Science Quote by Niklas Zennstrom

“Easy enough” is doing the real work here. Zennstrom isn’t praising simplicity as a virtue in the abstract; he’s staking a claim in a particular era of tech history, when “being online” still carried the faint odor of hobbyism. Skype’s pitch was radical precisely because it refused to treat communication as a feature that required initiation rites. The intent is businesslike and ideological at once: make the interface disappear so the network can spread.

The subtext is a quiet indictment of the tech industry’s old habit of equating complexity with sophistication. By naming “people who don’t need to be tech savvy,” Zennstrom draws a bright line between products built for insiders and products that win by enrolling everyone else. It’s a democratizing move, but also a strategic one: the moment you optimize for the person who just wants to talk to their sister, you unlock scale that geek-only tools can’t touch.

Context matters: mid-2000s telecom was expensive, international calling felt punitive, and carriers controlled the chokepoints. “Cheapest way” isn’t a throwaway; it frames Skype as consumer rebellion against entrenched pricing, powered by broadband and VoIP. The quote’s emotional center is “friends and family,” a reminder that the killer app isn’t novelty, it’s intimacy.

Zennstrom’s language is plain because the product promise is plain: technology that earns trust by not demanding attention. In that sense, it’s less a statement about software than about power - shifting it from gatekeepers and experts to ordinary relationships.