Spotify Founder: “Spotify Was A Stupid Idea!” How A 23 Year Old Shy, Underdog, Introvert, Built A $31 Billion Business! - Daniel Ek
Guests: Daniel
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
§01Transcript — part 1
I'm an introvert, not amazing academically. Didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. Average at best. And yet you created Spotify. Yeah. Daniel Peck. Spotify founder and CEO. He's not only saved the music industry, he's created a $50 billion company, and he himself is worth more than $4 billion. I flunked high school, then started my first company. That later got acquired. And you retired at 23. Yeah, first month was fun. Night clubs, sports car, 20 or 30 girls throwing around money.
Six months in, I realized that this thing I thought I wanted, I just didn't want at all. I was just empty. Just thinking, am I ever going to get out of this depression? And what to do in life? What if you can work on something you actually care about? What would you pick? Music. But the industry is going down the drain. I honestly did not think we would succeed. But if we succeed, I knew it was going to be a big thing. Spotify is here. A one-stop shop for music.
Higgins, you use Spotify? I love it. I read the journey to that success, had multiple near-death experiences. It was awful. Ran out of money. I lost all of the hair. Gained 30 pounds. And the problem was I modeled myself on the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. I ran every meeting. I did the best product person. It just wasn't me. Share the burden with someone. It is so important. We tend to believe the world is more logical than what it is, but it's based on relationships.
Be the easiest person to deal with, and you'd be surprised how many problems it solves. One of those problems was Apple. What's your opinion on Apple? Daniel, what is the most important context that I need to know about you to understand the man that sits in front of me today? And when I ask about context, I want to go right back to where you come from and that earliest environment that I almost see it like an oven. I see our earliest context as like an oven that baked us into who we are today.
What is that context? Yeah. I'm a product of a very, very strong single mom. A woman that probably had a ship on her shoulder against her sibling, her brother, her older brother, who kind of said, you can't do this, you can't race. a child to be productive. And I think she kind of just well, hell bent on making a point of showing that, I was going to be successful in her definition and successful meant well-educated, well-read and be able to handle almost anything thrown at me.
And just to give you an example of that, while I was brought up in the suburb of Stockholm, very much a working class rough neighborhood, one of the big things that my mother did was she had me doing a pentathlon. And the pentathlon was like the classic pentathlon. So that means fencing, horseback riding, shooting, running, and swimming. Doesn't sound like what someone basically from the projects in Stockholm would do. But she thought that would be a good sort of wide education for me.
And pretty much my entire life has been around that. I was kind of clumsy as a kid. My fine motor skills was pretty good. My rough motor skills wasn't very good. So she enrolled me in like an all female gymnastics group. You know, I'm an introvert. So she enrolled me in a theater group to have me, you know, learn how to express myself. And so an eclectic childhood, but one where she heavily influenced me, brought me along in almost every context with adults, with professors like at a very early age and just had me sit along.
or with just the person from next door who's struggling getting to the next paycheck. And I really saw all of those contracts in life from a very young age. Did she have any desire for you to become any specific thing? I'm honestly not sure, but I think she wanted me to be broad just in general. And I think in many families, you kind of have this maybe educational pressure where you have to be a doctor, you have to be a lawyer. And none of that mattered to my mom.
The only thing that mattered, and she kept repeating this, was that you need to become a good human being. And for her, If I wanted to study, sure, she thought education mattered and was important, but not like in other families. And the only thing in fact, you know, probably influenced Spotify later on was I very much come from a music family. My grandfather was an opera singer. My grandmother was... An actress in theater, but also jazz pianist.
So like music education was weirdly enough, like the premier education that was focused on for me. And then all the other stuff, she was basically only important that I showed effort. um i i had a pretty easy time in school and so uh she constantly kept pushing me because she felt that i wasn't uh i wasn't making enough of an effort uh no matter what so it wasn't about the grade i could come home with a straight a uh she would still be like well did you really make an effort i don't think so and um and um and and so for her it was kind of always that thing So she cared more about, less about the outcome and more about how much of your potential you were realizing.
Yeah, very much so. So on school then, you referenced that she kind of identified you were an introvert early on. But then I think you said you had an easy time in school. Typically people that are introverted, that are an only child at the time that they go off to school, often they struggle a little bit. Because, you know, finding friends and fitting into social groups. And I read somewhere else that you don't love small talk. You tend to gravitate towards the people that you know.
What was school like for a kid like that? Well, I think, you know, I think there are many types of introverts. Let's begin with that. And I can switch it on when I have to. And certainly I think the theater helped me. You know, I can be very project a lot of things if I'd like to and be a force of nature, but it doesn't come easy. That requires tons of energy, whereas others get energy from like the room and they're like very excited. It's just not me.
For me, anything with anyone I'm not comfortable with is really taking a lot of energy. But I think the easy time in school was just, I loved learning, I've always loved learning. So, you know, be putting in an environment where you're constantly being forced to learn new things wasn't a very hard thing for me. And I have a very good, I used to have a very good memory, I don't know. have it anymore, but I was able to memorize very easily the concepts and the things that we talked about in school.
And so I think in that end, it was very easy for me. And then again, because my mother tried to make me very broad... The positive and the negative of that aspect is I could kind of be in any social group. I could be with the athletes. I wasn't the best athlete by any stretch of the imagination, but it worked. I could be in the musicians group as well with any of the people who were really good at arts. And I probably wasn't the best at any of that stuff either, but it was pretty decent.
Yeah. But I could also be in the math group. I probably wasn't the best of math, but I was pretty decent. And that, to be honest, is kind of the story of my life. You can kind of plug me in anywhere. I won't excel at practically anything, but I'll hold my fort. And that's, I think, both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that it's very easy for people to, for me to be able to relate to other people enough where I'm accepted in the group, but it's hard in the sense, the downside with that is that I never really belong anywhere because I'm not that one-sided as an individual.
I'm not an artist, I'm not a technologist, I'm not a business person. I'm all of that and probably a few other things as well. And you can see that very clearly with my friend group too. You'll have artists on the one side and you have entrepreneurs on the other end and it's very hard for them to speak to each other most times. But I love it. I love seeing very creative people. I love, you know, business people and scientists mixed together, whereas the scientists get very, you know, have a hard time, I found speaking to an artist, and quite often they're talking past each other.
For me, it's just, I love it. And that's the blessing and curse. When I speak to people that know you and work with you, they describe you as ambitious. Now, ambition and being ambitious is an interesting word, because it's often loaded with this presumption that someone has a desire for a certain outcome. Yeah. Like they're trying to, they're ambitious because they want to be really successful or they want a gazillion pounds. Are you ambitious?
And what does that actually mean to you? Yeah, I'm ambitious, but I probably am ambitious in the way my mother taught me to be ambitious, which is the inputs, right? Which is, you know, if I see someone with incredible potential that squanders that potential... I asked myself why, why are you doing this? Why not strive for the great thing? And in so many cases in life, I found that the difference between aiming super high versus aiming just a little bit higher than where you are from an effort perspective is about the same effort.
