Want some of that Skype cash? Call Atomico

An interesting tidbit from the very bottom of the blog post that Skype co-founder Janus Friis wrote about taking the early (and much smaller than anticipated) earnout from eBay on the Skype deal: Friis says that this will allow his friend Niklas Zennstrom and he more time to make venture investments through a “risk capital group” known as Atomico. Om Malik mentions this as well, but the Friis post was the first I’d heard of the company.

The website says that Atomico was founded by Zennstrom, Friis and their friends Mattias Ljungman and Geoffrey Prentice. Its investments so far include Joost, Last.fm — which was bought by CBS earlier this year for about $380-million — as well as FON, Wunderloop, Jott.com, Xobni and Technorati (I wonder how that last investment is panning out. Oh well; easy come, easy go). Atomico is also an investor in DECA, a “digital entertainment studio” founded by a couple of guys from Sony Pictures.