5 Skype Questions for Marc Andreessen
eBay announced this morning that it has reached a settlement with Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, whose legal actions were complicating eBay's sale of a majority stake in Skype to a private equity consortium. Under terms of the deal, Zennstrom and Friis will receive a 14% stake in Sykpe (still valued at $2.75 billion), with eBay holding 30% and the remainder going to Silver Lake Partners, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. Original consortium partner Index Ventures is out. So we've got 5 questions for Marc Andreessen, the eBay board member who is half of Andreessen Horowitz's eponymous founding duo: 1. You told TechCrunch this morning that the money for this deal was in escrow, and would have gotten done even without a settlement with the founders. Why would you have gone forward with all of those troubles hanging over your head? Because there was another route to take, and a whole other side to this in terms of legal arguments we could have pursued. We were following those routes simultaneous to talking with the founders, and as it turns out we never had to file any lawsuits. These were known issues going into the deal. One reason Skype was even available was because of these issues. Our view was that a settlement would be the preferred outcome, and we’re very happy with how it turned out. We were pretty sure this is what was going to happen, because it made the most sense.
