Climate change, migration... they transcend national borders and require an international response.
Taavet Hinrikus
The technology is not an end in itself: it is a tool. It can make it easier for us to communicate or manage our finances. It can help us take care of our health or help policemen in their work. It can create jobs and boost growth. It can enhance transparency and accessibility to services.
I think that's the beauty of being a private company: you get to choose when you disclose something. You can play it in a strategic way or in a tactical way.
The fact that Skype was founded in Estonia, the fact that Skype had a successful exit, which meant that Estonia benefited in a major way, meant that entrepreneurship became legitimate. There were more than a thousand people who either worked or had worked at Skype who had seen what it takes to build a global business.
Building a business is a marathon, not a sprint. I don't believe it when people tell me they've been working 80-hour weeks for five years in a row. I just don't think that's possible.
Creating a new country from scratch has given Estonia the license to imagine what a country could be.
As technology progresses, I believe that fintech will fundamentally change finance.
International money transfer is a massive consumer rip-off. Banks and companies like Western Union have gotten away with it for too long.
Changing behaviour is a very slow process.
I think that if Britain does decide to leave the E.U., that would be a disaster for the technology sector here and probably also for the broader economy.
If you think about the influence it has had, it's incredible. Think of all the relationships that have been saved because of Skype.
The world is getting smaller thanks to technology.
There's most definitely a Davos bubble. You're in a small Alpine town that, for just four days in January, sees its population tripled with world leaders, CEOs, media, police, the army... and a whole bunch of people who aren't invited but just come to hang out.
I get a kick out of helping the next generation of founders.
As consumers in general, and with Millennials in particular, we're getting used to everything being cheaper, faster, better - and banks aren't keeping up.
The U.S.A. is a huge market which has a large immigrant population from Europe, India, from all around the world; lots of them have, still, strong ties to home, so move lots of money.
Without immigration, nations would stagnate. It is key for innovation and for economic growth.
Bitcoin and the whole discussion around it shows how big a need there is for innovation about what money is and how it is stored.
The world is becoming more global. More than ever, people are proactively deciding where to live, where to study, where to work. Sometimes it's out of necessity, sometimes it's out of choice.
Most of my time at Skype was spent doing new things.
There are so many instances in banking where 'free' simply doesn't mean free, whether it's opaque overdraft charges or credit card providers that are quietly raising interest rates without customers noticing.
I was pretty vocal about being anti-Brexit before the referendum vote.
Talent is the lifeblood of a fast-growing company.
'Big' problems are overwhelming, but when we distil them down to their simplest forms, then the solutions become simple, too.
You start a business being hungry, foolish, and a little bit naive. But more often than not, you end up being disrupted yourself. It happened to Skype.
If we think about how long Google spent searching - I think they came around in '98? And, OK, Gmail came in 2004, but it was literally built by one engineer as a 20%-time project. It was probably 10 years before Google started diversifying.
There's always been a lot of interest in the tech community about how to foster innovation and creativity - both within a company but also in the ecosystem of a tech cluster. In both cases, creating opportunities for people who don't encounter each other normally to meet and talk is key.
People bought bitcoin because they thought it would be worth more tomorrow. And a lot of people got lucky. But we're not seeing real people use bitcoin. And we don't know what problem it solves. Now, blockchain, I think, is a genius advancement in technology.
Financial services have always been about trust. Perhaps the biggest barrier to entry has been getting new customers to trust an unknown brand or service, and that's particularly true with digital disruptors who lack a physical presence on the local high street.
Securing and attracting the best talent is an obsession in the tech industry for good reason. It's your main asset; it's your edge.
Historically, people have flocked to Silicon Valley because of the belief that that's where the latest innovation is happening. It's a snowball effect.
Talent is a complex subject: from the education our kids get in kindergarten and beyond to the re-skilling of some parts of the workforce; from the opportunities available for research to how we attract the best people to work in our companies.
The attitude to failure is one of the characteristics that's often called out as the difference between the U.S. and Europe. And we do need to be less risk-averse, more embracing of failure. Having failed makes you look bad in Europe. But in the U.S., it makes you look experienced.
Scaling a business at speed can feel like an out of control roller-coaster.
I was in my early 20s when Estonia joined the E.U. For a kid who'd grown up in the Soviet Union, it seemed like my country had come of age. For a country that had been isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, it seemed like we were becoming part of the global community. It opened a whole new world of possibility.
For Estonia, joining Europe meant our potential as a country increased - not decreased - because of that connectedness.
Being a 'global citizen' is not something reserved for the global elite anymore. Thanks to the democratising power of technology, it's not a trend determined by privilege or even age but by attitude.
At TransferWise, we started out as - and continue as - idealists. We start with what we can do to make things better and how we can solve problems, focusing on what people need. It turns out you can focus on building the best service and be successful as business.
Sometimes, companies are better placed than politicians and governments to make change happen. That doesn't mean that they should not be held to account and follow international rules. But with the right motivation, they can be the force for change.
To be a global business, you need access to the best talent from around the world - fix this, everything else falls into place. Whether it's homegrown or imported, we don't mind where it comes from - we just want the best.
People need the financial sector to be safe; people also need the financial sector to go through a massive phase of innovation. That means delivering on the positive rhetoric, like around settlement accounts, not allowing Open Banking to be diluted, and leading the way on AML.
While in two very different sectors, both Skype and TransferWise were born out of frustration.
In 2011, when we launched TransferWise, it was our frustration with banks not giving us what we wanted or needed as customers. The motivation was a strong desire to solve a problem and not just fix something that was broken but create a better alternative and a new system for doing things.
A seed depends on a whole host of factors to grow - from the fertility of the soil to the right mix of rain and sun to not being eaten by a passing bird. The same goes for an idea. For an idea to really take hold, other factors come into play, from timing to the emerging technology that makes it possible.
We're living in a world where international governance is failing to overcome borders, but technology is succeeding in removing them.
When a new hire is afraid to roll up their sleeves and get things done, it's a clear sign it's not going to work out.
A preoccupation with job title is an immediate giveaway that someone's priorities are not in line with the company's.
The financial crisis of 2008 created a seismic shift in the dynamics of trust in financial services. FinTech would have happened without the global financial crisis - but it would have taken much longer.
The growth of FinTech has been driven by adoption across age groups, but the demand from the millennial generation to innovate and think about financial services differently has been a catalyst for change.
With a smartphone, we have a supercomputer in our pocket and are always connected. The way we bank is changing as part of this macro trend.