So you might just as well aim higher. You know, this saying of you shoot for the stars and you land on the moon. That is very much kind of my life philosophy. Why not try to do it bigger? Why not try to do it even more interesting? And maybe you have to settle for something less. But isn't it more interesting and more fun to try to do the really big, hairy, audacious thing? Not for everyone. Maybe not. You'll know that because you work with so many people that maybe don't lean into ambition.
Yeah, that's true. But I also wonder if that's true or whether they're just worried about it really testing themselves and understanding where their limits are. So many people are more afraid of failure than they are of success. And that stops them from even beginning to try, right? And I find that so many times, like the amount of people I'm sure came to you, it's like, oh, it's really good for you, but I had the same idea. It's like, okay, well, why didn't you do anything about it?
And oftentimes it's like, well, for this and that and that reason, and they talk themselves out of it. But at the very core, I believe it comes down to that they're actually more worried about failing than they are about the prospects of succeeding. Your kids then, what would you advise them to do if they were, say they wanted to follow in your footsteps in particular or start a business at that juncture where we kind of leave high school and we can either go into like work or university?
Would you, do you think the university system is a little bit outdated? Yeah, I do. But as with many things, you know, I don't think it's bad. I don't think it's good either. I think it depends on. there are certain people that do well in that structure and need that kind of rigor of that sort of path to go down and do incredibly well against, you know, the essays and the ACETs, and they're really good, and they're really good with the lectures, and then taking the notes and just have that sort of discipline in that area of their life where they do well in that circumstance.
And then that education then sets them up for greater things. So I think it depends. I mean, if your dream is to become a lawyer, then I think you have to go through that path, right? Because it's impossible otherwise. I think if you wanna be an entrepreneur, the single best thing you can do is to probably study as many businesses as you can and get as much business exposure in that. So what do I mean by that? Well, it can come in by working for businesses that are great, but more importantly, probably working for great individuals and learning from them, right?
So if you are fortunate enough to be able to do, you know, we're talking about this, but your behind the scenes version and being able to like work for you in that and see you up close, it's gonna be invaluable for that individual to get to do that. because you get to see entrepreneurship from the first row. You get to see what it's like, what business aspect, what's, you know, how do you do that? How much admin do you need to carry? And even if you're just a fly on the wall, you're gonna learn so many skills that are quite diverse And that's the, I think the biggest trick about entrepreneurship is like the, the, for me, everyone, when they think about the word innovation, they think that it's something entirely novel.
Yet for me, innovation, I don't know of a single thing that just someone came up with that had no prior grounds. Everything is about putting two or more things in together in a new context, right? So studying many different things, understanding a little bit about business, understanding a little bit about product and how to make that product, understanding whatever it is that are drivers from that, I think is important. And that's not to say that university can't do that and it can't be helpful to learning sales and the theory of it, etc.
But I think that there's many other paths you could take that may even if you're, you know, if you have enough grit and kind of like are able to put yourself in a situation where you can get in front of the right person and start working for them. So much in life is around people believing in you and giving you the right place to grow. And it's really serendipitous, to be honest. And I'm certainly a product of all that. So I think it is not right or wrong.
It's just, I dislike how we're talking about it as it is the way or it's not the way. And it's like, no, I think it's more like it works sometimes for certain individuals. And then for other individuals, it is not the best use of their time. And there are other paths you can take. But educating yourself, even if that's outside of a university and getting a degree concept, that I think is invaluable. And it's the most important thing you can be doing as a young individual about anything you're interested in.
I think that's one of the big misconceptions people have about me when they hear I dropped out of university. They think I don't like education. No, no, no, no, no. I spend all day, like all night till 2am learning about rockets and AI and all that stuff. I'm a self educator, but the institution of education that is university, for me, I just couldn't stay awake in that experience. Same here. But for another person, it is exactly what they need because they may not even know what they're interested in.
And they feel like I want to have a foundation that gives me a broad base. So again, if a master's of science degree, if you know you want to be an engineer, but you're not entirely sure what type of engineer, it's a very broad foundation that will teach you elemental skills that you probably will use at some point in time. I'm not saying you can't go outside of that realm too, but it's great stuff. And if you're wired that way, you do well in that type of environment, great.
And there's certain types of people that do that. When young people, people come up to me and ask me this question about what I should be doing with my life at that early stage. The advice I've started to give, and I wanna check how you would change or add or alter this advice, is to try and go and join a startup. So just for context, I'm talking about people that wanna be entrepreneurs here. To try and go and join a startup that's doing something at the very cutting edge of the world or a wave that's currently coming into shore.
So I'd say to young kids, like, go and join an AI startup. And the reason I say startup is because you're going to be closer to the decision making. You're going to learn more. You can have more exposure than like if you went and worked at, I don't know, a Google or something. Sure. And also it's the cheapest way to fail when you're young, right? Like you can observe the company fall into the graveyard without there being a huge cost to you. I would agree.
I mean, I think that is a tremendous opportunity to do that. But again, I've seen other paths work too. I've seen people join bigger companies, and move around inside of that company and get super valuable skills. And then eventually kind of break out as an entrepreneur as well. And maybe you wanted to save up some money and obviously if you're doing a little bit of a bigger company, you're able to do that and prioritize doing both. And then, you know, once you have that kind of nest egg of sorts, you can then break out.
And so I don't know. It's like the, I used to think, and you and I, we were talking about this before. I used to think that, you know, hey, I've got all this advice. I'm going to just going to give it. And the more and more I, on a personal basis, I'm not sure I'm in a great position to give advice on many things. And so I try to stay away from it. I can't help myself when I feel like people are doing it, but I try to not do it as much as I do. And it's actually something I'm deeply conscious about because I don't think that there's one path in life.
I think that there are many paths in life. And of course, there are really bad ones, but... Some of the more amazing life stories aren't the obvious ones. It is not the people even doing the sort of, hey, I joined a startup or I did this and that. It may be the person who spent his entire life in a lab to only get so frustrated in the end that they end up breaking out and then forming a company because no one else wanted to do the idea that they had in mind.
Or maybe the person who was the least likely to solve that problem, but had really been spending all this time thinking about it and developed this really odd skill while doing their normal day job that then turned out to be really useful to solving this particular problem. And going back to that first company that was acquired, Advertigo, after that was acquired, I read that you retired at 23 years. Yeah. I'm guessing that made you enough money to retire.
Yep. And you're 23, which is in 2006, and you're a retired man living what one can only describe as any 23-year-old's dream. Yeah. Lots of money. I'm guessing there was some champagne there. I think there was a red Ferrari. Yeah. How was that for you? It was amazing. No, all jokes aside, I grew up and as I said, I was kind of like always socially accepted, but didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. And I never had an easy time with girls. Not a bad time, just not as good as if I was widely successful in music or widely successful in sports or any of that stuff.
