Travel of Skype tiny Estonian startup to Microsoft $ 8.5 billion purchase

Tallinn, Estonia - it is in a bleak Soviet complex on the outskirts of Tallinn, in Estonia, a quiet revolution of the high-rolling technology. In the research park where the USSR secretly assembled his first computer and designed its first space mission, a group of young Estonian computer enthusiasts launched Skype and marked the beginning of a communications revolution.

Eight years later, Microsoft is set to pay $ 8.5 billion for the Internet telephone company, which has about 400 million users around the world, in its largest acquisition in the history. Looking back on the rapid rise of Skype, Jann Tallinn, one of its founders, credits to a spirit of entrepreneurship that filled with Estonia days after the Soviet collapse, giving rise to a spirited community of computer developers who, in some caseshave contributed to write new laws on the technology of the country.

"Because we started again, we have new laws, new leaders and new technology," explains Mr. Tallinn in Skype interview at his home in Tallinn. "The big winners were the creation of enterprises."

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Of course, there was much uncertainty in the early days of the independence of the Estonia of the Russia. Nothing in the crime, there was a black market, but there were also unbridled creativity. "It was the wild, wild west," remembers Tallinn, which also contributed to the development of Grokster, online music site that began as a peer-to-peer file sharing application.

"If you start a new country in the 1990s, you have the advantage of the drafting of new laws in the knowledge that the Internet is there," explains Tallinn.

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Skype put the Estonia on the map. In the country, his success began to influence other technology entrepreneurs. "" If you were an entrepreneur who wanted things crazy and people say, 'come, it is not possible' - well, you it could not say more, "said Tallinn."

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When eBay has paid about $ in 2005 for Skype 2.6 billion, about $ 150 million has remained in Estonia. Most visits investment Ambient Sound (ASI), an investment firm owned by the engineers of Skype, including Tallinn. ASI has provided approximately $ 25 million to finance 30 technology or business on the Web, many in Estonia.

Park former Soviet Cyber science where Skype has made its debut today houses Estonia hub creative IT Rebaptisé Tehnopol Research Park, it houses Business Tip like Modestat, which develops communications technology to make it possible to introduce broadband high speed ultra on the jets and the high speed train.

Estonia is not quite Silicon Valley. But many see here its small size and the spirit of innovation the greater incentive for thinking big.