Deutsche Welle's Michael Altenhenne interviewed Skype's Sten Tamkivi (with remarks by Jean-Jacques Sahel) for a "Made In Germany" television news segment. Posted 2 September 2009, it takes the theme of Skype against big mobile phone companies like Deutsche Telekom.
While the positions are old news by now, the Skype Tallinn headquarters tour is fairly unique. Sten shows Skype's anechoic chamber and acoustic test dummy, the silver globe chandelier meeting room, the autobot racetrack, a huge logo-engraved table, expansive open-plan offices, and video conference rooms. I took a few dozen frame grabs from the video if you care to put names to faces.
This follows-through on Skype's pledge to make superwideband audio cheap and ubiquitous.
On the business side, the SILK codec eliminates one of Skype's three outside software dependencies: audio codecs from Global IP Solutions (GIPS). The two remaining are Skype's high quality video codec, from On2, and Skype's peer-to-peer directory, the Global Index from Joltid. Skype's commitment to free themselves from dependencies should comfort investors and others worried about the Joltid/Joost litigation.
Here's Jonathan Christensen speaking about the evolution of codecs (the software that turns your voice into bits and back) at the March 2009 Emerging Communications conference (slides, podcast).
Thomas Howe left his CEO role at Jaduka a few weeks ago, leaving the VoIP platform company in the capable hands of COO Jack Rynes. Thomas is back filling demand for Communications Enhanced Business Processes (CEBP) from his Cape Cod office.
"Skype Labs is a new R&D center located in the Bay Area focused on next generation technologies for Skype which will be applicable over the next one to five years. The initial areas of work will include security, signaling and call control for audio, video and presence, p2p and collaboration."
No specifics on where in the nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Area the office is based. Skype has a few technical staff working in San Jose at the Skype Inn office and in San Francisco.
The office will report to Daniel Berg, Skype's CTO. It will be independent of Skype's other development centers in Tallinn, Tartu, Stockholm, and Prague.
Skype's outside dependence on the Joltid p2p engine and Google/On2's video codec may benefit from the lab. The first three of the four research areas (1. Security. 2. Signaling and call control, the layer above p2p. 3. peer-to-peer.) focus on Skype's network fabric and infrastructure. Collaboration research should support new features and increase Skype's reach into new market segments.
Skype is mum on current lab members, the lab director, specific projects, and how much the existing Skype product council will influence project selection. By my estimate, the Bay Area lab has an annual budget around US$2 million.
Skype filed an update to a August 10, 2009 filing about employee stock purchase and awards with the U.S. SEC (pdf file).
"Q32. If I am a Skype employee, can I still participate in the eBay Stock Option Exchange Program? What will happen to my eligible options and new RSUs if the sale of Skype is completed?
A32. Our agreement to sell Skype raises important matters for you to consider in making a decision whether or not to participate in eBay’s Stock Option Exchange Program. Here are some things you should consider in evaluating whether or not to participate in the Stock Option Exchange Program.
As we have announced, we expect that the sale of Skype will close during the fourth quarter of 2009. If the sale of Skype is completed, as of the closing date of the sale you will no longer be an employee of eBay or one of its majority-owned subsidiaries. If you participate in the Stock Option Exchange Program and exchange your eligible options for new RSUs, you must be an employee of eBay or one of its majority-owned subsidiaries on the vesting date of the RSUs in order for the RSUs to vest. If your RSUs do not vest, you will not receive shares of eBay common stock under your new RSUs. The earliest vesting date for any new RSUs received in the Stock Option Exchange Program will be the first anniversary of the completion date (i.e., in September 2010).
As a Skype employee, if you decide not to exchange eligible options through the Stock Option Exchange Program, you generally will have three months or 90 days from the completion of the sale of Skype to exercise any vested options. Your vested options will only have value if eBay’s stock price is higher than the exercise price during the period in which you are eligible to exercise your vested options. Unvested options will expire upon completion of the sale.
Only you can decide whether or not to participate in the Stock Option Exchange Program.”
