During his tenure as Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt attended a private meeting in Davos with a group of senior telecom executives and tried to crack a joke. “Why don’t you make all of the investment and we will take all the profits,” quipped Schmidt, according to a story making the rounds in the tech industry. Nobody in the room laughed. His stab at humour hit too close to home.

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Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom remembers when 3 UK launched a video calling service a few years back. Trouble was there was no one to call, since so few people used such a service.

Times have changed. Only now it is disruptive young companies, including Skype, creating the market.Read more

Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, a speaker at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, plans to speak about how operators and Internet players might work together so that both sides can benefit financially. Click on to watch Informilo's pre-Congress video interview with Zennstrom.

Eight years ago Niklas Zennstrom famously tried to pitch Skype, the London-based Internet voice communications firm which he co-founded and eventually sold for 3.1 billion dollars,  to 26 European venture capitalists.  No one wanted to invest. Now he is doing his part to ensure that the European entrepreneurs  who come up with the next Big Thing will not meet with similar frustrations. Zennstrom is the most public face of the new breed of seed, super-angels and early stage venture firms that are emerging to fill the early stage funding gap in Europe.Read more