And for all of us: NEVER turn any P2P-service into a proprietary
platform that puts restraints on societal development. The success
depends, and only depends on the feeling of sharing! All you inventors
will get your monetary benefits anyway, trust me.