He's got a history of disruption, thanks to his creations Kazaa and Skype. But these days Niklas Zennstrom is in with big business, thanks to the sale of Skype to eBay a little over a year ago.
Or is he?
Apparently Kazaa was built with the idea of people sharing files, videos and pictures using a peer to peer network - but they were too early and people just used it for music. If it had been a little later, executives from the media companies that basically killed Kazaa would perhaps have held back. Unfortunately, he notes, most legal departments haven't necessarily caught up with everyone else.
Skype has obviously had a big influence on the telecoms world. But pressed about the relationship with American networks, he doesn't say much - no great surprise given that he's most familiar with Europe, although it leaves the overwhelmingly American audience here.
So why did Zennstrom sell to eBay of all people? Apparently it was a great fit: he calls eBay "the first web 2.0 company". But also he admits that there were financial factors at play - the revenue model needed to develop outside of telecoms (ie e-commerce and advertising).
So what about another disruptive firm that was bought for big money - YouTube? Zennstrom says "the timing was phenomenal"... "A year earlier and they'd have been sued, but all the media companies were thinking about new models," he says. He compares it to Skype, which also had great timing but mainly through luck.
He trails Skype 3.0, which will include greater sharing features and moderated conference calling, and then talks about his other investments: Fon, the sharing network for Wi-Fi hotspots, and The Venice Project, which is hoping to revolutionise TV over the web using peer-to-peer technologies. It's not a competitor for YouTube, he says... which is the kind of thing that should leave the BBC et al trembling.
