This document summarizes Eileen Burbidge's experience as an early employee at Skype. It discusses how she was initially skeptical of the product and company but was intrigued by the founders' previous success with KaZaA. It notes that the founders worked extremely hard and were laser-focused on their vision. The document also provides advice from the Skype founders, such as working passionately, protecting the company from dilution, and not being afraid to take risks on new ideas and technologies.

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