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 6 pm - 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.
As an investor, what we're not looking for is 'oh this is a cool app,' it's 'is this something that can become a big business?' You need to find those that can become real businesses.
Look for when the environment is changing - the big shift now is mobile Internet. It's really happening big-time. The way you interact with services on a smart phone compared to the Web is quite different, so there's a huge opportunity.
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.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, it's not a job, it's a lifestyle.
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.
It's extremely hard to build a company with a product that everyone loves, is free and has no business model, and then to innovate a business model. I did that with Kazaa, had half a billion downloads but that wasn't a sustainable business.
The telephone is a 100-year-old technology. It's time for a change. Charging for phone calls is something you did last century.
Talent can pop up anywhere in the world, it's not just one city block.
As an entrepreneur, if you're the originator, you need to be faster than ever.
Some Internet operators are concerned that video services such as Netflix and YouTube consume lots of the bandwidth on the network. While there is some truth to this, my guess is that the operators wished they could provide the same kind of services with the same success as Netflix and YouTube.
Another differentiator is that Skype is free and simple to set up, and it costs us virtually nothing for a new user to join the Skype network, which is why we can offer the service for free.
Today as an entrepreneur you have more options.
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.
They also can combine voice with instant messaging and online file sharing.
If you could utilize the resources of the end users' computers, you could do things much more efficiently.
I try not to dwell on big mistakes but to move on when I make a mistake. I make mistakes most of the times and that's part of the risk profile being an entrepreneur. I guess one big mistake I did was not to start my own company earlier. I spent nine years working for others before starting Kazaa in 2000.
When we started Skype, if you look at analyst reports, no one forecasted it as a big business. Also when Google started, it was not fashionable to be in search. It's not trying to do the obvious - that's the hard part.
The next Google or Facebook will come from somewhere other than Silicon Valley.
International markets are much bigger than the U.S. In Sweden we have 9 million inhabitants, and if you're successful in Sweden, you're not successful - it's such a small market.
Silicon Valley is the best place to start a tech company in so many ways.
The thing about the Internet is the openness. People can link to each other themselves.
Today, over one million people now make their living on eBay, which is astounding.
When radio stations started playing music the record companies started suing radio stations. They thought now that people could listen to music for free, who would want to buy a record in a record shop? But I think we all agree that radio stations are good stuff.
We have 2 million users in the U.S. and about 13 million worldwide in more than 200 countries. We're getting 80,000 new users each day. And more than half a million people are connected via Skype at any given moment.
