Mr. Priit Kasesalu

In 1986, he began his career as a programmer for a local hardware manufacturer with his class-mate Jaan Tallinn. The company was assembling 8 bit computers for use in public schools. He wrote various software for the platform, including several games. In 1989, together with Ahti Heinla, and Jaan Tallinn, he participated in creating Kosmonaut ? the first Estonian computer game to be published outside the country. He studied Computer Science in 1992 in the Tallinn Technical University. Currently with Ambient Sound Investments (ASI), where he is heavily involved in assessing all of ASI's new technology investments, he previously played an integral role in developing Kazaa and later Skype along with Ahti Heinla, and Jaan Tallinn.He continues to work at Skype as a core library developer. While cryptography and data communication are his areas of expertise, his other passion is computer game development. In addition to the computer game, Kosmonaut, he created Continuum, BanG, and edited subgame2. He is also famous for being a head programmer for Kazaa Media Desktop. Skype was first released in 2003 and developed into a platform with over 600 million users and was bought by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5 billion. The service allows users to communicate with peers by voice using a microphone, video by using a webcam, and instant messaging over the Internet. Phone calls may be placed to recipients on the traditional telephone networks. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free of charge, while calls to landline telephones and mobile phones are charged via a debit-based user account system. Skype has also become popular for its additional features, including file transfer, and videoconferencing. Competitors include SIP and H.323-based services, such as Linphone and Google Voice. The network is operated by Microsoft, which has its Skype division headquarters in Luxembourg. Most of the development team and 44% of the overall employees of the division are situated in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia. He also set up Bluemoon Software with Ahti and Jaan, and has been involved in most of the projects of the company to date.