The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Michelangelo Volpi was voted off the board of directors at Joost yesterday. This creates a potential problem. About a week ago, it came up that the Skype acquisition could be screwed due to a pending lawsuit from the founders. And those founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, are the heads of Joost. Everyone thought Volip was going to be the guy to assure that the lawsuit didn’t invalidate a $2 billion sale, but now it looks like he’s not the ace in the hole everyone thought he was.
But we’ve got to be clear on something: no $2 billion deal would EVER go down on the basis of some people liking some guy. When all those VCs and rich guys got together to buy Skype, before they talked it over with eBay, they talked it over with Zennstrom and Friis. And you know what they did? They worked out a contract that says “the pending lawsuit will not shut down Skype.” Is there a chance that this was not worked out ahead of time? I guess, but that would make the Skype buyers some of the stupidest people out there. So far as I know, none of these people are stupid.
