Fortune Technology Editor Daniel Roth has really captured the essence of SKYPE in a recent article that ran late in January. While you may need to register or be a Fortune subscriber, the general thought I have is that there is much more to SKYPE than a free voice chat coming. What we don’t know about is what the VC’s are investing in, and why many more want to get in line.
Here’s a link to where the article is blogged in case you are phobic about registering where it has been mentioned also.
I am sure that the VCs want in on Skype because their model of giving away a free service, to an already gigantic base of existing clients, is 100% a better business model than that of Vonage or Packet8 who actually have to spend millions on marketing to get customers (still trying to figure out if Packet8 even spends any money whatseover on marketing or if they even care to sell their product en masse). When Skype announces that they plan to offer a premium service similar to what Packet8 and Vonage have, Skype will already have millions on existing customers from the Skype/KaZaa network. The VCs in my opinion are betting that Skype will win big with its already big customer database.