My advice: 1. Get a chartered accountant or an employment lawyer to review your situation this month. 2. Skype/eBay HR will brief you; don't skip the sessions. 3. Draw a timeline showing all the dates and decision points. 4. Test your plan against the scenario where you leave the company. 5. Get your paperwork in early.
The concept started with Skype alumnus Villu Arak (@villuarak), now CEO of Hill & Knowlton Estonia who brought the idea to Skype. The collaboration started then. Villu said "all actors, except for the evil dandruff-skiing boss, are Skype employees who volunteered to participate. The director is Andres Maimik, a young Estonian filmmaker who also does commercial work through the Kuukulgur production company."
This campaign seems focused on attracting people with Skype's personality traits. Quirky humor, curiosity, ambition, sense of self worth, a desire to have your work matter. Not to mention you're a YouTube user, you're socially active online, you're a knowledge worker. And maybe you're ready to be appreciated, to make a difference, to do something new and challenging. To be with people like you.
In other words, instead of driving traffic to the job site by keywords from skills ("Cocoa developer wanted"), Skype's recruiting from a smaller pool of people who might actually fit Skype's playful, rebellious culture. (Among other things, a culture where sharing videos is an easy, common social gesture.) This should be a much better return on everyone's time.
Putting together all those SkypeIn and SkypeOut charges from termination service providers. Turning it into a stream of wisdom for managing partnerships, allocating resources, finding opportunities, keeping Skype competitive.
Skype has more than 60 other job openings, most in Europe, none in the Americas.
So what would a good market value be? Skype are profitable to the tune of $100+ million/year. Ten times earnings seems lowball to me.
Two years from now Skype could easily have $1 billion in revenue. At current 20% profits, that's $200 million in free cash per year. 10x suggests a $2 billion value.
Unless there's a premium for growth. Skype might easily step into adjacent markets. $1 billion run rate in three years for a light version of WebEx-style conferencing. $1 billion in two years for a cloud computing platform that lets you build Skype into your web apps and enterprise systems. $1 billion in four years for Skype inside of televisions and set top boxes.
Despite eBay's protestations, there are also massive opportunities for eBay-Skype-PayPal synergy. What eBay and PayPal do for markets that bring together buyers and sellers of atoms, eBay+Skype+PayPal could do for markets of service, information, education, and entertainment, a much larger market. Sadly, every eBay alum I've talked with in the last six months says eBay execs are incapable of that much innovation, head stuck firmly inside the 1999 eCommerce box.
I'm in the New York Times coverage of Google Voice. Quoted correctly (yay!) but before my own column on the subject came out (d'oh!). Google has some truly delightful advantages in the race to become the world's largest communications company.
Foresight Institute gets a new president. Skype me (evanwolf) if you want to come to Dr. Hall's Sunday reception in Palo Alto. We'll all be talking molecular manufacturing, nanotechnology and the singularity.
Nokia shares its vision. Smartphones rising. Death of patience. Rewarding engagement. Personal expression. New learning economy. Clickable world. Personal relevance. A good summary of forces driving the interplay between mobile technology, industry dynamics, and human behavior.
Benjamin Leviton seeks VoIP help: "I have a Brekeke SIP proxy server. I am looking for someone to remote on to my desktop, log into its interface and config my carriers with the proxy server. Also check the interface of Polycom phone and make sure it is working properly with the SIP proxy server." Contact: +1-917-273-5808, ben@capitalfinanceusa.com, yahoo IM gcc644@yahoo.com, or skype:levtop.
Here's Mr. Lund speaking at Le Web 3 in Paris in December 2008. He explains how it feels to lose everything. It's part of a larger presentation on risk, entrepreneurship, the downturn, vision vs. hallucination, timing, selling, strategy, and action.
Brian is Google’s Director, Global Corporate Communications and Public Affairs. Before that, Brian directed corporate communications at VeriSign, policy communications at Network Solutions and the Internet Alliance.
Brian got his start as a legislative aide for U.S. Congressman Edward Markey, known for his support of net neutrality and other Skype-friendly policies.
Q. Hey, it's Christopher Smith here for Relevantly Speaking. We're in Berkeley at the Haas School of Business. We're at the play conference and we're talking with Julian from Skype.