And I kind of had odd interests because I kept, as I said, kind of moving from group to group. And so I had this idea in my head that I wanted to, you know, be financially independent. I wanted, I thought that once I got to that point, I would start living life. And I thought that, you know, I would be more socially accepted and I would find my tribe. And it's embarrassing to talk about it now, but that was really what I thought. So I thought that if I was lucky and worked really hard, I might be able to retire in my 40s if I worked really hard, but 50s for sure.
And so, you know, getting to that point when I was 22, actually, not 23, it was just mind-boggling to me. And I had that financial target in mind. And I thought, well, once I hit that, I'm just going to like, you know, do something else. And so as you said, I kind of like started frequenting all the nightclubs, bought a sports car, tried to get the girls I could never get before, realizing that, yes, I could get them, but for all the wrong reasons.
And they didn't really care about me. Um, and it was kind of a hollowing thing because it was this kind of, oh, was this what I worked for for such a long period of time? And then, um, only to find out that, um, you know, it was quite depressing. Honestly, I had all these new friends that weren't really great friends at all. Um, luckily I was able to keep my old friends as well. Um, but I realized that this thing I thought I wanted, uh, I just didn't want at all.
And, um, what was the symptom? Um, When we say realized, there's typically symptoms, psychological symptoms or... No, I realized it because I, you know, I started getting all these phone calls from people asking me to come out on Friday evenings and Saturday evenings. And I just, I was just empty. I just had no energy to do that. Um, and I thought to myself, oh, this is odd because the old me thought this was what life was all about. And I had, I had girls call me and like, Hey, you should really come out.
We miss you, all of that stuff. And I realized that I just didn't care. And had, um, I thought that that was, you know, this magical moment. And in fact, um, you know, putting on my computer or playing my guitar, um, was kind of yeah, this is more me. And so something on the back of my head started forming around like, who am I? What do I care about? And it's, it's actually in that process. I met my co-founder because he was the founder of trade doubler and who, uh, bought my, uh, company, uh, And he too, it kind of, the company had IPO'd, he got kicked out of the company.
He, he was like a hundred times more wealthier than I was. Like he, he had like the biggest success in tech Sweden at the time. and had everything going for him, but he didn't know what to do with life. And so that was kind of how we bonded. And we were watching old Godfather movies, eating crisps and talking about what to do in life. And that was like a real friendship moment, a real turning point. And he saw the same thing that I saw. And that was when I realized that I've been approaching this all wrong.
In fact, I always loved working, it was never about money. I always liked learning and I would pay to go learn for someone rather than getting paid for it. But at the same time, I thought work should be hard. That was the thing that I had programmed into me. So work has to be clearly something you don't enjoy doing. So I thought, well, what if you change all of these parameters? What if you create an environment where you can come in and learn from really smart people all the time?
What if you can work on something you actually care about opposed to something that makes money? What if you could have a lot of fun while doing it and not take it too serious? And we started talking and we were bouncing ideas. And Martin, my co-founder, was like asking me like, well, if you really could pick anything, like what would you pick? And I said to him, well, you know, I'd probably pick music, but that's a terrible idea. And he said, well, why is that a terrible idea?
And I said, well, it's a terrible idea because, you know, the industry is going down the drains. It just doesn't work. It's piracy. It's all of these reasons. And he said, okay, but if one would fix it, how would one do? Well, it's kind of stupid. They're trying to regulate it. Clearly, you need to build a better product. That's the only thing that's going to work. So he said, okay, well, how are you going to do that? And it's like, well, I don't know, but maybe you could do this or that.
Okay, well, how would that work? It's like, well, I don't know, but maybe you could do this and that. And how would you make money? Well, I think maybe you could pay out based on how much people were listening. I don't know. And then literally after going through why not a hundred times, I started realizing that, yeah, why not? And why not give this a shot? And I told him from the beginning, you know, that, hey, this is probably going to lose us a lot of money.
I have a hard time seeing this ever being a sustainable business. But I'm in, let's do this. And he said, great, let's do it. And while I was hesitating for some reason, he wasn't. So he was like, this seems fun, let's do it. And that gave me enough confidence where I kind of had found a new purpose again. And instantly I stopped responding to all the people who were trying to get me out in the evenings. And I was like, well, I got something to do.
And then I went back to work again. And it was like pretty much a week from that moment where I felt like I'm happy again. I haven't felt this happy for, you know, the better part of a year. Because it was about a year when I was going through this transition of of just having fun, being retired. First month was fun. Six months in, depressing. Nine months in, am I ever going to get out of this depression to then kind of a year in, finding something else that I truly look forward to.
That felt crazy. And I honestly did not think we would succeed. But if we succeed, I knew it was going to be a big thing. Something really interesting there that I could relate to a lot was this idea that you had a hypothesis about your happiness that had to fail you to know that it was not a valid hypothesis about happiness. And there's so many people, obviously, I mean, there's... I assume it's more than half the population are currently pursuing a hypothesis they have about what will make them happy.
That probably, and this is the thing I always wonder is, does it have to fail them for them to know that that's not the right pursuit? In my case, it did. It had to fail me. I had to feel the anticlimax and then I had to go and buy the big house and then was there for nine months and got out of it as quick as I could. bought the car and then got rid of the car and then just moved as close to the office as I could in a one bedroom studio apartment.
But for a lot of people, I'm like, is there a way for them not to have to go all that way and have it fail them? Well, I think that there's certain life experiences that you can't learn from other people. You just have to live it. And I think it's not much about sort of the monetary thing or the status thing. Although I would probably say status, whether or not you should really seek it, I think is one of those things that we all have to go through.
I think everyone can talk about it. Don't seek attention, don't seek fame, don't seek all these things, but we're human beings. We want to be well liked by other people. And so I think that is probably one of them. But in general, I think the further away it is from anything you know and can relate to, I think we have to experience parts of it. So, you know, one of the most amazing thing that I get to do these days for my friends is from like back when is I take them on these crazy experiences.
right? You know, I'm fortunate enough that I get to see some of the coolest people in the world whether it's musicians but athletes and so on that they're able to get a glimpse of my life and I love it because you know, they're looking at it with this kind of shy like imagination and wonder about some things that I'm going through but I also see the other side when they're like is it really that much work? wow, I would never want to do this. And it's quite helpful because as we started out saying, they have this idea of what the life is.
So I kind of liked bringing them along on the journey where they get to see it. And then you can see that there are aspects of it that they like and then other aspects that they would never ever want to get into. So, you know, I think it might be possible to kind of simulate that experience, but I think you have to experience it very much up close. Certainly when you're talking about wealth and if you come from having none, I think almost everyone then would instantly need to experience a little bit of it to at least kind of understand whether that's important or not.
