Transcript

00:00 I'm an introvert not amazing academically didn't feel like it belonged anywhere average at best and yeah you created Spotify. Yeah Daniel Peck Spotify founder ncuo. He's not only saved the music industry. He's created a 50 billion dollar company and he himself is worth more than four billion dollars flunked high. School then started on my first company and that later got Acquired and you retired at 23. Yeah the first month was fun. Nightclub sports car 20 or 30 girls throwing around money. Six months in realized that this thing I thought I wanted. I just didn't want at all. I was just empty just thinking am I ever. Gonna 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's 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 Spotify I love it. I read the journey to that success I had multiple near-death experiences. It was awful ran out of money. I lost all of the air gained 30 pounds and the problem was I modeled myself from The Mark zuckerbergs of the world. Around every meeting I did the best product person and 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 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 I'll miss it like an oven I see at our earliest context as like an oven that baked us into who we are today. What is that context I'm a product of a very very strong single mom a woman that probably had a ship on her shoulder um um 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 um and I think she kind of uh just well hell-bent on making a point of showing that you know um. 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 um doing a pentathlon and the pentathon 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 in Stockholm would do but she thought that would be a good sort of wide education for me um and and pretty. Much my entire life has been around that I I was kind of clumsy as a kid um. My 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 uh and and so um 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 uh getting to the next paycheck and 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 because uh I I I'm honestly not sure. But I think she wanted me to be broad um just in general um so um and and I 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 like none of that mattered to my mom um. The only thing that mattered and she kept repeating us was that you need to become a good human being um and for her um if I wanted to study sure she thought education mattered and it was important but um not like in other families and the only thing in fact um you know probably influenced. Spotify later on was um I very much come from a music family. My my grandfather was an opera singer. My grandmother was an actress in theater but also a jazz pianist so um like music education was weirdly enough like in the 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 she constantly kept pushing me because she felt that I wasn't. 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 about like just pushing and making the real effort. 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 you reference that she kind of identified. You're an introvert early on. But then I think you said you had a good. You're an easy time in school typically people that are introverted that are um an only child at the time that they go off to school. Often they struggle a little bit yeah 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 yeah what was school like for someone for a kid like that well. I I think you know um. I think there are many types of introverts.Let's begin with that and I can switch it on when I have to uh and certainly. I think the theater helped me um you know. I can be very project a lot of things if I'd like to uh 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 um for me anything with anyone. I'm not comfortable with is really taking a lot of energy um um. But but I think the easy time in school was just uh I loved learning. I've always loved learning so um. You know you put be putting in an environment where you're constantly being forced to learn. New things wasn't a very hard thing for me and um I have a very good um. I used to have a very good memory. I don't have it anymore. But I was able to memorize very easily the concepts and the things that we talked about in school and so um. I think in that end it was very easy for me and then again because my mother tried to make me very broad um 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 really good at Arts uh man. I did you know I probably wasn't the best at any of that stuff either. But it was pretty decent. But I could also be in the math group. I probably wasn't the best of math. But I was pretty decent and um that to be honest is kind of the Story of My Life um 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 in 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.You know 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 and you can see that very clearly with my friend group. Too you'll have artists on the one set and you have entrepreneurs on the other hand and it's very hard for them to speak to each other most times. But I love it. I love um seeing very creative people. I love uh you know business people and scientists mixed together. Whereas the scientist gets very you know have a hard time. I've found uh speaking to and an artist and quite often they're talking past each other and for me it's just I love it um and and that's the blessing and curse when I speak to people that know you and work with you.

