tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post5288919874552373224..comments2024-01-11T07:07:31.635-05:00Comments on .ee Bubble: The Murky World of Defining an Estonian CompanyDot EE Bubblehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01855670670568018877noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-13363321111973627632013-08-13T10:27:16.786-04:002013-08-13T10:27:16.786-04:00The Economist magazine has recently published seve...The Economist magazine has recently published several blog posts (not to be confused with articles in the print magazine, which are higher value journalism) that sex up the start-up scene in Estonia. The blog posts are all rubblish and biased journalism.<br /><br />For years the main zealous advocate for the Estonian cause has been Edward Lucas. Lucas was remorved from the Eastern European correspondent job three years ago in 2010. This happened overnight and the magazine did not replace him over a year. Why would a senior journalist, who had been covering Eastern Europe since 1986, be removed from his post? And if this was a planned move, why did The Economist replace him with someone else immediately?<br /><br />Reportedly Lucas nearly got the sack and saved his skin by offering to edit the International section. The International section is considered second-rate by The Economist journalists. No senior journalist wants the job. The stories are mostly about women's issues, religion, hunger in Africa, etc. Lucas has been the editor since 2010.<br /><br />The British media reported at the time that Lucas was too close to Estonia's officials. The president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the corrupt former prime minister Mart Laar and several advisers in the governement are Lucas's close friends (his Twitter feed is illuminating). Lucas travelled to Estonia once and twice a month, which is once or twice too many. His articles were filled with praise for Estonia even when the topic was Polish prostitutes or Hungarian wine. <br /><br />Eventually the editor of The Economist John Micklethwait caught up with Lucas's game. Lucas stopped writing about Eastern Europe and his travel budget was taken away. (There is a monthly section in the European Voice, a newspaper no one reads, where he promotes Estonia as often as he can.) <br /><br />Recent blog posts in The Economist about the start-up scene in Estonia have all been by second-rate journalists: Kenneth Cuckier, Ludwig Siegele, etc. Lucas is feeding them ideas and information. He made an unofficial deal with president Ilves and co several years ago to promote Estonia any way he can. <br /><br />The blog posts are littered with very bad mistakes: Hotmail was created in Estonia, Transferwise and Realeyes are Estonian, Skype is Estonian, 5-year-olds are taught programming at school. But then again the quality of The Economist has been in serious decline more than a decade. This is a magazine that claimed Ronald Regan broke up the Soviet Union, that Iraq war is justified, that Iran has nuclear weapons and that Snowden is a criminal who should serve at least 15 years.<br /><br />Doteebubble - keep up the good work!<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-55520481469135047642013-07-15T13:03:04.162-04:002013-07-15T13:03:04.162-04:00Ideas are cheap, execution is everything.Ideas are cheap, execution is everything.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-14052502562904237832013-06-25T04:00:07.694-04:002013-06-25T04:00:07.694-04:00http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastTrack
Lame my ass...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastTrack<br />Lame my ass ;)<br />Calling all it as Dane invention and founding is nothing less than lame.<br /><br />and http://www.bluemoon.ee/bluemoon/index.html Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-14531586291264466112013-06-20T15:47:40.476-04:002013-06-20T15:47:40.476-04:00You sir just made my day with this analogy.You sir just made my day with this analogy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-37142722438391491012013-06-07T15:35:27.319-04:002013-06-07T15:35:27.319-04:00Company should be treated as Estonian only if it p...Company should be treated as Estonian only if it pays most of its taxes in Estonia and has majority of employees in Estonia. How can you call company Estonian if founder just run away when earned enough money and uses its own country as a place where he could hire cheap work force. It will not last forever - more smart people are migrating away, less taxes are paid, education and infrastructure becomes worse, level of corruption increases. Source of good ideas is just running out. Companies and startups are already unable to find smart and talented people inside the country. You cannot consume from local society all the time without investing into it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-54361416086496453902013-05-10T07:10:54.436-04:002013-05-10T07:10:54.436-04:00If a woman gets married and takes new family name,...If a woman gets married and takes new family name, is she now the daughter of her husband's mother instead? Or is she still daughter of the woman that gave birth and raised her? :)<br /><br />Sorry to see all these lost daughters...