Skype co-founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis have already announced their decision to quit their positions. While Zennström (the now former Skype CEO) is to take the nonexecutive position of chairman of board of directors, Friis will leave the company altogether.
It seems that the two were actually happy to ditch the Skype responsibilities so they could focus on their new projects:
“Niklas and I are both entrepreneurs at heart, and this allows us to move on to our next projects – and we are fortunate to have two ambitious projects in front of us.
One is Joost. The ambition for Joost is still to create the first truly global TV platform for high quality programming. Joost is different than anything we have tried before. For whereas with Skype and Kazaa you just had to create a great product and let it loose, with Joost we have to satisfy three groups – users, content owners, and advertisers. So it is inherently more complex and ambitious, the curve is more steep in the beginning – and the potential is enormous.[…]
The other project is Atomico. Atomico is our new risk capital group where we invest our own capital. We have already, quietly, invested in many companies such as Technorati, FON and Last.FM, and now we are going to take it to the next level.”
eBay will certainly be busy in the next months to stress out that Skype will be blooming once again. Still, the PR department is a looking at a very tough job. The Skype founders have no wish to continue with the project, and that’s not a good sign for the public.