Interview with Skype founder Niklas: Interested in investing in Chinese start-up companies

[Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom recently visited China. Move Point Blog English edition Sherman So gave him an interview. Here is the first part of the Chinese translation of the interview record written by Sherman.

Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom

I visited Skype founder Niklas Zennstr the day before yesterday. M, he recently studied in China, mainly because of not Skype, but his own VC fund Atomico.atomico is looking for to develop overseas market of Chinese start-up companies to cooperate.

Niklas said: "If Chinese startups want to develop markets in countries such as Germany or Brazil, I believe Atomico can give them good help." "After selling Skype to ebay, Niklas and Janus Friis founded the venture capital Fund in 2006. They themselves took out 40 million euros as the Atomico start-up fund. Last year, they raised a 106.5 million-dollar fund that was mainly provided by European institutional investors. Atomico mainly invests in high-tech start-ups in Europe and the US, with two companies in Latin America (Brazil) getting their investment. Although there is no investment in Asia, I believe it will be soon.

This trip to China, Niklas met a lot of Chinese internet giants. He recognized from the meeting that China's Internet market is very special. Some of these rules are special (for example, you can't rely on intellectual property to protect against competitors), and the companies here are just as special, Niklas. Most of the major players in the Chinese market are local companies, such as Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba. "It's hard for international companies to succeed in China," Niklas said.    ”？ There is fierce competition in the VC market here. "There is plenty of money, and you have to have other advantages," Niklas said, "for Atomico, as an international venture capital fund, our advantage is to help companies develop across borders."    ”？ The best-known example is Skype, which is a start-up in Sweden, and is now almost global. "We understand the market environment in each region-local regulations, local consumer behavior, and so on," Niklas said. "We can help Chinese companies develop their products or service markets abroad." ”

One area of particular interest to Niklas is the game, he says: "Both mobile and casual games are popular." You can see that the top iphone apps are games. "China has a strong game development community, many of which have entered the international market." For example, Beijing's hot-cool company has become a top social gaming operator in Japan. Niklas and his team should soon find a satisfactory investment.

What is Niklas's opinion about the future trend? What advice would he give to young entrepreneurs? What does he think of the Chinese market? In the next few days, we will continue to introduce. Interview his video clips see: http://mobinode.tv/archives/1762