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-12072296706259701592013-04-30T05:29:42.374-04:002013-04-30T05:29:42.374-04:00This constant talk about value, outside the box, b...This constant talk about value, outside the box, bay area etc reminds me of:<br /><br />http://cdn.motinetwork.net/politifake.org/image/political/0912/perception-obama-your-not-even-close-political-poster-1261130855.jpg<br /><br />Actually goes with Estonian start-up scene as well.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-13502864867790228812013-04-27T18:08:55.175-04:002013-04-27T18:08:55.175-04:00Bottom line -- It's not about Estonian, vs Ame...Bottom line -- It's not about Estonian, vs American, or The Chicago Bulls vs The San Antonio Spurs.<br /><br />It's about having a kick ass team and being able to build great value in society. <br /><br />Getting caught up with politics, and burning your mind working with small minds -- is a waste of time.<br /><br />Small minds talk about people, Mediocre minds talk about events, And Great minds talk about Ideas.<br /><br />Estonian has the potential to become a hub of great minds, if they delete this idea of having pure Estonian teams.<br /><br />To build the next generation DNA, its important to have the best the world has to offer, and build an environment where the best minds can come and comfortably work. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-81751924200035783622013-04-26T14:37:51.447-04:002013-04-26T14:37:51.447-04:00No one here (except you) has expressed the idea th...No one here (except you) has expressed the idea that the credit of founding the company does not belong to the two guys from Denmark and Sweden. Your presumptions are wrong and the butthurt has no grounds. Get over it, indeed. Skype's Microsoft's property now, anyway.<br /><br />Also try to get over the fact that Estonia is the place where the technology was invented and the software and the server park is still being developed and maintained from. Is there something wrong about that?KTnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-17319842348383760442013-04-26T03:47:53.401-04:002013-04-26T03:47:53.401-04:00Estonians don't say Estonians wrote the Skype ...Estonians don't say Estonians wrote the Skype code. Estonians say Skype is Estonian, was founded by Estonians, was started by Estonians. That is false.<br /><br />The REAL founders (founders = people who build the COMPANY) were Danish and Swedish.<br /><br />Get over it. <br /><br />Rajeshnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-18694034292200002142013-04-25T10:05:38.053-04:002013-04-25T10:05:38.053-04:00Very well written.Very well written.Jaynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-17524061697541822762013-04-25T05:32:34.501-04:002013-04-25T05:32:34.501-04:00My 5 cents. I think the article is somewhat to a p...My 5 cents. I think the article is somewhat to a point. Of course, labelling a company with a certain 'country' is typically done by those, who are not directly associated with it - the comment of Anonymous has its point. <br /><br />But a more interesting question is if the public money - read taxpayers money - should be spent as it is - on supporting risky businesses which are very likely to move away from the Estonian tax domain if they succeed. <br /><br />In my opinion one solution could be to limit the size of a public money pot given to a single company by ~50k EUR. If the company cannot get to a product/service interesting for the private investors with this kind of money - as a tax payer I don't want to support it frankly and would rather see money being invested into creating kickass physical and chemical labs in schools and higher bonuses/events for the education. Ilja Livensonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15917649077119633632noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-8047847130572765572013-04-25T03:29:45.954-04:002013-04-25T03:29:45.954-04:00I think the desire to promote an American style st...I think the desire to promote an American style start-up / free enterpise scene with public money / the social democratic political approach that comes from the EU is at the heart of many of the problems in Estonia. <br /><br />I am not saying that either of these approaches is wrong. It is just that they do not work together in this order. Perhaps it would work the other way around when we would promote socially conscious start-ups with private funding American style. Where the companies goals are related to benefiting the public (socially concious and all that) and their funding is private. Not like it is right now when the funding is social / public and the goals private.