Especially if you get it, like we both did, probably in our 20s and so on. Had I worked up until my 40s, I may have kind of realized, hey, this isn't life. I'm having children, I'm having my wife, this is amazing. I got this experience being a single guy trying to chase girls. And all I'd seen was on MTV how all of the rappers were throwing around money and having 20 or 30 girls at the nightclub. And, you know, hey, I wanted that too. One thing I'm really interested in is you said you got to nine months and you were depressed.
Nine months after the sale. There are so many people now. And this is why I asked about what the symptoms of that were. It's hard to know when we're drifting down the wrong path because it creeps up on us like a frog in a frying pan. I remember a time working seven days a week and this feeling in my chest of, I would describe it as like a... a subtle growing emptiness. And that was for me in hindsight, I was lonely. And I didn't know I was. So those symptoms that you encountered at nine months in, in a way that someone might relate to them, what were those feelings?
I think my entire life, as I mentioned, I've been struggling to fit in. And I think it's something we probably share and have in common. And I somehow thought that this would help. When the situation was new, it did feel like I found my new tribe and it did feel like they, you know, this early excitement, everyone's calling you, everyone wants you to be part of something that you before may not have been able to enjoy and may not get those phone calls and may not get into the hottest night clubs and the club promoters, like putting you on the list plus 10 and all that stuff, the social currency.
So it was thrilling. It was absolutely amazing. And it truly was this kind of like, wow, I've made it kind of feeling. But after you experienced the 10th time, and I somehow had this idea that it would translate into this continuous feeling of that thing or translate into something more meaningful... I sort of realized that, no, wait a minute, it's the same experience again, but it's lost a little bit of a charm. And I started now getting the hangarounds that were trying to get in with me because, you know, they realized that maybe I would buy the bottles.
I was seeing people at the table come up and grab a glass and then run away. all of that kind of thing and it's slowly sort of dawned upon me that you could replace me by just anyone else that had the money and the connection that I had at that time thereby the status and it really wouldn't matter And I was listening to, I think his name is Morgan Housel, the author who talks about psychology of money, and he kind of talked about the Ferrari syndrome, and he basically describes that everyone who aspires to buy a Ferrari thinks of themselves and say, oh, well, one day when I'm in this Ferrari, everyone's gonna look at this Ferrari, and they're gonna be amazed with me.
Yet what we all do is we look at the Ferrari and we want to sit there. We actually don't care about the individual that's currently sitting there. So this kind of paradox, so to speak. And that's very much how I felt about my life. And you're right. you push that to a side and say, well, surely this is fun. And you have all these other people coming out and then you kind of bury it. And then it keeps coming up and then it comes up again and then it comes up more and more and more.
§02Transcript — part 2
And I didn't realize what it was at first because I was like, surely I'm just being foolish. This is life. And everyone was rewarding me on the outside too, saying, well, I didn't life you lived this amazing. How cool is not to be retired and just not having to do anything. But I wasn't learning and I wasn't forming genuine connections with people. I was just being and yes, I got status, but I realized I never did anything for status and I actually didn't care in the end for being status.
I cared about belonging, but not in that group. I wanted to be in another group that cared about me for being me. And you must have learned a lot now in hindsight about what the core components of you being sufficiently happy are. You've used a few of them there, like learning was one of them, belonging. What are the other core components of you think for someone, it's easier to just talk about ourselves here, for you to be stable? Yeah. I realized that I also need to be allowed to be by myself.
Right. So I used to, in prior relationships, before meeting my wife, I used to think, you know, you're in a relationship, you constantly need to do something with the other party, and it was draining me. And I used to think there was something wrong with me because I wanted to be by myself for most of the time. And being comfortable with that I am that way, that I thrive on loneliness, not all the time because I can feel lonely, but for quite a lot of time, perhaps more so than most normal people like being lonely.
I'm just finding myself in that place where I just pursue whatever is top of mind for me. I am sort of in my own thoughts, wandering, dreaming, scheming. You know, that's been very important too because I used to think there was something wrong with that. And then my wife, luckily, she's kind of the same. She does her thing and I do mine thing. And we love that we can do stuff with each other, but we're also perfectly happy doing things on our own.
And that kind of taught me also quite a lot about myself in that because, again, we are social animals. And I am too, by the way. I love social. hanging out with my friends, but I also love being by myself. So I think having a positive impact, not just on myself, I have to feel good about what I'm doing and know that it helps someone. Being able to learn, being able to have fun while doing it and then be in an environment where I can be lonely and then can come back without that being sort of socially awkward Like one of my favorite things that I can do with my close friends is I can literally, let's say I would host a dinner.
I can host a dinner and I get an idea. It's very uncommon, but I'll get an idea and I will walk away and disappear for an hour and I'll come back. And that's like something that's kind of socially unacceptable in most situations. I do realize that. So I try to not do that if I'm with strangers because... They won't understand. They won't understand. But my real friends, they know that about me. And they're like totally cool. So they just hang out.
And then when I come back, I love that they're there. And I love that they're hanging out with my kids or hanging out with my wife and doing other stuff and just being comfortable in that. That for me is like a perfect dinner is one where I would be social. I would get an idea, walk away, think about it for a moment, get collect my thoughts, get energy, write it down and come back. filled with energy from that and then you know continue the conversation that's a great example of something I love doing So that's actually happened where you've been at a dinner party with friends and then you've had an idea and you've left.
My thing there is if I'd left, so the first thing is I'm not sure my girlfriend would be very happy. She understands that I'm like that. She understands that I love being alone. She understands that I get ideas at unpredictable times and that idea might suck me away. She probably wouldn't be that happy about it. Probably needs to have a conversation about that. But also, if I went away, I would need to start working on the idea. Because I'd get so energized about the thing that I'd then spend all night like, sorry guys.
Yeah, that happens, by the way. It happens that I like finish halfway through the dinner and just disappear and don't come back to... I will say my friends usually, even my close friends are like, hey, we came to hang out with you, not like to see you for half an hour, then you're disappearing. But it happens. But I can obviously equally be there for all the dinner too. And, and yeah, I mean, it is one of the social oddities I think that I do, um, with my close friends.
Um, and, uh, again, I, I know it's highly socially unacceptable in most situations, but, but if you really think about it as an introvert, uh, as I said, I'd usually thrive on, I need social elements, but I get most of my energy being by myself, um, All right. And so then from an energy balance perspective, being with people, it gives me a lot of ideas. It's great, but it also empties my energy reserve and going away, filling them up again, coming back.
It is probably the ideal way for me. If you ask me, like, what would a perfect night look like? It would probably be that. How do you then balance romance and relationships? And my partner, I think her attachment style and her love language is like quality time. So I often violate that love language because of what you've just described. We could be Saturday in a park and then I think about something or get an email and then I'm off away on my own little world.