You've got a really enviable position there at Skype. you're a director of strategy, which means you have the ability to see the future, move the company into particular directions. Where are you going right now?
JD. The beauty of working for Skype is the breadth of opportunities you look at is very very wide. I'll give you a few examples. Skype could get into SMBs or enterprise. Skype could move more aggressively into mobile. Skype could get into the web. So there's a flurry of opportunities. And my job is to navigate the ones we should go after first knowing we're only a 500 [person] company.
So a few things that says...
One is: mobility is a big deal for us. There's tremendous appetite from our users to use Skype on the mobile. We don't want just to take the experience on the desktop into mobile. We want to invent something that's very unique to mobile and complements the desktop really nicely.
And also we think, even if it doesn't sound super sexy, just improving the basics of the service making it into the next level is a big deal for us. The best example is video calling in high def for everyone. We think that's really exciting, for example, and we're working very hard at this.
Q. You just released a desktop device to assist in that.
JD. We work with ASUS as a partner. They built the first Skype specific video phone, for example, which allows you, for I think it's a $200 device in the US, to get very simple video calling capabilities from your home without having a computer or anything else. That's one example of things we think are pretty cool.
About Google Video
Q. Last week Google comes out with Gmail Chat and Video in there. Do you find yourself in a defensible position there? Do you think Skype already has a very significant head start?
JD. Every time Google enters a space you have to watch out. They're big and they're very good and they innovate really fast. First thing I'll say we're not very surprised, that's something we've been expecting for a while. We're surprised it took so long.
We think it's a good product, we think the quality is good, it's not great, it's good, a nice implementation.
We think it also validates our idea that video is a big deal. And it's so early that everyone who can come with us and sort of help evangelize the fact that video calling is free for everyone and that it works is good.
Of course it's going to force us to get better and better, but I wouldn't say it's going to change our course. we're going to watch them. That's a company we have a lot of respect for in general.
Search
Q. Discoverability seems to be a common theme in a lot of the conferences we've been attending, the problem of finding both people or audiences for content. How are you guys approaching that problem?
JD. That's a very big question. It totally depends on what you're looking for, if you're looking for content or people.
We spend a lot of time helping you find people. it's a big deal for us to find someone you can communicate with. And linking people is a big deal for us because we're in the communication business.
Finding content is not our business. We'll definitely leverage third parties to do it. We'll let third parties get into Skype, to allow this to happen. We have for example the ability to attach a video mood message to your profile. So we worked with partners; you can attach a video to your message and if I'm connected to you I can click on that video and watch a video clip. That's the kind of thing we're going to do but it's mostly about driving and triggering conversation.
Future?
Q. So looking around the corner what should I anticipate from Skype?
JD. Great mobile applications, across platforms. I don't want to announce anything but look around all the key platforms are coming up. We'll be on there very soon with something pretty radical I think.
Expect the video and voice quality to improve significantly. So expect very very awesome video quality very very soon. And expect a few surprises. If you're a Mac user you'll have a few surprises pretty soon.
Cute. Minoru from Novo 3D stereoscopic webcam, works with Skype. Anthropomorphism intended. They may be competing with IPEVO at the CES I-Stage in Vegas this weekend.
Deadspin's "Kendra Wilkinson Will Skype Your Brains Out" delights in a Playboy Playmate's experience that Skype video is better than phone sex. So that's what all the Skype High Quality Video fuss is about!
Different types of users gave us very different feedback. For example, in the Skype forums, where some of our most experienced users hang out, we heard a lot more negativity, in particular around screen size. However, in our surveys we saw quite the opposite. When we collated all of the feedback together, we found that just over 70% of people who tried Beta 1 prefer using it to older versions of Skype.
We’re confident that this is quite reflective of the entire Skype user base. But 70% is not a number we’re happy with because we know that many of you out there would prefer a more familiar experience, and in particular an experience that allows you to work more easily whilst Skype is running in the background.
