The origins of Skype lie in the success of Kazaa, a peer-to-peer file-sharing application developed by Friis and Zennström. Leveraging the P2P technology, they envisioned a platform where people could make free or low-cost calls over the internet. They teamed up with a team of Estonian developers to bring this vision to life. Initially, Skype was launched as a beta in August 2003 and later fully released in 2004.