09:51 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 gazillion pounds um are you ambitious and what does that actually mean to you um yeah. I'm I'm ambitious um. But I probably am ambitious in the uh. The way my mother taught me to be ambitious which is the inputs right which is um you know. If I see someone with Incredible potential that squanders that potential um I um I asked myself why why are you doing this and why not strive for the great thing and in so many cases in life. I found that the difference between you know aiming super high versus um aiming just a little bit higher than where you are from an effort perspective. It's 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 um 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. Bodacious thing not for everyone maybe maybe not uh. But I don't know that because you'll work with so many people that maybe don't lean into ambition yeah that that's true. But I I also wonder if if that's true uh or whether they're just worried about really testing themselves and understanding where their limits are so. Many people are more afraid of failure than they are of success uh and that stops them from even beginning to try um right and and I find that so many times like the amount of people I'm sure came to you is 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 and oftentimes it's like well for this and that and that reason and and they talk themselves out of it um. 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 yeah and we can either go into like work or university would you do you think the the university system is a little bit outdated yeah. I do um but as with many things um you know I I I don't think it's bad. I don't think it's good either. I think it depends. There are certain people that do well in that structure and and need that kind of rigor of that sort of path to go down and do incredibly well um against um. You know the essays and the Asics 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 a 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 path right um because it's impossible. Otherwise.I think if you want to be an entrepreneur uh the single best thing you can do is to probably study as many businesses 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 um you know we're talking about this but you're behind the scenes version um and and and being able to like work for you in that and see you up up close. It's going to 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 um of what business aspect what um 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 and that's the I think the biggest trick about entrepreneurship is like the the for me uh everyone when they think about the word Innovation. They think that it's something entirely novel yet for me. Innovation um 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 so studying many different things understanding a little bit about business understanding a little bit about um product and how to make that product understanding uh whatever it is that our 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 is many other paths you could take that may even if you're um you know if you have enough. Grits and kind of like are able to put yourself in a situation where you can get in front of the right person start working for them.So much is in life is around people believing in you and and giving you the right place to grow um and and and it's really serendipitous to be honest um. And and I'm certainly a product of all that so I 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 um. You know. 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 yeah. No no no no no yeah. I spend all day like all night till 2am learning about rockets and Ai and all that stuff I'm a self-educated but the institution of Education that is University for me. I just couldn't stay awake yeah in that experience same here but for another person it is exactly what they 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 Masters of Science degree if 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 um 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 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 want to check how you how you would change or add. Alter.This advice is to try and go and join us startup so just for context. I'm talking about people that want to be entrepreneurs here yeah 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 would say the 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. I know at Google or something sure um and also it's the cheapest way to fail when you're young right like you can observe the company fall into the graveyard yeah without there being a huge cost to you. Yeah I I would agree. I mean I I think that is a tremendous um uh opportunity uh to do that um but again I've seen other paths work too. I've seen people. Uh join bigger companies and move around inside of that company and um get a super valuable skills um and then eventually um 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 I don't know I it's like the I used to think um 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 gonna just gonna 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 um and and so I 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 um. It is 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 um but but some some of the more amazing life stories aren't the obvious ones uh. It is not the people. Even doing the sort of hey. I joined the startup or I did this and that it may be the person who spent um started like 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 uh 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 turn out to be really useful to solving this particular problem.I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of spotify and apple and our audio channels the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the Subscribe button. Wherever you're listening to this I would like to make a deal with you. If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better. I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button. The show gets bigger which means we can expand the production bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to doing this thing. We love if you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button wherever you're listening to this that would mean the world to me. That is the only favor I will ever ask. You thank you so much for your time back to this episode and going back to that first company that was acquired at vertigo. After that was acquired um.