Yeah, I mean, that's certainly the risk. Again, I'm fortunate enough that my wife is kind of very similar to me in that regard. So she too leaves dinners and has her ideas and, you know, do that. So I think we're more similar. We try to make sure that one of us stay because it gets very awkward otherwise. But if you're both like that, do you have to have rules though for when you do bond? Yeah. Yeah, well, that's the thing. That's actually the harder thing for us is finding that quality time.
So I mean, there's two parts. You can either have, I like defaults. So you can have like the default is we spend time together or the default is we're in a relationship, but we don't spend time together. And so you have to make time where you're actively finding something you both are interested in, and you want to spend time on together. Yeah. And I think we're more that. And I think most people probably with kids would recognize that because the kids come first in the relationship anyway.
So your relationship to your significant other is probably, you know, the second priority in that relationship. And your wants to kids are the first. So I don't think that's uncommon, but I think changing that default could be really important. And again, if it's something that's really important to my wife, of course I'm going to be present. She's really into horse riding. I'm not, but I know it matters to her greatly. So not only will I try to speak to her every morning when she wants to talk about that, but I also show up for her competitions or I show up for important practices.
that she has as well. And there are aspects of the horsing thing where we can bond and have great quality time as well. As it is, she loves hearing about my entrepreneurial endeavors as well. And we find quality time through that. And then we have date nights like most couples do. And yeah, I mean, if you're at the restaurants, you don't just really walk up and get away. Of course, you're gonna spend that quality time as well. Starting Spotify. When I heard the Spotify story, I really wanted to meet you because I consider myself to be ambitious, but there are some challenges that I would just view as impossible.
And at the time when you consider how the music industry was, that it's ran by these big record labels predominantly, and they own the music, to be a young kid from Sweden, and believe that you could change that, for me, is a special type of delusion. Like, it's just an impossible task. It's what I just would have thought, okay, some things are the way they are. They're removable objects. That is one of them. Why didn't you think that was an impossible task?
Well, I think for several reasons, but I think that is the beautiful naivety of an entrepreneur as well, right? We move mountains. I'm sure Elon was, you know, even more insurmountable thing, electric cars, and there hadn't been a successful car companies for... I think a century or something, or at least many, many decades in the US. And he managed to do that. So I think it's part delusion. But the other part I think also is that what I realized is before even committing to this idea, the why not part, I probably spent 500 hours learning about this problem.
And the scarcest resource we have in the world today by far is time. And when you have high quality people that spend thousands of hours on a problem, you find new solutions. And so the biggest thing for humanity, I believe, is simply that. I believe we're capable of doing practically anything, but there aren't that many people that can see these multi-dimensional things with that right experience that happens coming at that right time. They're spending thousands of hours of trying to needle in a haystack, see that opportunity through that very, very tiny prism.
And even today, when I think about some of my other businesses, it kind of worked the same way. So I started a healthcare business about five years ago, but I was spending, I think the first interview when I mentioned it was in 2009. And I started the company five years ago, 2018. So I probably spent a decade thinking about this problem. and I couldn't figure out a solution. 2008? Yeah. You started the company in 2008, but you started- No, no, no.
I started the company, the healthcare company in 2018. 18, right. But I started thinking about it 2008. Oh, okay. So I have a notebook with all my crazy ideas. Most of them amount to nothing. Quite often someone else comes along and dust them and I'm happy and it's amazing. But every now and then nothing happens for a great period of time and I kind of feel that itch to maybe make a difference myself. And I say that because the realization there was I had spent up until that point thousands of hours understanding the healthcare system, why it is the way it is, the incentive schemes and what the NHS is doing and what someone else is doing and the public healthcare system, insurance, business direct-to-consumer things, the...
the longevity curves of human beings, the disease groups, the costs, curves, like all of those aspects about it, similar to how you're describing looking at rockets. But, you know, imagine you spending a thousand hours of rocket, not just kind of casually researching it. I'm sure you will find novel ways of how to attack the problem. It may not be because, you know, if you're not a physicist, you may not come up with the next rocket engine, but you may find another twist too on how to attack this problem.
And I don't really think it comes down to that. And so in the space of music, I don't know anything about the music industry going into it. But I would argue a few years into it, I was probably one of the most foremost experts on copyright in the world around like the DMCA and what the US copyright regime look like and what other regimes look like and how, you know, performance rights societies, label rights and what kind of rights, mechanical rights, performing rights.
All of those different aspects, all the different code ISRC numbers, ISBN numbers, and how they're related and so on and so forth. And, you know, I find like people either get too muddled in on the details and don't see the bigger picture, or they stay too top level picture to really see the new ones. And the question is, how do you dive deep enough where you see it and figure out which problems to solve in what order? And I was at that point by probably 2007 having spent a year on Spotify, but the team was super small, so it really wasn't a big commit at that time.
And I wasn't sure at that time. But then I realized that, hey, this is actually possible because we'd built the product that showcased the technology of what we were doing. And it felt like if you had all the world's music on your hard drive, So then the real problem ended up being, can we get the music industry to accept this? And to that, I had no idea. But I felt like this is so obviously, if this came out in the marketplace, what consumers would ask for.
Now, the only question is, is the music industry going to allow this? And that took me another year and a half, 18 months, to learn the answer. And it was completely binary. We almost died probably four times in that process and ran out of money and record companies saying, no, this is never gonna happen, until eventually one day, the stars aligned and we were able to launch. But that was not a given, but it felt like the right bet to make because You know, it was a binary outcome.
Either we'd fail, the price wasn't all too bad. If we would succeed, it was clearly so that at least this would resonate very well with consumers. Was there any moments where you thought that it wasn't going to happen, i.e. conversations you had with record labels where someone very high up says, absolutely no way? Many times. I would say probably once every month or two over a two-year period, I thought that this probably won't pan out. And it was incredibly demoralizing.
I usually joke, but like in the beginning of that process, I had hair and then in the end of it, I lost all of the hair. I probably gained 30 pounds in weight during that period of time. It was awful. But throughout, my co-founder, Martin, probably a factor of just who he is as an individual, but also probably because he didn't participate in these meetings, kept being really upbeat, kept being, you know, amazing support and said, don't worry about it.
You're going to figure it out. And he just kept believing in me. And then he also said a few times, you know, when that wasn't enough, he said, don't worry about it. We'll figure out something else. If this doesn't work out, it felt to me like I always had that safety net. And it was just the amount, the push that I needed to do this. And again, I'm talking about not giving advice, but the advice that I do give to other people is to share the burden with someone.
