Skype was sold to Ebay in 2005 for 2.6 billion US$, so one would think that the founders have plenty of money. Why did they just raise what seems to be a petty amount instead of just ponying up themselves? Is it risk management, to work with other smart people, broaden the base of potential deals or what?
Or was Joost an expensive venture that left them with less funds than desireable?
Atomico's first fund was internal; this is Atomico II and they went out and raised a fund for this one. They've already done a handful of investments in the past:
There are plenty of large funds out there, the
more capital you raise the more money you have to deploy and the larger your portfolio exits need to be. Not sure why you think 165MM is a "petty" amount, especially these days! And more than risk management it's "smart" money vs. "dumb" money
This is great news -- I think Europe is fertile ground for doing startups.
Europe only has one fundamental disadvantage for startups -- that there aren't a lot of startups yet.
Three factors:
1) European employment regulations: which largely wouldn't apply in a tiny startup, or could be circumvented through use of contractors. This is the one area where government could have a positive impact.
2) Lack of investors -- there are a few great ones (Index, Atomico, Seedcamp) but there isn't a huge pool of medium-good firms to pitch, or to syndicate on deals. Even bigger, there aren't anywhere near as many tech angels as NYC or Austin, to say nothing of SFBA. The solution is to have more successful exits like Skype.
3) Lack of entrepreneurial education in colleges or programs -- Founder Institute, Seedcamp, and a few others are changing these. I'd love to see European universities focus on startups.
I'm planning to go full-time on a startup this summer, and would definitely do it in Europe (Berlin, Scandinavia, Netherlands, Poland, or the Baltics) or Canada if I could get financing and visas, rather than the US. It's going to be a lot easier to recruit top talent from India/China based on easier visas, and even though it might be easier in SFBA, I think the marginal extra startup in SF will have a harder time getting the top 5 people than the marginal extra startup in Europe, since there's less competition.
Or was Joost an expensive venture that left them with less funds than desireable?