<br /><br />Young and in terms of Estonia, affluent, men failing with large sums of public money is never nice for the morale of the country and even if you succeed the DNA of your business is built upon the Anglo-Saxon model so you will end up in London, Boston or Califronia sooner or later because your business was built for that environment and all of your role-models are there.<br /><br />That leads to there not being any big social benefits for Estonia or the EU to fund start-ups with public money. Hopefully, the founders succeed and I wish them well.. but the gain of an handful of founders does not replace the benefits that we expect to come and that will not come. Thus, Boston or San Francisco benefits from public money that Estonian and European pay in tax. <br /><br />Sad.<br /><br />Robert Jakobsonhttp://www.discoveryourdesigner.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-29760852834158962602013-04-25T03:24:55.384-04:002013-04-25T03:24:55.384-04:00As an Estonian, I could not care less whether Skyp...As an Estonian, I could not care less whether Skype is called Estonian or not. National identity can not be built upon such fragile things as success of private companies.<br /><br />My friends and I talked of how the Estonian official propaganda machine went off the rails / lost common sense overtly promoting Skype, the local start-up scene etc.. already in 2006. That is 7 years ago. Why should we, men of intelligence, be concerned with the propganda machine that is present in every country, entity like cosmic noise?<br /><br />This is an old story of middle men trumpeting old stories. You mistake the official propaganda for what Estonian people feel in their gut, not to speak of how we think more intellectually - but I do not think statements like "company x or z is estonian or not" reach the level of intellectual discourse. <br /><br />This entire post is a solution searching for a problem that does not exist. Let's be friends and forget this nonsense. Robert Jakobsonhttp://www.discoveryourdesigner.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-67059263606194674602013-04-24T20:45:32.076-04:002013-04-24T20:45:32.076-04:00I think I made myself quite clear. The Swede and t...I think I made myself quite clear. The Swede and the Dane *founded Skype-the-company*. Estonian team *created Skype-the-product*. All of them deserve credit.<br /><br />If this does not explain to you why Skype is often praised as being of Estonian origin (the core development and the servers, if I'm not mistaken, are still here, by the way), I do not know what else to say. Go troll somewhere else. This is certainly not the place to discuss how much exceptional skill is needed to exceptionally sell an exceptional product.KTnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-68661144497746532562013-04-24T16:46:11.384-04:002013-04-24T16:46:11.384-04:00"Funding is important, but in general a repla..."Funding is important, but in general a replaceable aspect of a tech company."<br /><br />"Prior to forming Atomico, he co-founded Skype, Kazaa, Joltid and Joost among other high-profile technology companies. Niklas held the position of CEO from Skype’s inception until September 2007 when he became the company’s chairman, a post that he held until March 2008."<br /><br />So you're saying the guy who co-founded Skype and served as its Chief Executive Officer, is somehow less important than the Estonian techies who wrote the code?<br /><br />History is littered with great technology that went nowhere because of bad business leadership.<br /><br />It seems kind of stupid to deny the bottom line, that a Dane and a Swede brought this to market, led the company to what it became, sold it for billions, and rightfully, are acknowledged as its founders and former CEO, by the world (except the world according to Estonians).Rajeshnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-40462915564079575452013-04-24T10:02:31.891-04:002013-04-24T10:02:31.891-04:00As I mentioned above, I think the reason is way si...As I mentioned above, I think the reason is way simpler.<br />For all of the startups listed above I can say that they were founded either by a friend or a friend-of-a-friend or, in a rare case, a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend of mine. Due to the size of Estonia, this holds for pretty much all the people here.<br /><br />Thus, politics aside, most Estonians know the local companies simply because they are closely related to the people that work on them, and it is only natural for them to appreciate the efforts, especially if you see that those efforts gain some worldwide resonance.<br /><br />It is easy to see that this aspect is not present in most large countries at all.KTnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-75207088897664145152013-04-24T09:57:02.974-04:002013-04-24T09:57:02.974-04:00@Anonymous:
It seems you did not read what I wrot...@Anonymous:<br /><br />It seems you did not read what I wrote. It does not make sense to "draw the line" anywhere. No matter where the employees of the company are now, if it was born from the particular Estonian ecosystem, the company will always be regarded as "founded in Estonia" and can be called "Estonian" in the appropriate context.<br /><br />It is later only natural for any Estonian company to expand beyond the tiny country of origin up to the point where it may have its proportion of Estonians matching the overall proportion of Estonians in the world, i.e. close to zero.<br /><br />And no, it is not true that "every company where an Estonian was even slightly involved gets trumped up". None of the examples above fit this category and I doubt you'll find any.KTnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-69838927278407074122013-04-24T09:50:01.027-04:002013-04-24T09:50:01.027-04:00[Now this is dumb, the combination of the moderati...[Now this is dumb, the combination of the moderation policy, blogger commenting functionality and a broken internet makes it impossible to understand whether the last comment went in. Do ignore this retry if it did. Drop this header if it didn't]<br /><br />@Rajesh:<br /><br />Short answer: Niklas and Janus were the guys that gave the money and founded Skype-the-company. They certainly deserve a lot of credit for its success. Estonians are the guys who developed the tech. Funding is important, but in general a replaceable aspect of a tech company.<br /><br />Long answer: You see, Estonia is a small country and everyone in IT knows everyone. In particular, most IT guys here have had a chance to exchange a beer or two with Ahti, Jaan and other guys behind Skype tech. Moreover, most people here know the full story of a small game-coding shop BlueMoon interactive that started sometime in the eighties and produced brilliant software already at that time (I still long for SoundClub). In the nineties they went on to producing revolutionary brilliant peer-to-peer tech, and later on in the naughts managed to finally monetize it in the form of Skype. Skype was not born in a year or two "after the swede and the dane came". There are literally *years* of cultivation and development of brilliance in that particular Estonian team hidden before it came up with Skype as-yet-another-application-for-FastTrack-like-things.<br />Would Skype be different if the guys from BMI found other friends? Most certainly, but it would still be a brilliant piece of technology. Would Skype even be possible without the carefully cultivated know-how of the BMI team? I doubt it.<br /><br />Knowing this history and knowing the people behind it closer than just from the pages of a newspaper it seems kind-of stupid to deny their achievements in actually *creating* (even if is not the same as "founding") Skype.KTnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-56600085182712989262013-04-24T09:35:10.926-04:002013-04-24T09:35:10.926-04:00It is interesting to look at the whole picture and...It is interesting to look at the whole picture and to see the reasons behind why would anyone be interested at all by saying that one or another company was founded in one or another country. Usually the ones who care and promote this aspect of some company and specially start-ups are government (or non-profit) employees, politicians and other similar people who gain something by showing how good and successful everything around them and specially the project they have some “responsibility” in, have been. It is same with every other country too. Usually companies only promote their “background” when they have something to gain from it (like “Nordic design”, or “Swiss made” and so on). It would be interesting to see the analysis about the biggest loudmouths about Estonian start-up scene. <br />For example - Garage48 has their own agenda to push, EAS has their agenda, Andrus Ansip has his and journalists have theirs. Garage48 needs to find new participants and get their funding going, EAS needs to show how well tax-payers money has been spent, politicians just want overall “I’m great leader” image to be re-elected and the journalists – well, they need to write something to get paid and why not some nonsense about some “miracle” country. As long as it “turns profit” for everyone involved there seems to be no stop to it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-82890968393735935862013-04-24T09:05:27.398-04:002013-04-24T09:05:27.398-04:00KT: The line has to be drawn somewhere. When does ...KT: The line has to be drawn somewhere. When does Grabcad finally become an American company then? The majority of their employees are based in the US, are American, and were (probably) educated through the US university system. What percentage does it need to reach before they finally become an American company?