Wednesday, October 1, the second beta release of Skype 4.0 for Windows will become available for worldwide testing. Via a mix of the Skype 4.0 for Windows Beta 1 feedback channels involving legacy users and new users, bug reporting and usability issue forums and direct surveys that resulted in over 45,000 participants' responses and feedback, Skype learned:
70% were in favor of the new "large desktop" user interface; about 30% wanted to return to the traditional compact user interface.
users were looking for improved means of organizing contacts by groups
relative to pre-Skype 4.0 beta 1 surveys, increased awareness of the multi-modal features of Skype such as IM, file transfer and SMS.
there existed problems with how IM presented itself to the new user
users were missing Instant messages and other events due to a lack of appropriate notification procedures
increased conversions rate to paid Skype subscriptions
As a result Skype 4.0 beta 2 includes:
user choice of a default "large desktop" view or a compact view
organization of contacts by categories with several default categories (the term "Groups" now refers to a multitude of users within a conversation such as in a Group Chat, Public chat or on a multi-party call)
new drop down menu to select "Categories" from the "Contacts" tab
new algorithms for message and missed call notification, with the initial notification coming via a tag on the Skype System Tray icon so as not to make the notification activity overwhelming
a new way to display a selected Contact's information when in a call or chat session
several options for resizing the user information, the video images, the chat area of a conversation, etc.
entry of PSTN phone numbers into a Contact's information on your local PC for those Contacts who have not included these phone numbers in their Skype user profile: mobile, home, office, other.
Skype for Windows Product Manager Mike Bartlett has prepared a video to demonstrate some of the new features:
And you can download Skype 4.0 for Windows Beta 2 here.
Skype 4.0 for Windows Beta 2 has the same caveat as we issued for Skype 4.0 Beta 1: this is beta software, there will be bugs and may even be usability issues. This is your opportunity to provide feedback. It is still missing some features of Skype 3.8, the last officially released version of Skype, such as Call History and creation of Public Chats. Do not use it as your primary Skype interface, especially if you depend on Skype for business or professional communications. I am still running Skype 3.8 on my laptop; I run Skype 4.0 Beta on my desktop PC.
Phil will be posting tomorrow with more details on his experience.
Check out Alec Saunders comments. And Mike Bartlett appeared as the featured guest on the October 1, 2008 SquawkBox. Click on the link to access the recording.
We asked about any upcoming Skype for Mac; the response was along the lines of (i) the Mac group is also examining the feedback from the Skype 4.0 for Windows Beta 1 for ideas to incorporate and (ii) when a new version does come along it may have some features that are not available on Skype 4.0 for Windows.
Hint: to activate the Contact Categories feature, go to Contacts | Contact Categories | See All Contact Categories.
This is the fourth in a series of posts resulting from an interview a week ago Friday with Josh Silverman, Skype's recently appointed President. In this post we talk about directions for the Skype platform and partner programs. When I first attended a Skype developer event in June 2006, there was lots of enthusiasm for the Skype partner program and for its integration into various third party applications and service offerings. Several of the feature requests, such as call transfer and access to the voice stream, that had come to the surface by the time of this event, have since been implemented. In December 2006 Skype announced the Skype Extras program for which there are over 100 offerings available, mostly for the consumer user but the list also includes about ten in the small-to-medium business space. Most importantly, partners have been asking not only for a platform roadmap but also for execution on that roadmap. Skype Extras included a publishing and transaction platform, yet to date, only PamConsult has taken full advantage of these feature for its well received (and award winning) PamFax offering. On the other hand, OnState has been able to figure out how to provide a friction-free full services program for its call center customer base. However, over the past eight months market visibility of any significance for the entire Skype partner program has just not been there. Yet we see "Skype access" continue to be built into various platforms such as Ribbit and Voxeo. Skype Certification exists for only seventeen offerings. InnerPass has received Skype Certification two weeks ago (review coming). At IT Expo last week in Los Angeles I came across several service providers and application developers who wanted to have a Skype presence in their offerings. On the hardware side there have been many innovative offerings; I have experienced many of them. As confirmed by 3 executives at last Thursday's Mobilize 08 event, the Skypephone has met with phenomenal acceptance in the nine countries serviced by 3. Yet several hardware partners