Sten Tamkivi, the former long-time executive of Skype in Estonia, has been hired by US ventural capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, writes Äripäev.
“Although I am still very patriotic towards Estonia and Europe, I and my family are temporarily moving to Palo Alto,” Tamkivi wrote in his blog.
He added that he will be working as an EIR or so-called entrepreneur in residence in the firm. Essentially, it’s a temporary job that businessmen often use when they prepare for next steps in their career. EIRs typically earn about 180,000 USD (over 100,000 euros) a year in venture capital firms.
Tamkivi was head of Skype in Estonia in 2005-2012. Last spring he took a sabbatical to undergo a training course in Stanford University. Tamkivi says that he continues to advise seed companies and has invested up to 100,000 US dollars in two seed companies.
Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital company founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company has invested in Skype, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. According to Wikipedia, it has investments in 156 companies.
42-year-old Marc Andreessen is known mainly as the founder of the early web browers Mosaic and Netscape. Forbes estimated his assets at 600 million US dollars.
Toomas Hõbemägi
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