We thought it would be interesting to re-post here some thoughts from the Estonian media about last week's news, which was a significant event for the whole country. Here is a great column from Allan Martinson, a well-known pan-Baltic IT leader, that neatly summarices the thoughts and aspirations of much of the local IT industry and people.

Original column published on Sep 14 in [Äripäev](http://www.aripaev.ee), Estonian business daily. Translated and re-published on share.skype.com with kind permission from the author. See footnotes for details about the local context.

### Skype More Important Than Hansabank¹

Allan Martinson, member of the board, AS Microlink²
Sep. 14, 2005

The acquisition of Skype Technologies SA by eBay for about $4.1bn may be more significant to the Estonian economy than Swedbank’s recent takeover of Hansabank, valued at $5.6bn at the time of the acquisition. This is indeed the case, even though more than half of Estonia’s population had never even heard of Skype before the deal was announced.

During the final stage of the Hansabank takeover, its Estonian shareholders received some $400m in new money. Skype employees have stock options. For a similar sum to land in Estonia through the sale of Skype, Estonians need to own 10 percent of the company, which is unlikely. But if Estonians owned just two percent of Skype, it would be worth $78.5m, the largest deal in the country’s IT industry.

I’ll skip the issue of whether eBay paid too much or whether it was the best suitor for Skype. A price tag was attached to Skype, this is objective and final. The founders struck a brilliant deal. The venture capitalists who financed Skype, including Steve Jurvetson [who was born to Estonian emigres], saw a fantastic return on their investment in just two years, enough to secure a place in venture-capital textbooks. Jurvetson’s previous feat, the sale of Hotmail to Microsoft, was worth “just” $400m.

Skype has boosted Estonia’s reputation more than any other company or person from this country. When you type “Estonia” and “Skype” into Google, you get 326,000 hits. Combining Estonia with former president Lennart Meri³ gets 79,000, Hansabank 27,000, rally driver Markko Märtin 17,000, soccer goalie Mart Poom 11,000, supermodel Carmen Kass 1,000, and flat tax just 648 search results.⁴

No other company worth $4bn holds its regular board meetings in Tallinn. Except for Hansabank, but this may change next spring. Not a single globally-known venture capitalist besides Jurvetson publishes a [blog](http://jurvetson.blogspot.com/) where he calls Estonia his home and lists Estonia, nanotechnology and biotechnology as his interests.

Two years after it was launched, Skype’s turnover is some $70m and the company has shaved up to 30 times as much off the earnings of traditional telcos. No wonder, then, that when FCC Chairman Michael Powell had downloaded Skype, he said the world would no longer be the same.

Skype has about 200 employees, with 150 in Estonia. This year’s turnover stands at $400,000 and market value at $2m. Per employee. By this token, one Skype employee is worth more than the [Viisnurk](http://www.viisnurk.ee/) wood-processing company and 1.5 employees equal the entire value of the [Kalev](http://www.kalev.ee) candy factory.

It is hard to escape the sad question why most of this will line the pockets of Zennström, a Swede, and Friis, a Dane. And why Skype can’t be fully owned by Estonian boys. But we cannot ignore the fact that these Scandinavians came to the Estonian boys -- not the other way around -- and let them build the Everyday.com web portal, then KaZaa and finally Skype. We may have the best IT gurus on Baltic shores, but it was the Vikings who had the initial idea and the necessary connections.

We cannot complain about this to Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, Jaan Tallinn and Toivo Annus⁵, because 15 years after the fall of communism, participating in Skype’s success is an unqualified mega-achievement.

So, why is the sale of Skype more important to Estonians than the sale of Hansabank? Because we have tasted something pretty sweet now. We have over a hundred men and women who saw the making of Skype and know how it was done. We now have hundreds of young people who are saying to themselves: If Skype could, then I can, too. They now have the skills, the confidence and the energy.

Six years ago, then-president Lennart Meri urged us to search for the Estonian Nokia.⁶ Gentlemen, we’re beginning to get there.