have drifted away to the point where we only see limited visibility for Philips, GE and IPevo dual mode (Skype and landline) phones and a few accessory products, such as the FreeTalk Wireless Stereo Headset, from InStoreSolutions (who largely address the European market). Beyond the Skype Store availability, WalMart is carrying Skype hardware in the U.S. (and I found some at Fry's in Sunnyvale this past Saturday). Frankly, sorting out its platform strategy and partner relationships, and giving them appropriate visibility, is perhaps one of the biggest challenges that Josh and his team face in sustaining Skype's presence in the IP-based conversation space. In our interview with Josh it became quite apparent that these issues have not missed Josh's scrutiny leading up to the business reorganization we have been discussing in the various posts in this series: SJ: In your interview with Om Malik yesterday you mentioned as one of your key growth initiatives "Skype as a platform, embedding Skype as the conversation infrastructure for devices and services". Tell use more:
JS: We're incredibly lucky that almost everyone in the world wants to do something with us. That's fortunate because we need to be everywhere. For Skype to be successful and to fulfill its full potential we need to be part of every device and every communications experience. We can't do that on our own. We need a really robust platform that allows us to be part of other people's experiences or devices and allow other people to be part of us. We all recognize that we have a long way to get from where we are today to there. With the relatively small program we have and small investment we have made we have 15,000 partners who have signed up for our program today. I think that's a great indication that if we really invest behind this we can do something magical.
SJ: What would that future platform look like?
JS: What we want to do is lay out a set of principles around the platform that say:
we want people to be able to incorporate Skype into their experience.
It should be the full Skype stack of functionality
it should include all of our feature set and not just hive off one piece or two pieces.
When you use Skype you should know you're using Skype and
you should have a SkypeID which works across all of our experiences,
So somebody who wants to take Skype and build it into their experience but create a walled garden of "only within their experience" doesn't build value for the greater ecosystem. If you start with Skype on one experience and then you go to another experience with another platform partner, you still need to be able to communicate. There needs to be one SkypeID that works everywhere and then it needs to hold true to some basic sense of brand principles around what the Skype brand should be. Beyond those principles we really want to allow people to innovate and use Skype and do what they will to extend the functionality for our users.
SJ: Has the architecture for this started?
JS: Right now we have created the job of GM of Platform; I hope to very soon name a GM of Platform. That person is going to have to really work on what does the architecture need to look like to support this, what are the API's going to be - reference UI's, technical documentation - as well as evangelizing to the broader community forming some of our partnerships, so we have some work to do.
SJ: Is the job posted on your job board?
JS: Not yet, we have some candidates; but if there are folks in your community that are excited by this and we haven't already filled this in the coming days [faded away but implication was to apply].
SJ: Is there a timeline?
JS: I don't want to speculate too much. We do have a API [set] today, we do have lots of people working with the API's so we have something to build from. I'm not an expert. I wouldn't be able to lay out a timeline but we are going to get an expert who can lay out a timeline. ... As with everything at Skype, we want to be fast but also make sure we do it well, in particular with a platform. It's got to be well thought through so we support our partners really well. We know there's a big responsibility in there and we take it seriously.
SJ: Would you be looking at getting the partners involved in helping design that platform and getting some feedback on it?
JS:I think that would be essential. One of the things I'm pretty passionate about is always bringing the voice of the customer in early to anything we're trying to do and I think that, for the platform, that would be absolutely essential.
SJ: What are you looking at to address ongoing partner communications issues with respect to the partner program?
JS: I take the partner program really seriously and we're aware that we've not invested adequately behind it and want to do more. The first thing we are going to do is hire an experienced, capable leader of that organization who will pull together for me a plan for what resources do we need to invest in -- engineering, partner support, evangelism, technical documentation -- to make sure we build an organization that can support our partners robustly. What I don't want to do is over promise. Step one is, when you get somebody good in, lay out a plan and then when we're ready to announce some more forward looking things we'll do that.