It is so important. And I know I get most of the credits for Spotify, but it is really a team effort from the Gustavs and Alex and all those people who, But then also in the early days from Martin in believing in me and knowing this kind of supernatural ability that I'm going to pull it off somehow. That must have told you a story which I guess has stayed with you about perseverance and the power of perseverance. The double-edged sword to that is...
sometimes it's right to quit as well. And knowing when to persevere and knowing when you're just wasting your time, which is, as you said, the most important currency of all. That's where art meets science. There is no scientific answer because it depends. It's an art to know when something is futile and when something is worth doing. But I call it that sort of binary outcome, but with uneven distribution, right? Right. So if you think about it as a curve, even if it's 50-50 whether you succeed, but on the upside, you can win a lot more than you can lose, and all you can really lose is one time and the upside maybe 100, it's probably worth persuading.
Obviously, that's the science part. The art thing is, okay, well, is it really 100 times? Is it 10 times? And have I already lost, but I'm just not aware of it? That's the art. And also in that I hear an optimism bias from two co-founders. The constant, oh, we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. How important do you think that is? Especially, you know, you hire a lot of people. Is that something you're like looking for in the people that you work with that bias towards?
We'll figure it out. I think again it depends on the role you're hiring for. You need a team. I think it's really important that you just don't surround yourself with just yes people or optimists. You need the naysayer in the room as well. You need the people who will balance it out and be the one who says, I'm not sure this is going to work out. And so often I think that's the important part. We keep talking about it with CFO or salespeople, but again, you can have a deal-making CFO and a salesperson that's happy-go-lucky.
it may not be a great combo. You may want the CFO to be skeptical about the sales pipeline and a happy-go-lucky salesperson or the inverse. Maybe like really diligent that and the CFO that maybe sort of like, don't worry about it, we will sort it out. But I think so much about that is the subtleties. We don't have a perfect model of the world. And the more experience I have, it's a cheesy thing to say, but the less I realize that I actually know.
And so much of these are actually down in the nuances and most people are... above the nuances don't really understand the issues well enough or too bogged down in the details to understand the bigger picture. And going that sort of up and down, that's sort of super detail oriented, but also being able to go up and see the big pictures. That is, and simplifying very complex concepts. I think some of the most amazing entrepreneurs in the world are experts at And that is a superpower.
And that is certainly one that I'm trying to hone and work on. But when you see it like Steve Jobs, when you think very complex things and people say he didn't understand engineering and technical problems, it's not true. Yes, he may not have been an engineer, he may not have known how to write code, but he certainly could empathize with what made an amazing engineer tick, empathize with different technical solutions, will have different inputs and outputs.
And he understood it. And he was brilliant in taking very complex ideas and understanding how to make that resonate for the everyday person. These tales I hear of you sort of being outside record labels and waiting for the CEO to come out so that you could catch them or trying to accost, I don't know, the assistant outside and asking when the CEO was coming outside so that you could get a meeting with them. Yeah. Are these tales true? As with many, they're probably exaggerated a little bit.
Where is the truth? Well, the truth is, that certainly happened, but it wasn't, you know, I've heard people recounted us that I slept outside of the record labels, kind of in a sleeping bag. That didn't happen. That happened another time in my career, but it wasn't... It didn't happen there, but it certainly happened that I'd book a week, fly to New York with no meeting booked, with basically an open calendar and about 20 phone calls a day just trying to figure out a time to get on the schedule of a senior VP or a CEO, etc., That certainly happened.
And that taught me another thing too, which is that these assistants, like you better befriend them because they are the keys to the kingdom. And most people don't care about them at all, but they're very influential, they're very powerful. And, you know, that was hard in the beginning, but then I realized that they got to see me as an individual. I saw them as an individual and eventually You know, this is not, we tend to believe the world is more logical than what it is, but a lot of it is based on relationships.
So eventually some of them started taking a liking to me. And so when there was the opportunity and they could prioritize 10 other things for that CEO to do, but I was there, I was friendly and easy to work with, show up at no moment's notice, even if it was 20 minutes before finding out about it, I would show up. And so I was easy to deal with. So take away all that complexity in order to achieve the outcome that I wanted to do. And sometimes that is as simple as it is.
Just be consistent, be the easiest person to deal with, and you'd be surprised how many problems it solves. Yeah. Did you invest your personal capital into starting Spotify? Because I read again that you'd spent pretty much all of your personal wealth to start the company. Yeah, I did. So I invested not all of it, but quite substantial amounts of it. And my co-founder invested even more, but he obviously had a much larger sum of money from the beginning.
So all in all, I think we invested about $10 million. into this by ourselves, which was also crazy because back then, today, 10 million into a startup just isn't a big number. Many startups that have done that before, but doing that on a seed stage back in 2007, that just was unheard of. It was usually 500k seed check sums, et cetera. What if it hadn't worked out? What would have been the personal implications for you financially? The personal implications, I went from not having to have a job to then probably having to go back to having a job.
So I basically took that security that I built up, that 22 set for life, and I gave that up in a moment's notice. And... Yeah, I mean, I don't know what to say. I think from a purely logical point of view, it was probably a terrible decision, but betting on myself and betting on yourself would probably be, again, I say I should give advice, but it is probably the best advice I could give many people is, you know, because especially those that want to invest in various startups, et cetera, but they may not have a lot of money.
And then I always say, well, why don't you just better yourself instead? Why don't you just try to work for one of these startups, like you said, and maybe take a little bit more equity and a little bit less pay and take out of your cash instead? Because that way you increase the likelihood, hopefully, if you know you're good, of the company being a success. And it just feels like the more prudent thing to do. And so I had a sneaky feeling that that was the right thing to do.
But investing as much probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. Spotify goes on to be, I mean, success is probably an understatement. I know the journey to that success had multiple near death experiences to get there. One of the key things, key moments I reflect on as a Spotify customer is when Apple launched their competing product, Apple Music, in 2015, I believe it was. And there was lots of articles saying that this would be the death of Spotify.
I think I was even concerned. As a very loyal Spotify user, I thought, fuck, they have all the phones, they're kind of like the mafia, they could just squash you. Most companies, when Apple comes into their territory, shake in their boots. What was it like in your office that day when Apple Music launched a competing product? You know, when you live in the thick of the fire, you're not concerned about the things that everyone else is concerned about.
I usually say public perception lacks about six to 12 months what's actually going on. And so in our case, we'd known that Apple's going to launch something for probably the better part of a year because they had the Beats acquisition beforehand and we were hearing all sorts of rumors, etc. about what it was. absolutely you have to be worried when one of the greatest companies on earth decides to compete with you. So we were concerned about it. And we were kind of doubling down on what our positioning was going to be.
So you kind of like double and triple check whether or not, you know, you were deluding yourself into believing things to be true. And so for instance, in our case, one of the big things, we had some strategic pillars that we were focusing on. One of them we call ubiquity, because we always knew this would eventually be the case. We thought that consumers would value the ability to work across all devices and all ecosystem. And our bet would be that, Any competitor we might have had would actually focus on reinforcing their own ecosystem and not care about all the other stuff.
