Jüri Kaljundi has a great post on what the Skype deal means to Estonia.
While I join everyone in congratulating Skype (Jeff has posted some good comments and links to other blogs on this) and all the great people there, there are many reasons why the Skype deal is also of great importance to Estonia and Estonians. It should be a big push to start new successful tech startups and for enterpreneurs to look more actively at international markets, something that has been very limited until now...
True, you can say Skype is not Estonian per se, having its holding company in Luxembourg (tax reasons?) and big part of management and marketing in London. Still over 80% of the employees are located in Tallinn, and all of the product management and software development as well as other technical functions are done here in Estonia. Pretty good for a country with only 1,35 million employees and a total headcount of less than 5-8 thousand IT people in the country (my very rough estimate). ...
Actually, Skype is even more of an Estonian company than most realize, as the majority of founder stock is, perhaps the best measure. Jüri suggests rightly that Skype will be the reference model for Estonian companies in how they source the best international talent and expand abroad.
I'll add this, Skype could prove to be the Nokia of Estonia. A few years from now, when deal earns itself out, Skype could diffuse a generation of tech entrepreneurs and investors. In Nokia's case, many of them started companies that were later brought back into the fold, benefiting the company and the country. A unique capability cluster is being developed here in VoIP, P2P, Security and Social Software that will give rise to new startups.
Again, the primary risk for this scenario is immigration reform and cultural tolerance. The former is policy and the latter systemic. Reflecting upon my own experience, it's not easy for the expats who do get in. Expat networks provide a kind of support group, and seeing how I'm in the business of supporting groups, I wonder if Social Software could come to aid. Would anyone see value in an expat wiki as a resource for informing and connecting?