Changes are not going to happen overnight when Skype is acquiring 300,000 new registrations per day and profitable. But, based on the strategy and principles outlined by Josh in this interview, going forward we should be looking to see within a three to six month timeframe:
Announcements of the appointment of two key senior executives who bring along experience in building platforms and partnerships
A platform architecture and developer roadmap
Revamped plans for Skype's hardware and software partner programs
It will also be most interesting to see what forums or other means Skype provides for input into the platform architecture and developer roadmap strategy. Execution is everything, especially at this stage of Skype's growth within the IP-based conversation space. (For background on Skype's partner program history check out: A Primer for Skype's Direction - Skype's Extras Gallery and Developer Partner Program. And for an example of what attracts developers to Skype as an ecosystem check out "On Spotlight: Don Kennedy AKA TheUberOverLord".) Next: Markets: Business and Geographical
This is the third in a series of posts resulting from an interview last Friday with Josh Silverman, Skype's recently appointed President. In this post we talk about Skype's value set, getting the business side right while benefiting from the experience and skills of the current employees and the role of product marketing. In the last post we talked about the major issues Josh has identified for addressing along with a strategy for employee empowerment to reduce the complexity of decision processes while driving towards business success. But a critical requirement for employee empowerment is the need to establish and communicate a sense of core values that flow throughout the company and make employees more comfortable in making decisions, especially with decisions that may involve some risk. As a follow-on question to our discussion of employee empowerment I asked about the need to drive a value set through the company. Josh's response:
Skype has a great set of values. Coming into the company I'm very humbled by what they've accomplished, what a great culture and values we have. I want to make sure we nourish and respect that. So some of the values I see are:
thinking disruptively and differently about problems, not just incrementally innovating
wanting to have an impact on the world
caring a lot about what we do for people and doing that globally
a big desire to win
a big desire for excellence
a passion for the customer
Those are qualities that I would hold dear and want to make sure we nourish as we grow.
We then went on to the "people" challenges of getting the business side right while building on the inherent passion of the current employees.
I think everyone at Skype would agree that we, in a very short time, in about a year, hired over 150 people into marketing, product management and [other] non-technical functions. [We] essentially evolved those functions from scratch in a year. Given the pace of change at Skype, we needed to bring a lot of that expertise into the company. Of course, the challenge is that, when you grow that fast, making sure everyone knows what their role is and how to do that well ... training ... getting a common culture ... takes a little bit of time. So what I'm focused on now is clarifying the accountability of all those business roles. By the way, to your point about 'we have a lot of passionate technical people', I couldn't agree more. Often time the best ideas come from that team. It is my belief that what the product and marketing organizations need to do is understand what problems the customer needs solved, and then to work together with engineering to think of the most creative, best way to solve that problem, hopefully better than anyone's ever thought of in the past. If you're doing an "ok" job of that, you're understanding the articulated needs of the customer - like I can't pay easily enough ... it takes too long to download ... I can't configure my devices . If you're doing a great job, you're understanding the unarticulated needs of the customer .. things like "I'd like to be able to call anyone in the world for free" ...
We then got into a short discussion about the role of the product manager as the mediator managing a balancing act between the user market and the engineering and design teams:
... It is not the job of the product manager to come up with the solution; it's the job of the product manager to quarterback the design team and the engineering team and the marketing group together to come up with the world's best solution. I think engineering and design play huge roles in that process.