<br /><br />Or what about a company where 2 out of 20 employees are Estonian, including one of the cofounders, and they are based in the UK. Are they Estonian? It seems like that's the story with some of these "Estonian" companies. It gets nauseating to hear every company where an Estonian was even slightly involved trumped up as some "Estonian" company. <br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-7578096218718301042013-04-24T04:00:25.337-04:002013-04-24T04:00:25.337-04:00ZeroTurnaround was founded in Estonia, developed i...ZeroTurnaround was founded in Estonia, developed in Estonia and most of its core team/founders still live in Estonia.<br /><br />How does one office in Boston make them a US startup?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-15124427097442827352013-04-24T03:05:50.015-04:002013-04-24T03:05:50.015-04:00The key P2P framework was designed by the Dane. It...The key P2P framework was designed by the Dane. It had applications (like file sharing) prior to Skype - and it has had applications also after Skype. This is why eBay had to deal with Joltid after acquiring Skype.<br /><br />The Estonian team certainly was important for Skype, I wouldn't argue the opposite. However, trying to label Skype as an Estonian company is lame.Jaynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-9284827002397199442013-04-24T02:09:06.034-04:002013-04-24T02:09:06.034-04:00So taking Estonia's pride and joy, Skype, who ...So taking Estonia's pride and joy, Skype, who was Niklas and Janus? <br /><br />How was Skype founded by Estonians exactly when the founders are Danish and Swedish?<br />Rajeshnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081340196831249352.post-38309298879259347022013-04-23T19:28:00.378-04:002013-04-23T19:28:00.378-04:00Given the otherwise reasonably smart posts in this...Given the otherwise reasonably smart posts in this blog, I find the particular rant somewhat unexpectedly shallow.<br /><br />Whether something is "Estonian" or not, is, of course, a matter of definitions and everyone is free to pick one definition of the other. Hence, the whole attempt of stamping "Estonian" or "American" on particular companies seems, if you'll excuse me, dumb.<br /><br />What you could do instead is try to understand *why* those companies are regarded as "Estonian" and, well, you'd probably immediately find the obvious answers (but then you'd lack the opportunity to write a provocative post, which is what you aim at, right?).<br /><br />Where did "Google" come from? Well, presumably it came from the combination of American-educated brains within an American university/business ecosystem and funded by American money both initially and later on. Hence, even if some crazy country decides to buy Google at some point, it will still proudly carry the "made in America" sign on it with the particular meaning that "America has the ecosystem to produce such companies". Of course, you are also free to discuss whether the fact that Brin is from Russia gives bonus points to Russia or whether the fact that he is Jewish should be regarded as another plus point towards the popular "Jewish have all the brains" meme. If you find enough examples, you can make a compelling case to praise any of those facts *in addition* to the American origin.<br /><br />Now it is obvious that Estonia *does* have a particular ecosystem which seems to push more people towards creative entrepreneurship than in some other countries. All of the founders of the companies you named above know each other, many of them have had education in the nearby buildings, they stem from the same "ideasphere", if you will, and were it not for this combination of factors, many of them might not have decided to go for building their business instead of settling down at a nicely paid cubicle position. For this simple reason it makes sense to single out the fact of those companies having been "made in Estonia" (among other factors, of course)<br /><br />Does the fact that the company has outgrown its Estonian market (or maybe never even aimed at it) and is now based in the UK or funded by US investors, or even simply "prefers to list UK addresses in Twitter" diminish the significance of the observation that it was founded in Estonia? I do not think so.<br /><br />Did the listed companies give nothing back to the Estonian state? Oh yes they did, and most of them continue doing so.KTnoreply@blogger.com