Ran, skippered by Niklas Zennstrom and one of the pre-race favorites for line honors, had yet to finish.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Startup FreedomPop, which is backed by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, DCM and Mangrove Capital, provides cheaper Internet access and the ability for people to share access with others on its network.

FORBES: FreedomPop Preps Open Wi-Fi, Launches Free Home Internet Challenging ISPs

The deal shows how far Skype has come since it was launched in 2003 by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, two men who had created a file-sharing technology called Kazaa that became widely associated with music piracy.

WSJ: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Skype for Nearly $8 Billion

Last December ten times as many came and on the stage were plenty of Europeans, including Marten Mickos of MySQL, a maker of databases now owned by Oracle, a software giant, Marc Simoncini, founder of meetic.com, Europe's largest dating site, and Niklas Zennstrom, who started Skype.

ECONOMIST: Europe's tech entrepreneurs

According to the Financial Times report, Janus Friis and our man Niklas Zennstrom -- whom you may know from a little company called Skype -- are supposedly developing a peer-to-peer IPTV service with the intention of distributing video online the same way Skype and its P2P approach distributed VoIP calling online.

ENGADGET: Skype founders to launch P2P IPTV for millions of people?