So the primary reason they were into a music service would be to make their own devices better, not to make the world's best music service. And so that's why we made such an effort of integrating into cars, integrating into all sorts of weird devices, smart fridges, whatever you might think. And so it was kind of like reiterating that, but I felt pretty good about that position and going back. And then there's always this sort of like, what if they figured out something that we just wouldn't have thought about?
And I remember we were constantly talking to the product teams about this. And like, what if they come up with this? And we're literally trying this, game theorizing every possible angle on it. But I think at the end of the day, we kind of went through the thousand scenarios kind of thing. We knew we had prepared as well as we could we anticipated a certain type of product. There was this kind of 1% or 10% chance, whatever you want to quantify it as, where we would just be wrong and they'd come up with something that widely superseded any of our expectations.
But that very day, remember we'd been preparing for that day for so long. So the first reaction was kind of them announcing it, which we expected them to do. And then seeing the walkthrough of the product and realizing that, okay, well, we prepared for this. We thought about this, et cetera. And so weirdly enough, as the rest of the world kind of like gasped for air, we were thinking about it, okay, well, this was what we expected. And back to that point, distribution was the amazing thing.
They hadn't come up with something on the product side that we just didn't anticipate. But it was really just about distribution. And there was nothing we could do to guard ourselves against it. But we felt like we had a superior experience on the personalization side. The fact that if you have a Windows machine and an iPhone, Spotify would work, but Apple Music wouldn't at that time. So there were many of those things that I thought had a better positioning than they had.
I've long thought that. I've tried both. I mean, I tried it when it came out and I couldn't stick to it. And I think me and my friends who are in my music group, we all concluded that the personalization, how Spotify understands me is really the thing. It's hard to know why you do what you do as a consumer. But from analyzing it a bit more deeply, it just felt like I built, there was a lot of investment I'd done to my playlists and all those things.
But Spotify just knew me better. It seems to have much more data than data on me and understands me and is more of a bespoke solution to me than Apple was. And also the user experience is not great. And I just can't get past that. I just, so I tried it and I bounced. I just stuck with Spotify. Apple are, I used the word mafia earlier on. A lot of people don't know this, but they take 30% revenues on pretty much every new app in the store. They've rejected your audio book app multiple times.
There's a rumor going around that they even delay how quickly you can release new updates of your app and delay how that reaches phones. What's your opinion on Apple and what they do and how they conduct themselves? Well, as a consumer, let's start off with Apple is a fantastic company and they make amazing products. I really do believe that. I've been a Mac user since I can't even remember, probably late 90s when I could first afford one all the way to now.
And obviously you use the iPhone and Apple watches and all that. So let's start with that. And I think that's hard to square then that there's this other company that's fiercely focused on just itself and constantly trying to do things by itself and not working well with others. and those are perhaps two different sides of the same coin. But the way that manifests itself, I think that it's a company in many cases that still sees itself as an underdog, but don't realize that they become Goliath.
And so many of the tactics that made it the rebel kind of thing are now stifling innovation and it's really hurting consumers to great extent. With the 30% you talked about, with the fact that Spotify can't, or any developer, if you don't pay the 30%, you can't even speak to your consumers. It's kind of absurd. So, you know, there's a ruthlessness on the business side of Apple. And perhaps it's always been so. I don't know. I never got the opportunity to meet Steve Jobs.
But yeah. where just from an ethos point of view, it's just not me. And I have a hard time squaring that with me as the consumer and me as the business leader. And needless to say, I do believe that Apple can and should play fair. And I think it would be way better for the world if they did. And I think that it would actually help them in many regards to switch their tactics and realize that they are the Goliath at this point and not David. And so, yeah.
One of the things I want to close on is your philosophy. So I guess it's the same answer because Spotify's philosophy towards what's made it successful will probably be in many respects a reflection of your philosophies towards business and more broadly towards life. But when I sit here, and I think a lot of people will sit here and say, There's clearly something unique about you, about the way you approach problem solving, problems, life, business, all of those things that has been, that has defined you and set you apart.
Are you aware of what that is, what those principles are? No, I don't think so. But I think you're right in that, you know, the way I would describe Spotify to people, you're right that it is scary sometimes watching Spotify, trying to watch it from a distance and not just be in it. Because sometimes it's doing things where I'm like, how did people know that we were supposed to do it this way? And it would be how I would approach solving a problem.
And it's... kind of how we've internalized certain things. But the best way is it's 17 years old now, and it is a teenager that's liberating itself. So it's not 100% me. In fact, it is this much broader, different being. There are aspects of it that hasn't taken after me at all in product development. Gustav is a formidable product leader, as an example, and Alex is a formidable, business leader and the two of them are now leading more of the day-to-day and they're certainly instilling their personal values and their personal perspective of the company too, which I think they're totally entitled to doing having been with the company for 12 plus years, both of them.
§03Transcript — part 3
But it is interesting seeing it because we're approaching things now in a way I wouldn't always do. It's not inconsistent with important principles of mine, but it's certainly not directed. And the other part is I started as a 23-year-old. And the 23-year-old Daniel, while many parts are the same, the 40-year-old Daniel with two kids, having seen that, have changed perspectives as well. I have a different feeling about work and the importance of that in my life.
Still very important, but may not be the sole most important thing that I do, just to mention one. And so it has similarities, but there's differences to me as an individual too. But I think if you compare me to 23-year-old Daniel, to 30-year-old Daniel, to 40-year-old I've evolved too and candidly I'm in that period at the moment where I'm perhaps trying to figure out who the 40 year old Daniel really is. Because it's a different one than the 30 year old one.
Maybe it's subtleties. But I think in quite a big way also just thinking about something like culture. The 23 year old Daniel culture was having a ping pong table. 30 year old Daniel would have said, yeah, culture is important, but didn't really understand why. And the 40 year old Daniel would be, you know, the 30 year old Daniel would be more strategy than culture actually. And the 40 year old Daniel is all about culture, almost to the point where strategy is secondary, if not even tertiary to that.
40 year old Daniel is all about culture. Yeah, way more so. What is the culture? Well, that's the amazing thing because it is the most scalable thing done right of a company. And it's the hardest thing, right? Because it is everything and nothing. It is every positive action that's happening in the companies, every negative action of company, every person that's joining, every person that's leaving is impacting culture. And so in its essence, I believe culture is about rewarding the positive behaviors you want to see in the company and obviously dissuade the negative.
What are the positive behaviors you want to see? Well, one of them is taking risks and failing. And how do you do that when you have 8,000 or 9,000 people inside of a company responsibly? How do you, when the common status quo is, we don't like failure. You don't get promoted based on failure. You get promoted based on being successful. Annie Duke has this thinking in bets. She talks about, I love that, is thinking about poker ships on the table.
