And guess what – I believe it is all true! Estonians die young, work too hard, worry too much, spend too little time with their friends and families, drink and smoke too much (and die!), do not care about our beautiful nature and environment etc.

Many people in post-communist countries say that they were happier in soviet times. This is true for many of them, free fast-growing capitalist society does not equal happiness.

This is a good reality check to realign their priorities in life.

Everyone can now print out their Estonia-cert, which says: “This award is in recognition of the nation whose people have shown their dedication to making improvements in business and technology by demonstrating their skills, knowledge and abilities as well as representing the talent that lies within their region. Congratulations to Estonia!”

Back in 2000 or 2001 we promoted BB heavily at CV-Online resume database, integrating the whole BB system into ours, so the certs were linked to people’s CV’s. The whole BB service, including mailing you nice printed certs, was free, so people used it a lot. Not sure how many use the service nowadays.

Somewhere I have my own certs from that time as well, from areas like Master High IT Aptitude, Master Internet Security Specialist and Unix Adminitrator.

This morning I found a baloon with Skype jobs ad in front of our office quite near to the centre of Tallinn. Unfortunately it never took off, probably because there was no wind.

It is almost impossible to find any IT people in Estonia nowadays and Skype and some others are spending a lot on recruitment advertising. Full-page ads in newspapers and magazines as well as any other forms of marketing. Basically you have to headhunt quite agressively to get someone good, and pay them some extra. IT people here are not so cheap either.

If someone asks me nowadays, should they come and start an IT development centre in Estonia, I have to say no. The 10000 IT specialists we have in total is a small number and it is hard to grow bigger teams, you run into obstacles very soon. IT is not popular among university enrollments and the lack of people grows bigger and bigger each day. Which is sad considering Estonia’s current position on the world’s innovative IT solutions market.

The largest Estonian shareholder and local founder Rain Kivistik had a 6,4% ownership in the company, which means he will make personally around 35 million euros – about the same, as all 4 of the Skype´s Estonian founders each made.

The implications for Estonia are the same as for Skype: having a big part of an internationally successful tech company here brings more know-how and experience about that field to us. As people from Skype and Playtech will move to other companies or found their own startups, they bring that experience with them. There will now be also more financing from the founders cash chest available for other startups.

• 0,7 times revenues (35,5 mEUR)
• 9,8 times EBITDA (2,6 mEUR)
• 19,6 times net profit (1,3 mEUR)

Up to you to decide if the price was right. Comparing to the revenue multiples, you would expect a higher valuation. Then again, the markets for IT services companies are hard, profit margins have been low for years and there is no reason that should change, so based on EBITDA/net profit the price seems about right.

Today, December 31st, is also my last day at MicroLink. The almost 4 years have been a lot of fun, working with the best IT people and most interesting customers in the region. I hope that over the next years MicroLink will keep its leading position on the market, but as we will see continuing consolidation across Europe, the main goal will be breaking outside the Baltic region to serve customers in Scandinavia, Western Europe and why not Russia. If MicroLink will not do that, someone else will.

Having been an enterpreneur already twice in my life, I have for some time wanted to get back in the world of startups. I believe there are a lot of good ideas and smart people here in the Baltics, so I will be incubating and supporting some of these under Customix. And may be developing some services and apps myself as well.