Former Skype CEO Tiit Paananen attended 144th Tsinghua Global Vision Lecture

(By Meng Dongxue)

Mr. Tiit Paananen, former CEO of Skype Estonia, attended the 144th lecture of the Tsinghua Global Vision Lectures on October 31. In this lecture entitled “Story of Skype and a career in European IT business”, Mr. Paananen shared with Tsinghua students the ten years’ development of Skype and his professional experiences in Europe.

In the lecture, Mr. Paananen firstly introduced how Skype had grew from an unprecedented but immature instant massage tool to a well-organized company with 2000 staff and 58 million online users at peak time.

Skype was purchased twice, by eBay in 2005 and Microsoft in 2011 respectively, and went through five CEO changes along the years. According to Mr. Paananen, these are “dangerous moments”, but Skype managed to stay alive after all the purchases and changes. “Our users forgave us because we can satisfy their need, which is to communicate”, he said.

In the second part of the lecture, Mr. Paananen introduced to Tsinghua students the European Union’s IT industry, particularly IT educations and start-up businesses in Estonia.