"Do you know Lady Emma?"
In the morning, Barron returned to the bedroom and saw that Yulia Moore had just woken up. He sat down beside the bed, kissed her on the forehead, and asked the name he had just heard.
At the beginning, when faced with the Devonshire family's participation in the investment in the "Star of London", in addition to other reasons related to the family's need for funds, he was always confused. That is, these known reasons were not enough for the previous Duke, who had always been cautious, to decide to invest so much money in the "Star of London".
And just this morning, Barron received new news from the briefing on the further interrogation of Soslan Digiyev and others sent from the Munger Base.
That is, in the "London Star", the initial investment of the old Duke of Devonshire family was made by a woman named Lady Emma.
"Lady Emma?"
Hearing the name, Yulia stood up and reminisced, momentarily forgetting her beautiful moment.
When she noticed Barron's gaze, she pulled up the quilt belatedly, her face flushed:
"I met her twice in London, both times when I was with the old Duke. She was an elegant and noble lady, but..."
She glanced at Barron and said:
"It seems that she and the old Duke are old acquaintances. Why are you suddenly asking about her?"
"Nothing, I just heard this name from a friend."
Barron made an excuse to Yulia. Since he couldn't get more information from her, Barron still planned to find someone to investigate this clue when the time comes.
"Let's go get some breakfast together. I'll have the kitchen prepare it now."
Yulia came to London yesterday. Today, the Cavendish King's Hotel in King's Cross is about to open. As the manager of the family trust fund of the Cavendish Hotel Group, she will also be present.
After dinner, Barron received a call from Amber Sheehan, CEO of DS Industrial Investments.
He told Barron's that he had found the Skype team in Estonia and had secured the investment.
They will invest £10 million in the Skype team and acquire a 60% stake in the startup.
Of course, what convinced the other party to give up so many shares was that Amber Sheehan, on behalf of Barron, assured them that she could help them resolve the lawsuit filed by the United States against them for infringement of their previously launched software Kaaza.
Skype is an Internet phone that was officially launched at the end of August this year. However, before that, when the test version of this Internet phone was launched, it had already attracted Barron's attention, and he immediately sent Amber to Estonia to discuss investment and shareholding with the other party's team.
Because DS Capital guaranteed to solve the big problem of them being sued by the United States, and because the company had just been launched, DS Capital gave such a high valuation. In the end, the Skype team including Zennstrm and Friis agreed to DS Capital's investment request.
This has to start with their last business venture.
As early as 2000, when the Internet craze swept America, Everyday.com, a European entertainment and news portal, was preparing to go online.
The initiator of this website is the CEO of Swedish telecommunications company Tele2.
When recruiting relevant technical personnel, the marketing director of Tele2's Estonian office suggested looking for Estonians.
So Tele2 posted a job ad in the newspaper, offering a salary of 5,000 Estonian kronor per day (approximately US$300), which is equivalent to an average person's monthly salary.
The three people who successfully applied for the position were Jaan Tallinn, Ahti Heinla and Priit Kasesalu.
All three are passionate about technology and are alumni.
They mastered the PHP language in a very short time and completed the tasks delivered by Tele2.
In addition to the above three people, the people responsible for the website also include old Tele2 employees Niklas Zennstrm and Janus Friis, and new employee Tovio Annus.
The two old employees work in Luxembourg and Amsterdam respectively, and new employees Tovio Annus and Jaan Tallinn and others work in Tallinn.
It is worth mentioning that these six people later became the founders of Skype.
Everyday.com ultimately failed.
Two employees, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, left the company and began to think about new ways out.
While Napster in the United States was under siege by the music and film industries, the two men wanted to do the same thing, but they hoped to cooperate with the entertainment industry.
They went to Tallinn and found the Jaan Tallinn technical trio.
Then Kaaza was born.
Kaaza is a peer-to-peer file sharing software that eliminates the need for an intermediary server, thus solving the problems of Napster.
It quickly became the most downloaded software on the Internet.
But on the commercial side, Zennström and Friis failed to reach agreements with American film and music companies.
Kaaza was sued for encouraging piracy and spreading pornography, and the startup team became the target of American lawyers.
This resulted in everyone on the team having to constantly dodge court summonses for a long time afterwards, even after they sold Kaaza.
For example, one time, when Zennström went to the theater to watch a play, a stranger handed his wife a bouquet of flowers and then took out a subpoena...
Zennstrm immediately got up and ran.
Another time, he was chased on a motorcycle in London, but again he escaped.
When Zennström went to Tallinn to meet with the team, he was nervous.
Sometimes when strangers came in, he would hide under the table.
In their previous lives, Zennstrm and Friis did not go to America for many years for fear of being arrested.
In the end, they paid $100 million in compensation to the American music and film industries to get rid of the lawsuit.
But that was after they sold Skype for a whopping price and became super-rich.
However, for Barron, this matter does not need to be so troublesome. After all, the Kaaza software has been sold. With his connections in the United States, solving this problem is not only a piece of cake, but also does not cost that much money.
The reason why Baron went to such great lengths to acquire so many shares of Skype was because he knew that two years later, eBay would acquire the company for a sky-high price of $2.6 billion.
And this is not the end, because after eBay acquired Skype, the integration with it was not very good. In 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype again for a sky-high price of US$8.5 billion.
After DS Industrial Investment Company acquired Skype for 10 million pounds, the company will set up a branch in King Cavendish Building in London in addition to Estonia, becoming a neighbor of Woaw.
And Skype's entrepreneurial team will still have the main rights to the company's subsequent operations.
In addition, the ability to cooperate with O2 Telecom is also the main reason why the Skype team is willing to accept DS Capital's investment.
Many subsequent articles introducing Skype mentioned that this company, which provided Internet phone service, had been suppressed by many telecommunications companies because Internet phone service infringed upon the interests of the telecommunications companies.
In fact, overall, the growth in Internet phone users will indeed reduce some of the telecom companies' revenue.
However, this part of the business is mainly concentrated in international communications. After all, before smartphones, the reason why Skype users used this software and made calls while sitting in front of their computers was mainly because this method could save expensive international call charges.
The impact on mobile communications is not that great.
And contrary to many people's inherent impression, in fact, after this, many telecom companies even took the initiative to launch their own Internet telephone services in order to promote their broadband business.
This year, AT&T, Time Warner and other companies will launch their Internet phone services, and BT will also launch similar services.
O2 Telecom already has mobile communications and broadband businesses, so its cooperation with Skype will not affect its own revenue but will expand its user base.
And as for the subsequent development of Skype, in terms of technology, this company does provide a better user experience than the Internet telephone services launched by those telecommunications companies.