And she said one time when we spoke, she said to me, it's like a company is like, everyone has chips at the table. We just don't know how many we have. And so the people that have been successful have way more. So they have leniency and allowancy in the culture of any organizations to do more than someone who just started. and perhaps have lesser ones. And if you failed enough times, what's naturally going to happen is that you won't have the same agency in a large organization to impact things too.
So then the counterpoint to that would be, well, how do you then... create an environment where people are allowed to take risks and then balance that with, say, Spotify at this point where we have a huge amount of responsibility too. We have tens of millions of creators that have their livelihood of the platform. So we can't just experiment with how we're paying out and so on and so forth, right? And 550 million consumers are We have to be responsible with their data.
We can't, you know, put new things in front of them without testing them and so on and so forth. And so there's this constant tension between being innovative, taking risks, and, you know, at the same time, obviously being responsible. And that's hard. But that's all about culture. I'm absolutely obsessed with the subject of culture because I really think it's an underappreciated factor in why businesses are the way they are. I think you could basically take...
a person off the street and the culture you drop them in determines the behavior you'll get from them. And so, and having sat here and interviewed like Sir Alex Ferguson's ex-teammates, you just come to learn that Sir Alex Ferguson's greatness wasn't strategy. They all say to me, I remember Patrice and Everett said to me that he walked in on a, we were playing Arsenal on a Sunday in London. And he walked in and just said, lads, listen, beautiful weather outside, don't fuck up my Sunday and walked out.
Because his thing was about management. He just had this culture. The other thing they said to me, which has always stayed with me is, Rio Ferdinand said to me, how many times do you think he came into the training ground dressing room in 26 years? Like, I don't know, they said twice. Really? Didn't need to come in there, the culture was in there. Yeah. And it was self-policing when it's strong, right? Yeah. But you're right, sports teams, the ones that do really well.
I was being told an Arsenal story that I probably can't share, but you could see bits and pieces of Mikel, you know, how he's pushing that team culture at the moment too, which seems very fascinating. with some of the almost antics seems to be doing this all or nothing season that was I think last season as well. So you can see that and I love studying that with sports teams because it's 11 players on the pitch. How do you make these people gel together and form a team?
Hugely important thing. So I agree, but also like imagine if you had 11 new players you know, can you even form, or Chelsea these days too, right? Can you even create a culture that way? Or is it something that should be done intentionally? I mean, if you're growing a company and growing the number of employees by 50%, two years in a row, most of your employees probably won't have been here even for a year. It will change things. Whereas if you make something where it's more of a gradual change, it's easier, I'm not saying it's trivial, but to kind of have the same culture.
And I think many founders make that mistake when they overhide, they don't understand the implication of the culture. They just look at sort of more warm bodies but it's all these other subtle things that starts breaking. Daniel, we've got a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. And I love this question because you don't like giving advice. So this is a perfect one for you. What is the advice that someone could have but didn't give you at 21 years old that would have made you more successful at the thing you now do?
I think we spoke about it. I've gone through iterations of trying to learn from other people and model that. A huge part of that has been kind of optimizing for my strengths and not covering my weaknesses. And I wish that I realized much earlier on that perhaps my superpower is that I'm pretty good all-arounder and not particularly good at anything. So I used to think, for instance, that I had this brilliant, you know, I modeled myself on the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world of like, I need to run every product meeting, I need to be the best engineer.
product person in the world. It just wasn't me. And it took me a while to realize that and be comfortable saying that. But I have realized that I do like a lot of different things. I love learning about new things. And perhaps that is my superpower to realize that The person who's doing PR, that's quite an interesting thing to learn about. There are interesting things about employment law, how that came to be and trying to understand that. And the list goes on and on and on.
And I love that. And I wish... I would have probably understood that earlier about myself because that would have allowed myself to not model so much on other people, but somehow be more introspective and listen to myself. And I think that's really one of the things I take away from you said very eloquently, is that you're proof that entrepreneurs can buck a number of different trends, you know, and still be wildly successful. And that evidence means to someone like me, that there's no such thing as a entrepreneur in terms of how they operate, what they're interested in, and that there's many ways to be a successful entrepreneur.
And it really, from what you've just said there, the most surefire way of becoming a successful entrepreneur is actually looking inward versus looking outwards. Like, oh, how does Elon do it? Or how does Mark do it? Or how does Daniel do it? Which stays with me a lot because it's really changed my thinking on a few really important things that I think I've been... Yeah, I've been limiting myself on. Daniel, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you for building such a great business and building a business that is, I guess even though you're number one, still embodies the kind of first principle underdog mentality. There's something about Spotify, which is, it feels, I know you probably don't like this word, but I don't know if you do, but it feels more like a family because I've met a lot of the people there. I know a lot of them. And they're like really nice people that are very open books.
It doesn't feel like a big corporate to me. It's very humble in its approach, but it's also very ambitious. And it strikes that balance really wonderfully well. And it's a company and a brand that I deeply resonate with for that reason. It's a wonderful thing. And I think, you know, you talked about wanting to do work that brings good to the world. The good to the world that Spotify has done, in my view, is... in quantifiable because I mean, music is a, is a wonderful thing, but what you're doing now and podcasting as well and how you've really owned and driven that industry forward for people like me to have these longer form, more contextual conversations.
I think it's hard to measure the good that's done to the world, but it's certainly an important one. Thank you. That means a lot to me. And you're right. You know, it's about being humble while doing it, but you know, ambition and humbleness may not seem like they go hand in hand. And so I think you captured the, essence of what we like spotify to be at its best which is super ambitious but yet humble humble with all of its past success all of that stuff that we're still learning super curious i i've never told the story before but when i went i went on a trip to sweden and i was there with some of your colleagues so gustav who's head of product right and alex who's head of business everything that makes money yep and i was there with shaquille as well who's a good friend and colleague of yours and has been for a long time yep And they sat me down at a table for about 30 minutes or an hour and said, you're a podcaster, Steve.
Tell us everything we need to know about podcasting. How can we make Spotify better for you as a podcaster? And for the very people at the top of Spotify to sit and listen so intently, to me and then to act upon what I said and then give me feedback weeks later and say, okay, we're now, you know, working on this, having listened to you. It's not something that a big corporate that was arrogant or very sure of themselves or had lost that mentality would ever do.
That stayed with me because it's hard to do that when you get big, to really be curious and humble. And that's exactly what Spotify is. So I wish, I wish you all the luck in the world and I'm sure you won't need it because you've got a wonderful culture of people and great people around you. But just wanted to say thank you for that. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Thank you.
And I mean, again, yes, we listen, but it's also because you are innovating on your side and with all the aspects, even seeing your studio here today, it's kind of like bringing it to the next level. So that's amazing to see that you're able to do that. Amazing to bring these conversations to the world and we all get the benefit to learn from them as well without maybe having the opportunity like you have to meet all these individuals too. And that's gonna bring a lot of growth journeys for a lot of people too.
So thank you.