Interview with Julien Decot of Skype

Christopher Smith of Relevantly Speaking interviewed Julien Decot, Director of Strategy for Skype, at the >play Conference last week. Rough transcript follows, emphasis mine.

Q. Hey, it's Christopher Smith here for Relevantly Speaking. We're in Berkeley at the Haas School of Business. We're at the play conference and we're talking with Julian from Skype.

You've got a really enviable position there at Skype. you're a director of strategy, which means you have the ability to see the future, move the company into particular directions. Where are you going right now?

JD. The beauty of working for Skype is the breadth of opportunities you look at is very very wide. I'll give you a few examples. Skype could get into SMBs or enterprise. Skype could move more aggressively into mobile. Skype could get into the web. So there's a flurry of opportunities. And my job is to navigate the ones we should go after first knowing we're only a 500 [person] company.

So a few things that says...

One is: mobility is a big deal for us. There's tremendous appetite from our users to use Skype on the mobile. We don't want just to take the experience on the desktop into mobile. We want to invent something that's very unique to mobile and complements the desktop really nicely.

And also we think, even if it doesn't sound super sexy, just improving the basics of the service making it into the next level is a big deal for us. The best example is video calling in high def for everyone. We think that's really exciting, for example, and we're working very hard at this.

Q. You just released a desktop device to assist in that.

JD. We work with ASUS as a partner. They built the first Skype specific video phone, for example, which allows you, for I think it's a $200 device in the US, to get very simple video calling capabilities from your home without having a computer or anything else. That's one example of things we think are pretty cool.

About Google Video

Q. Last week Google comes out with Gmail Chat and Video in there. Do you find yourself in a defensible position there? Do you think Skype already has a very significant head start?

JD. Every time Google enters a space you have to watch out. They're big and they're very good and they innovate really fast. First thing I'll say we're not very surprised, that's something we've been expecting for a while. We're surprised it took so long.

We think it's a good product, we think the quality is good, it's not great, it's good, a nice implementation.

We think it also validates our idea that video is a big deal. And it's so early that everyone who can come with us and sort of help evangelize the fact that video calling is free for everyone and that it works is good.

Of course it's going to force us to get better and better, but I wouldn't say it's going to change our course. we're going to watch them. That's a company we have a lot of respect for in general.

Search

Q. Discoverability seems to be a common theme in a lot of the conferences we've been attending, the problem of finding both people or audiences for content. How are you guys approaching that problem?

JD. That's a very big question. It totally depends on what you're looking for, if you're looking for content or people.

We spend a lot of time helping you find people. it's a big deal for us to find someone you can communicate with. And linking people is a big deal for us because we're in the communication business.

Finding content is not our business. We'll definitely leverage third parties to do it. We'll let third parties get into Skype, to allow this to happen. We have for example the ability to attach a video mood message to your profile. So we worked with partners; you can attach a video to your message and if I'm connected to you I can click on that video and watch a video clip. That's the kind of thing we're going to do but it's mostly about driving and triggering conversation.

Future?

Q. So looking around the corner what should I anticipate from Skype?

JD. Great mobile applications, across platforms. I don't want to announce anything but look around all the key platforms are coming up. We'll be on there very soon with something pretty radical I think.

Expect the video and voice quality to improve significantly. So expect very very awesome video quality very very soon. And expect a few surprises. If you're a Mac user you'll have a few surprises pretty soon.

Q. Any announcements about the Apple platform?

JD. Come to MacWorld and you'll know more.

See also:

• ASUS PC-free Skype desk videophone, coming October, Skype Journal, September 2008.
• Hands On: ASUS's AiGuru SV1 Grandma-Friendly Skype Videophone, Gizmodo, September 2008.
• GMail Voice and Video Chat: Threading Voice and Video Into Email Dialogues, Skype Journal, November 2008
• Blogger interviews Julien Decot, Skype's director of strategy, Skype Journal, August 2008

tags: skype, trends, strategy, juliendecot, bizdev

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