What I’ve Learned, By Skype’s Niklas Zennstrom
2010-11-08 14:18阅读：
Not bad for a 44-year-old Swedish-born Londoner listed in the
latest Sunday Times Rich List as worth a mere £320 million.
Not only did Niklas Zennstrom co-found and run Skype, the
London-based internet-phone start-up which eBay bought in 2005 for
$3.1 billion — a venture more than two dozen venture capitalists
turned down flat. He also, with business partner Janus Friis,
created the game-changing peer-to-peer software Kazaa, launched the
online video-sharing service Joost, and now runs a Mayfair-based
investment firm called Atomico which recently raised $165
million.
What, then, can the rest of us learn from Zennstrom?
1. “It’s hard work. When a business becomes successful
seemingly overnight, no one knows about all the months and years
you’ve invested, all the projects you’ve tried before that didn’t
work.”
2. “You shouldn’t be afraid of failure — when something
fails, you think, ‘What did I learn from that experience, I can do
better next time.’
Then kill that project and move on to the next. Don’t get
disappointed.”
3. “Often you’re the only one who believes in what you’re
doing. Everyone around you will say, ‘Why not give up? Don’t
you see it won’t work?’ You then have to find out, are they right
or am I right? It took a year to raise money for Skype: we went to
26 different venture capitalists, asking for 1.5 million euros and
prepared to give away a third of the company. But no one wanted to
invest.”
4. “Surround yourself with smart, dedicated people — to
build something isn’t a one-man show. It’s more important to have
smart people who really believe in what you’re doing than really
experienced people who may not share your dream.”
5. “Try to prove there are people actually interested in your
product before you spend money building a business. Test it on
your mother, sister, friends — I tried Skype on them very early on.
Though you never know with the ‘mum test’ if they’re saying good
things because they just want to be nice.”
6. “Think globally. If you don’t think big, it’s unlikely
you’ll become big. We made sure from day one that Skype was an
international business — we were incorporated in Luxembourg, we had
software developers in Estonia, we moved to London. The internet
has no country boundaries.”
7. “If you want to be an entrepreneur, it’s not a job, it’s a
lifestyle. It defines you. Forget about vacations, about going
home at 6pm — last thing at night you’ll send emails, first thing
in the morning you’ll read emails, and you’ll wake up in the middle
of the night. But it’s hugely rewarding as you’re fulfilling
something for yourself.”
8. “If you’re married, your spouse needs to be into it. My
wife’s salary could support us while we were founding both Kazaa
and Skype. With children it becomes harder.”
9. “Money, for me, was one motivation — but so was
the drive to change something, to make something happen. And to
prove to the world you can do something real. If you’re only driven
by making money, you’re not going to be as likely to make
it.”
10. “None of my family were entrepreneurs — my
parents were teachers. But I thought early on, in school in Sweden,
that one day I wanted my own company as that was the way to make
real money. I wanted to prove to others and myself that I could
make it big.”
11. “Don’t give up if you meet some resistance. I didn’t
need to raise this fund — but we continued right through the
[financial] storm and raised $165 million. So don’t run for
cover.”
12. “Once you’re successful, people listen to you more. You
get much taken more seriously. And people expect that the next
thing you do will be instantaneously successful — which makes
everything much more difficult. Just because you had one success,
doesn’t mean you’ll have another.”
13. “I’m doing a lot of philanthropy. I don’t feel any
obligation to do so, but I’m passionate about the environment and
climate change. It’s very rewarding.”
14. “With success you have the ability to inspire people. I
feel a public figure to some extent, that comes with the job. I’m
comfortable with that.”
15. “The UK is best country in Europe when it comes to setting
up companies. But it’s no no longer as attractive for
entrepreneurs to move here, and David Cameron should reset the
conditions to those I found when I moved here: tax shouldn’t be as
high for stock options, and there should be taper relief so that if
you invest all your savings to build something, you don’t get taxed
away.”
16. “Of course there’s envy, but you have to manage it. I
don’t see that as a big problem.”
(written by David Rowan)
