NIKLAS ZENNSTROM

Net worth         : $1.3 billion

Niklas Zennström, 44, is a Friis created Skype the peer-to-peer Internet telephony network.
He is also the co-founder (again with Friis) of Joost, an interactive software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the web set up in 2006 and Atomico, a venture capital company.
Zennström and Friis’ most notable success to date is Skype, a VoIP telephony company based on peer-to-peer principles.

On October 14, 2005, Skype was acquired by eBay for €2.1 billion ($2.6 billion USD) plus the potential to earn further performance-based bonuses up to €1.2bn. Zennström was CEO from Skype’s inception until September 2007.

Skype has become the global leader in Internet voice communications, attracting more than 276 million registered users within less than four years of its launch.

Skype’s continuing success was officially recognised in September 2005 when eBay Inc acquired the company for 3.1 billion US Dollars.

It is very similar to companies like Google and other internet companies. When you go and search on Google you don’t pay for that. But sometimes you click on an advert and Google makes money on that. Skype is easy enough to use so that people don’t need to be tech savvy – a lot of users just want to communicate with their friends and family, and they find this is the easiest, cheapest way.
What we are doing is taking advantage of the broadband Internet to provide basically unlimited free calls to anyone at a higher voice quality than they can with the phone lines.

People need to access Skype wirelessly, no matter where they are, and what happens is that we’ll be taking advantage of the rollout of Internet everywhere – WiFi and WiMax in particular.