21:06 I read that you retired at 23. 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 guessing there was some champagne there. I think there was a red Ferrari. How was that for you it was amazing no no all jokes aside I grew up and as I said I was kind of like always socially accepted but didn't feel like it belonged anywhere and um hi um um. I never had an easy time with girls um not a bad time just not as 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 um and so I had this idea in my head um that I wanted to you know be financially independent um. I wanted I thought that once I got to that point I would start living life and I thought that um you know I would be more socially accepted and I would find my tribe and it's embarrassing to talk about it now um but um you know 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 work really hard but you know 50s for sure and and um so you know getting to that point. When I was 22. Actually not 23. It was just mind-boggling to me and um I had that Financial Target in mind um and I thought well once. I hit that I'm just gonna like you know do something else and and so as you said I kind of like started frequenting all the night clubs. Uh bought a sports car um try to get the girls I could never get before realizing that yes I could get them um 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. But I realized that this thing I thought I wanted uh. I just didn't want at all and um what was the symptom when we say realize there's typically symptoms psychological symptoms or um. No I I realized that because I I'm um you know I started getting all these phone calls from people um asking me to come out on Friday evening. Since Saturday evenings uh 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 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 was kind of yeah. This is more me and so something on the back of my head started forming around like who am I why do I care about it. And it's it's actually in that process I met my co-founder because he was the founder of trade doubler and uh who uh bought my uh company and he too it kind of the company had ipo'd. He got kicked out of the company he he was like a 100 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 um and um you know we were watching like old Godfather movies eating crisps um and and talking about what to do in life uh and and that was like a real friendship moment. A real Turning Point uh and he saw um the same thing that I saw and uh um you know that was when I realized that I've been approaching this all wrong. Uh in fact I always loved working. It was never about money um I always liked learning um and I would pay to go learn for someone rather than getting paid for it and 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 not don't enjoy doing um. 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 balancing ideas and marked and my co-founder was like asking me like Well if you really could pick anything like what what would you pick and I I'm I said some well um. You know I'd probably pick music but that's a terrible idea uh and he said well. Why is that a terrible idea and I said well. It's a terrible idea because you know the industry's going down.The drains it just doesn't work. It's piracy. It's all of these reasons and he said okay but but if one would fix it how would one do well it can 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. Is. They 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 uh. It's like well. I don't know but maybe you could do this and that and how would you make money well. I 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 uh 100 times I started realizing that yeah why not and why not give this a shot and I told him from the beginning. You know uh that um hey this is probably. Gonna lose us a lot of money. I have a hard time seeing this ever being a sustainable business um. But I'm in let's do this and it's a great let's do it um. And while I was hesitating for some reason he wasn't uh 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 um. First. Month was fun six months in depressing uh nine months in am I ever gonna get out of this depression to then count of a year in finding something else that I truly look forward to that felt crazy um 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 had to fail me yeah. I had to feel the anti-climax 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 and 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 yeah yeah but for a lot of people. I'm like is there a way for them not for it for them not to have to go all that way and have it fail them well. I I think that there's certain life experiences um uh that you can't learn from other people. You just have to live live it and I think it's not so much about sort of the monetary thing or the status thing um. 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 of these things but we're we're human beings. We want to be well liked by other people um and so I think that is probably one of them but but in general I think the further away. It is from anything you know and can relate to. I think um we have to experience parts of it. So you know one one of the most amazing thing that I get to do these days for my friends is um from like back when is I take them on these crazy experiences uh right you know I'm I'm fortunate enough that I get to see some of the coolest people in the world. Whether it's musicians but athletes and and so on um that they're able to get a glimpse of my life uh and I love it because um you know they're looking at it. With this kind of child. Shy like imagination and wonder about some some things that I'm going through. But I also see the other side when they're like isn't really that much work wow I would never want to do this and it's it's quite helpful um because as we started out saying they have this idea of what the life is so I kind of like bringing them along on the journey where they get to see it and then um. 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 um so um you know I think it might be possible to kind of simulate that experience um. But I think you have to experience.It's very much up close uh 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 a had I worked up until my 40s I may have kind of realized hey. This isn't life I'm 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 and all I'd seen was on MTV how all of the rappers were throwing around money and uh having 20 or 30 girls at the nightclub and 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 yeah when we're drifting down the wrong path because it creeps up on us like a frog and a frying pan. Yeah I I remember a time working seven days a week and this feeling in my chest if I would describe it as like a a subtle growing emptiness and that was for me in hindsight. I was lonely yep and I didn't know I was yeah so those symptoms that you encountered at nine months in in a way that someone might relate to them. What were those feelings um. I I think my entire life as I mentioned I I've been struggling to fit in um and I think it's something we probably share and have in common and I somehow thought that this would help and um when the situation was new um. It did feel like I found my new tribe and it did feel like they um um. You know this early excitement. Everyone's calling. You everyone wants you to be part of something that you're before may not have been able to enjoy and may not go get those phone calls and get made out of get into the hottest nightclubs in in the club promoters like putting you on the list plus 10 and all that stuff this social currency so it was thrilling it was absolutely amazing and and it truly was this kind of like wow I've made it kind of feeling um but um after you experience the tenth 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 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 we're trying to get in with me because you know they realized that maybe I would buy the bottles um I was seeing people at the table come up and grab a glass and then run away all of that kind of thing and I I it's slowly sort of dawned upon me that you could replace me by just anyone else that had um the money and the connection that I had at that time thereby the status and it really would matter um you know and and um uh you. Know I I was I was listening to. I think it's his name is Morgan. Household um the author who talks about psychology of money and he kind of talked about it. The the the Ferrari syndrome and he basically describes that uh everyone uh who aspires to buy a Ferrari um thinks of themselves and saying 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.

