  niklas zennstrÃ¶m (born 16 february 1966) is a swedish entrepreneur best known for founding several high-profile online ventures with janus friis including skype and kazaa. more recently he founded the technology investment firm atomico and has become a significant figurehead for entrepreneurs in the tech sector. zennstrÃ¶m is also the co-founder of the charity organization zennstrÃ¶m philanthropies. ==education== zennstrÃ¶m has dual degrees in business administration (bsc) and engineering physics (msc) from uppsala university in sweden. he spent his final year at university of michigan, ann arbor, usa. ==career== zennstrÃ¶m started his professional career in 1991 at the european telecom operator tele2. he went on to serve in various business development roles including launching and being responsible for european internet service provider business get2net and as ceo of the everyday.com portal. in 2000 zennstrÃ¶m and janus friis co-founded kazaa, the peer-to-peer file sharing application. niklas served as ceo and the program became the world's most downloaded internet software in 2003. after lawsuits were filed by members of the music and motion picture industry in the usa, kazaa was sold to sharman networks. zennstrÃ¶m then founded and served as ceo at joltid, a software company developing and marketing peer-to-peer solutions and traffic optimization technologies. zennstrÃ¶m also co-founded altnet, the world's first secure peer-to-peer network promoting commercial content to consumers integrating promotion, distribution, and payment of digital content. zennstrÃ¶m's most notable success to date is skype, a telephony company based on peer-to-peer principles. on 14 october 2005 skype was acquired by ebay for â¬2.1 billion ($2.6 billion) plus the potential to earn further performance-based bonuses up to â¬1.2bn. zennstrÃ¶m was ceo from skype's inception until september 2007. during that time, skype became the global leader in internet voice communications with more than 309m registered users within five years of launch. after the sale of skype, zennstrÃ¶m went on in 2007 to launch joost, an online video distribution service (where zennstrÃ¶m was co-chairman). in 2009 zennstrÃ¶m was part of the investment consortium that bought skype technologies from ebay and re-joined the skype board. currently, zennstrÃ¶m runs atomico. based in london, the firm primarily invests in fast growing tech companies with the ability to transform their respective industries. through atomico they have invested in over 50 companies on four continents, including [[
1966_births Businesspeople_in_software Living_people Skype Swedish_billionaires Swedish_businesspeople Swedish_chief_executives Swedish_company_founders University_of_Michigan_alumni Venture_capitalists