Skype co-founder Geoff Prentice turns to funding Southeast Asian microbusinesses

Geoff Prentice bounds into the meeting room of his gleaming office on the 28th floor of a central Hong Kong skyscraper full of energy and dressed in a hoodie.

Almost two decades ago in 2002, Prentice co-founded Skype, arguably still the world’s best-known online phone service, and served as its chief strategy officer overseeing its expansion into Latin America and Asia.

Throughout the meeting, he references friends at tech giants like Google and Facebook, showing an inner familiarity with Silicon Valley but without a hint of pretentiousness.

Now aged 44, he lives with his wife and two children in Hong Kong, as co-founder of financial solutions tech start-up Oriente Investment Holdings: his third venture.

Originally from Detroit in the Midwest US state of Michigan, Prentice first came to Asia in the early days of Skype to find local partners who could help expand the business globally, with the aspiration of taking on the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo.

“Asia really exploded for us, around 2006,” he said. By “us” he refers to fellow Skype entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who had previously founded downloading app Kazaa.