35:32 We actually don't care about the individual that's currently sitting in there. So this kind of um you know Paradox um so to speak and and that's very much how I felt about my life and as you're right right it you push that to the side and you say well surely this you know 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 and I didn't realize what it was at first because I was like surely I'm just being foolish. This is this is life and everyone was rewarding me on the outside too saying what in life you live. This is amazing how cool is not to be retired and just not having to do anything um. But I wasn't learning and I wasn't forming genuine connections with people. Um I was just being and uh yes I got status but I realized I never did anything for status and I actually didn't care in the end uh from 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. Just. It's easier to just talk about ourselves here yeah for you to be stable. Um I I realized um that I also need to be live by be allowed to be by myself right um. So I used to in Prior relationships um before meeting my wife. I used to think you know your relationship. You constantly need to do something with the other party and it was draining me and uh I used to think there was something wrong with me because I wanted to be by myself for most of the time and um and being comfortable with that. I am that way that I thrive on loneliness. Not all the time because I can feel lonely um but um for quite. A lot of time perhaps more so than most normal people like being lonely um. I'm I'm just finding myself in that um place where I just pursue whatever um it's top of mind for me. I am sort of in my own thoughts uh wandering dreaming scheming um you know um that's been very important too because I used to think there was something wrong with that yeah and then my wife. Luckily she's kind of the same. She does her thing and I do mind thing and we love that we can do stuff with each other but we're also perfectly happy doing things on our own um and um and that kind of taught. Me also quite a lot about myself in that because again we are social animals uh and I am too by the way I love um hanging out with my friends. But I also love being by myself. So I think having a positive impact um not just on myself. I have to feel good about what I'm doing and know that it helps someone um being able to learn uh being able to have fun while doing it and um then be in an environment where I can be lonely and then can come back without that being sort of socially awkward uh like one of my favorite things that I can do with my close.Friends is I can literally uh. Let's say I would host a dinner I could host the 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 um and uh that's like something that's kind of socially unacceptable. In most situations. I do realize that so I I try to not do that if I'm I'm with um you know strangers because they wouldn't understand they wouldn't won't understand. But my real friends um. 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 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 uh 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 you've and then you've. My thing. There is if I left so the first thing is. I'm not sure my girlfriend would be very happy yeah. She understands that I'm like that she understands that I love being alone. She understands that I get ideas at predictable times and that idea might suck me away. She probably wouldn't be that happy um about. It probably need to have a conversation about that um 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 then spend all night like sorry guys I yeah that happens by the way it happens that I like finished halfway through the dinner and just disappear don't come back to I would say my friends usually. Uh even my close friends are like uh hey. We came to hang out with you not like to see you for half an hour and then you're disappearing but it happens um um. But I can obviously equally be there for all the dinner too um and and yeah. I mean it is one of the social Oddities. I think that I do um with my close friends um and I again I I know it's highly socially unacceptable in most situations but but if you really think about it as an introvert. As I said I usually thrive on I need social elements. But I get most of my energy being by myself all right and and so then from an energy balance. Uh perspective being with people.It gives me a lot of ideas. It's great but it also empties my energy Reserve then 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 her. I think her attachment style in her love language is like quality time so I often violate that love language because of what you've just described yeah. 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. Yeah I mean that's certainly the risk um again. I'm I'm fortunate enough that my wife was kind of very similar to me in that regard so she too leaves uh dinners and has her ideas and and uh you know do that. So I think we're we're more similar. We try to make sure that one of us stay because it gets very awkward otherwise um but but if you're both like that do you have to have rules though for when you do yeah yeah well. That's the thing that's 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 I like the faults so you can have like the default. This 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. 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 um is probably you know. Uh the second priority in that relationship and in your wants to kids uh are the first. So I don't think that's uncommon. But I think changing that default could be really important um and again if it's something. That's really important to my wife. Of course I'm going to be present. Uh. 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 um. There are aspects of the horsing thing where we can Bond and and have great quality time as well. As it is. She loves hearing about my entire Muriel and diverse as well and and we find quality time through that and then we have date nights like post couples do and uh yeah. I mean if you're at the restaurant you don't just really walk up and get away of course. You're. Gonna spend that quality time as well.

