After two decades of connecting people across the globe, Microsoft has announced that Skype will shut down in May 2025. While this marks the end of an iconic communication tool, Skype’s legacy—particularly in Estonia, where it was born and kicked off the whole ecosystem—will endure far beyond its final call.
In 2003, a small team gathered in Tallinn, Estonia, to launch what would become a booming internet communication service. On its first day, 10,000 people downloaded it. Within months, it had a million users. This was Skype, and it would go on to fundamentally alter both global communications and Estonia’s future.
While Scandinavian entrepreneurs Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström provided the initial business vision and acted as co-founders, it was three Estonian developers—Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn—who wrote the software that made Skype possible. These schoolmates, who had been creating computer games together since the late 1980s, formed the technical foundation of what would become a global phenomenon.
The “Skype Mafia” effect
The 2005 sale to eBay for $2.6 billion and subsequent 2011 acquisition by Microsoft for $8.5 billion did more than make the founders and first employees wealthy—it created what’s affectionately known as the “Skype Mafia,” a generation of over 30 Estonian tech entrepreneurs who would go on to transform the country’s economy.
As Sten Tamkivi, who ran Skype’s Estonian office for years, explained to Estonian World: “We came to believe that being small is an advantage. It’s not about manpower, it’s about finding creative, effective and innovative solutions to a problem.” After leaving the company, he co-founded a startup called Teleport which was acquired by Topia in March 2017. Now Tamkivi is running a VC firm, Plural, which has raised several hundred million on a mission to change the world through technology.
The experience, coupled with newly acquired wealth and network, sparked a startup avalanche in Estonia. Here are some of the success stories linked to Skype:
- Taavet Hinrikus, Skype’s first employee, went on to co-found TransferWise (now Wise), a fintech company valued at over $5 billion.
- Jaan Tallinn, one of Skype’s first developers, sold his shares in 2005 and became one of the most prolific VCs, backing over 200 startups, including AI innovators like DeepMind and Anthropic.
- Veriff, an identity verification startup with global ambitions and a unicorn status, was built by a team that included several Skype alumni.
- Bolt, a global ride-hailing service challenging Uber, received early backing from Skype veterans and is now among Europe’s 10 most valuable startup companies.
- Starship Technologies, co-founded by Skype’s Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, is developing autonomous delivery robots.
“By creating, having and maintaining Skype in Tallinn, we gained a great insight on how to launch a great global product and it created a feeling that we can create big things in a small place,” explained Taavet Hinrikus.
It also boosted the speed of digitalisation. Today, Estonia is recognised as one of the world’s most advanced digital societies, with all major government services available online, widespread digital identity systems, and Europe’s most productive startup ecosystem in per capita measures. While Skype cannot claim credit for all of this, its success is largely responsible for providing the inspiration and practical expertise that helped fuel Estonia’s digital transformation.
As Skype makes its final call in early May 2025, Estonia can look back with pride at how a small team in Tallinn helped transform not just online calls but also an entire sector trajectory.
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