This is the second in a series of posts resulting from in interview last Friday with Josh Silverman, Skype's recently appointed President. In this post we talk about the key issues Josh found necessary to address and establishing a framework for employee motivation and empowerment. Over the past couple of years I have written many posts lauding Skype, largely for its conversation infrastructure technology; I have also, from time-to-time written posts about the need for Skype to address the business infrastructure surrounding the deployment and use of the technology. With 300,000 new registrations daily, 30 to 50 million active users within a given day, and demand in the small-to-medium business market driven by its inherent cost advantages, Skype needs to right the ship when it comes to all aspects of turning Skype into a business that delivers customer satisfaction while sustaining profitable growth.. Some have thought that Phil and I are Skype Cheerleaders and, in their simplistic world, want instant solutions to problems. Doesn't happen in a business that has become as large as Skype. To take maximum advantage of Skype's technology, Skype needs leadership at the top that delivers a sense of mission, a set of inherent values and and a management structure suitable to a business that has grown as large and as rapidly as Skype. Business processes need to become readily scalable. Within such an environment, the Skype team needs to execute; employees need to know their responsibilities, to be held accountable for them, and, most importantly, to be empowered to act in their area of responsibility. When we asked Josh Silverman, who took over as Skype's President five months ago, as our first question, :"What has changed at Skype in the past year (since Niklas' departure)?" he replied that he could only speak for the past five months. He then confirmed my suspicion: he has used this time to delve into all aspects of Skype - involving internal team and individual employee meetings, learning more about customers and their needs, examining market differences worldwide, reviewing both current and archived Skype forums and websites and even surveying media, all as input to determine what management structure and what cultural environment were needed to right the ship. What follows is a high level view of his action plan. (Note: where appropriate he has already discussed these moves with the Skype team, so there are no surprises here for them.)
Define a mission statement
Establish a set of values
Restructure for business success
Improve the user experience
Evolve the business model
Develop a technology roadmap.
Establish a framework for effective customer and partner relationships
Build market awareness
In building out on his response, Josh identified as issues to be addressed:
clarify Skype's mission and strategy going forward
be clear about what Skype is trying to accomplish
be clear about decision making
maintain an ongoing sense of momentum around building great products
the Skype 4.0 beta program
understand their customers and bring their voice into the company.
a big issue: organize the company structure to clarify roles and accountability for people
establishing employee accountability: define who owns what internally
add people skills and resources consistent yet scalable with the level of customer growth
grow internal talent while adding experienced management leadership
bet on the people who brought Skype to this point
bring in experienced outside help to scale
On the core subject of building employee responsibility and accountability Josh responded:
We need to clarify accountability and roles for employees ... I'm a big believer that, if you take a small cross-functional team, give them a mission, a lot of room to innovate, they're going to come out with fantastic products. So we're moving our organization more in that direction. Skype, I don't think is different [from] a lot of hypergrowth companies, in that the business grows so fast that it is very hard for the organizational structure to keep up. What ends up happening is people just take on extra responsibility here and there as the needs come up. And pretty soon you find yourself in a place where it's really not clear who owns "this" ... there are some really important things that nobody owns and some things that two or three people all think they own it. So we need to step back and say, ok, lets' take a fresh look at this and make sure everyone is really clear about who owns what, what are you accountable for, and what resources do we have and then let them go forth and empower them. So that's what we're doing right now and I think in the coming months we'll be in a much better place for everyone. ... I've been very public with my team about it and they're all very supportive .... and they're quite excited for us to do that.
On building the right mix of people, skills, capabilities to execute:
I'm a big believer that, when a company is growing as fast as Skype, just keeping up with the scale and evolution of the company is a major promotion every year. So what we want to do is grow a lot of our internal talent and take bets. I'm also a big believer in taking bets on a lot of the people who have been with you from the beginning, who understand the business and culture. But I also believe in bringing experience from the outside ... who have seen this before and had to scale this way before and can help us to figure out how, as we inevitably get a little bigger, to stay agile and, in fact, I think we can get even more agile as we get bigger, if we're smart about it.
On getting employee empowerment right:
Everybody needs to know what their accountability is. I'm a believer that empowerment doesn't mean everyone can do anything ... because then everyone starts overlapping and, actually, you end up with a big mess. What empowerment means is everyone is really clear about what the company is trying to accomplish, everyone is really clear about what they're accountable for and, within that accountability, they have the scope to make all decisions. It doesn't mean they can make any decisions they want but they're really clear about where their decision making begins and ends. If you do that everybody feels empowered and we grow much faster. By the way I also believe that the best decisions you make are almost always made at the level of the working team. So I aspire to a world where very few decisions flow up to the executive ranks other than "what are we trying to solve for?" and "how much resource are we investing in any given initiative?" and "do we have the right talent?".
Cute
![skypeover. =]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3078/2912319522_7de4dd63ce.jpg?v=0)
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