You’ve probably heard by now that eBay unloaded Skype today to a consortium led by Silver Lake Partners and a bunch of other people including Marc Andreesen for mumblety-billion dollars.
Dan Hoffman, CEO of hosted VoIP provider M5 Networks, very intelligently points out that Silver Lake is also invested in Avaya (telecom equipment), and IPC (trading systems). Think those could be strategic partners for Skype? Me too.
I’d add to that roster NXP (chips for set-top boxes and mobile phones), Avago (chips for wired infrastructure and computer peripherals), NetScout network management, and Sabre Holdings (Travelocity). I can think of one or two pieces of synergy there, too.
I suspect Silver Lake’s board meetings are going to be very interesting places for the next five years.
September 1, 2009