The founders of one of the most widely used voice over Internet telephony services (VoIP), Skype have reportedly raised new funds, that they intend to invest in emerging and disruptive technologies from Europe. The founders of Skype, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis had set up an all new investment firm in the year 2006, by the name of Atomico Ventures, and this London based venture capita firm has now been able to raise $165 million in venture funds.

The newly acquired funds will be used to support early stage start-ups in the fields of software development and Internet and the goal of the company is to give a boost to the emerging companies, that could create and bring forth transformative changes. Many see this step by Atomico Ventures as a boon for the British entrepreneurs, who have constantly been neglected by other venture capital firms
, as these firms have been playing safe by investing in more known and older entities, due to the recession.

However, the recent economic downturn did have some adverse effects on the funds raising efforts of Atomico Ventures, as against the company’s targeted $266 million, it managed to raise only $165 million.

According to Niklas Zennström,

“The type of companies we are looking at are
consumer-facing and also small business, that do not need to build up
sales forces around the world to scale and grow. These are the kinds of
companies like Skype, Google and Facebook who, if the business model is
really working, they can get large revenues without having to go
through too many financing rounds.”

Via Financial Times