Sten Tamkivi, Head of Skype – pioneer of the upcoming wave of entrepreneurs coming from Central & Eastern Europe
Sten Tamkivi is the 28 year old Head of Worldwide Operations of Skype, the Luxemburg-born VoIP telco industry disruptive start-up company. Sten, who is Estonian, revealed in the British magazine The Economist (Face Value, August 19th 2006) that he has hardly known socialist times. He was 10 when the Berlin Wall collapsed, and therefore spent most of his “conscious” life in a fast-growing and opening environment.
Sten is a born software programmer and entrepreneur (he created his first software company at the age of 18), and strongly believes in the Skype culture, that should be kept intact despite eBay’s natural influence.
More important, this story raises two challenges:
1) with the recent adhesion of 11 Centrale & Eastern European countries to the EU, we may assume that Sten Tamkivi is pioneering a wave of young global leaders coming from this fast-growing part of the Eurasian continent. The challenge is therefore to make sure the appropriate “links” with the outside world are put in place (academic exchange, territory promotion agencies, press coverage, English schools, etc.). Sten has been advocating for Estonian students to be exposed to computer science more and more. By the way, I recently had a chat with a friend and real estate entrepreneur in Czech Republic, Cyril Koskas, who told me that Estonia was getting hot on technology-related issues.
2) Europe ought to ensure its most promising start-ups remaing..European. Skype was born in Luxembourg. Its founders had previously created the P-to-P network Kazaa and had worked for Tele2, a low-cost and marketing aggressive telecommunication provider. How the hell could investors have found better profiles to start Skype? It’s a shame that so few European Venture Capitalist took the time to call Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (from Sweden and Denmark, respectively, the founders of Skype) after receiving Skype’s business plan. Today Skype belongs to eBay, a major e-Commerce player and American company. Examples of European technology falling in hands of more dynamic and risk-friendly American corporations are countless. And just in case the European Union has ambitions, girlish (no offence) European mentalities have to change. Quickly.
All in all, congrats M. Tamkivi. For Skype, a great service, and for hitting the “Face Value” column at the age of 28. This is another problem with the EU: unless you have one leg in the crave and white hair, people do not listen to you. People like you are changing the way things work, and I thank you for that.
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Business strategy, Economics, Education, Entrepreneurship, Europe, Globalization, Organization, Silicon Valley, Software, Telecommunications, USA, Venture Capital, VoIP, eBay, innovation, marketing, operations
[...] I waited up to now for the US to be awake, or this would’ve been unfair. Coming back from Apple Expo or should I say iPod Expo. Paradoxically enough, I had a nice chat at the Microsoft booth…There you go with this week-end “Guess who I am?” game, a bit trickier than the two last editions: “I’m from Eastern Europe, and in my late 20s. Despite my young age, I’m the Head of Operations of a Europe-born start-up company that has revolutionized my industry so much that we’ve been bought out by a California-based big player late last year. We’ve been so disruptive, allowing for business opportunities in devices but smashing established business models, that multinationals are shaking when hearing the name of my 11-million-customer-strong company (I’m no owner or founder though). I started my career as a programmer, dropping corporate communication studies after one year at University because I had founded my own time-demanding software business. Jeremy has written some posts about my company, and I was granted a business portrait in the British newspaper The Economist in the August 19th 2006 issue. Who am I?” Update 6:56pm: congratulations to Ole Begemann for recognizing Sten Tamkivi behind the preceding description. Ole is German currently travelling throughout South America. He takes wonderful pictures and I recommend that you take a look at the website he devised himself clicking on this link. [...]