Niklas Zennstrom, the founder of Skype who sold that business to eBay in 2005, is now turning his talents to venture capital funding of Chinese start-ups, with the goal of taking them all the way to the international markets. His new venture fund, called Atomico, was started with about $54 million from his own pocket, and so far has mainly invested in European and American tech start-ups.

After a recent trip to China for Chinese business, he and his partner decided to raise a new fund worth $165 million, mostly from European institutions, to invest in Asia. Zennstrom has had private meetings with many of the Chinese Internet titans, which have led him to the conclusion that the Chinese Internet market has very different rules. For instance, you cannot rely on IP protection to defend against competitors. Many of the major players are local companies like Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba, which have succeeded where Yahoo, eBay and Amazon have tried and failed.