slides for #idealab12: my skype story and lessons learned

1. Eileen Burbidge (@eileentso)

3. Taken: July 20, 2004 (Tallinn Estonia)
source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/43922369
Howard Hartenbaum
Tim Draper
Steve Jurvetson MarkTlucz
Taavet Hinrikus
MikeVolpi
Danny Rimer
Niklas Zennstrom
JaanTallinn
Janus Friis
Ahti Heinla
ToivoAnnus
Priit Kaselu
Kaido Karner

4.  Had never heard of the company
 Net2Phone,VoIP available (MSN,AIM, etc)
 Personally “meh” about the product/USP
 I avoid talking on the phone
 Distributed team (remote dev)
 Founders didn’t look me in the eyes
 No real office
 Last-round interview at the pub
 No employment contract (no senior title)

5.  KaZaA founders
 “Something” there
 Skeleton crew
 Mystique
 Cost of living covered
 KaZaA founders
 KaZaA founders
 KaZaA founders
 KaZaA founders

6.  Shit smart (wit+common sense)
 Insecure; worked to impress
 Man-crushing on everyone
 Working hard, playing hard
 ESOL precise (no bullshit)
 Asked questions all the time
 Mutually respectful
 Got shit done

8.  Laser-sharp vision
 Intelligent + insightful
 Worked all the time
 Trusted his developers
 Greedy
 Conflict-averse
 Passive aggressive
 Greedy

9.  Laser-sharp tactics
 Crazy smart
 Worked 24/7
 Hired the best
 Slave-driver
 Painfully direct
 Aggressive aggressive

10.  Work your ass off (quality with quantity)
 Always get something out of it
 Make the choices that make you nervous
 You never know what will be the next big
thing (Skype,Twitter, Rovio (Angry Birds),
OMGPop (Draw Something), Instagram

11.  be passionate about your market, users,
product
 be the co-/founder, CEO, lead
 protect from dilution at all costs
 only raise from big-brandVCs
 …but it helps!

12. "What Skype is doing is like a toy,"
says Hossein Eslambolchi, AT&T's
chief technology officer and
president of AT&T Labs. "They will
realize they can't scale it, they don't
have a brand like the AT&T brand,
and they don't have the local
footprint, which we have. It's going
to be very hard to compete with
someone like AT&T."
Fortune Magazine, Feb 09, 2004

13.  You have nothing to lose
 You can always get a job at Siemens or Google
 Go work with amazing people (weird is good)
 Find complementary sets of individuals/skills
 Learn from the process; make shit up
 If decisions aren’t scary, it’s too easy
 Be paranoid about being found out

14. “The Internet isn’t going to work in Europe.”
(1996)
Robert Dighero
“Why would I useTwitter?” (2007)
“Microsoft Excel and business models are a
sub-genre of science fiction.” (on-going)
Stefan Glänzer