In this podcast, Jonas Kjellberg, the co-creator of Skype, gives few tips to entrepreneurs on how to think about running a business and how to innovate.

1. Thinking in Zeroes: One of his focus is to challenge the cost side. Running a business is costly and often in business leadership, cost reduction means laying off employees or moving business operations and development to a low-cost location. Skype was a challenge to Telcos and Jonas used this thinking to his advantage. What could he do which the telcos could not? Skype used the internet which was already paid for by the customer which brings the cost of laying out infrastructure to 0. Telcos use switches for routing. Skype used the CPU power to do the same. Again the cost is 0. They used idle computers to route the calls to reduce cost.

2. Adding Zeroes: While you can reduce cost by cleverly leveraging what is out there, you have to earn money by adding 0s to your bottom line. He cites Apple as an example (Jonas sold iCloud to Apple). The Apple thinking goes like this: a normal computer sells for $300. How can we sell one for $3000? The answer is how are you delighting your customer? What takes your product beyond competition?

3. Innovate in marketing for customer acquisition. You need to figure out how to optimize your funnel of engagement because no one is going to tell you how to do that.  It is mathematical. If you have a funnel, you know how people drop off. How can you scale that funnel to get many magnitudes of succes? How can you make your customer smile, when they a communication from your business?

4. Good businesses constantly change.  If your customers don’t like you there is a problem. Don’t be afraid to pivot as you learn. That way you will go to places where you would not have gone otherwise.