44:35 Starting Spotify when I heard the Spotify story. I 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 like yeah. It's just an impossible task. It's what I just would have thought okay. Some things are the way they are. They're immovable objects that is one of them yeah. Why didn't you think that was a impossible task um well. I I think for several reasons. But I think that is the beautiful narrative team of an entrepreneur as well. Right we move mountains. I'm sure Elon was you know even more insurmountable thing electric cars and it hadn't been a successful car companies for uh. I think a century or something um or at least you know many many decades in the US and he managed to do that. So I think it's it's part illusion. Uh dilution sorry um but but the other part I think um also is that what I realized is for even committing to this idea. So the 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 to me 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 and um um even today when I think about it 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 um. I think the first interview when I mentioned. It was in 2009 um and I started the company five years ago. Uh 2018. So I I probably spent a decade thinking about this problem um and I couldn't figure out a solution 2008. Yeah yeah you started the company in 2008. No no I started the company the Healthcare company in 2018 18. But I started thinking about it 2008. Oh okay um so I have a notebook with all my crazy ideas most of them amount to nothing uh quite often. Someone else comes along and does them and I'm happy and it's amazing um 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 and I say that because like the realization there was um. I'd spend up until that point thousands of hours understanding the Healthcare System why it is for the way it is the incentive schemes and the what the NHS is doing and what someone else is doing and the Public Health Care 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 um about it similar to how you're describing looking at Rockets um but you know imagine you're spending a thousand hours a rocket not just kind of casually researching it. I am 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. Uh too on how to attack this problem and I don't really think it comes down to that and so uh in the space of music I don't know anything about the music industry going into it um 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 um what the U.S copyright regime looked like and what what um other regimes look like and how um you know performance rights societies label rights and what color rights mechanical rights performing rights uh all of those different aspects. The all the different code is RC numbers ISBN numbers and how they related and so on and so forth and and um um you know. I find like people either get too modeled in on the details and don't see the bigger picture or they stay. Two top level pictures 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 um and 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 commits 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're doing and it felt like if you had all the worst 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 a record company saying no 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. I met many times uh I would say um probably once every month or two. Over a two year period. I thought that this probably won't pan out uh and it was incredibly demoralizing I 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 um it was awful um but through it all my co-founder Martin uh probably a factor of just who he is as an individual but also probably because he didn't participate in these meetings uh kept being really upbeat kept being um. You know amazing support and so don't worry about it. You're gonna figure it out and you 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 a safety net and it was just the amount the push that I needed to do this um and again talking about not giving advice but to 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 uh from the gustavs and Alex and all those people but then also in the early days from uh Martin in believing in me uh and and knowing uh or this kind of Supernatural ability that I'm gonna pull it off. Somehow I 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 yeah 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 yeah. You know that's where you know art meets science um. There is no scientific answer because it depends. It's an art to know uh when something is futile and when something is worth doing. But I call it that sort of binary outcome but uh with uneven distribution 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 but the upside maybe a hundred. It's probably worth uh persuading obviously. It's that's the science part the art thing is okay. Well is it really hundred. Times is it 10 times and and have I already lost but I'm just not aware of it um. That's the art and also in that I hear an optimism bias from two co-founders. The the constant now we'll figure it out. We'll figure. It out we'll figure.

54:08 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 will figure it out um. I think again it depends on the road you're hiring for you need a team uh. 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 um I'm not sure this is going to work out um and and so often. I think that's the that's the important part we keep talking about it over the CFO or sales people. But again you can have a deal making CFO and uh salesperson. That's happy go lucky. It may not be a great combo. You may want the the CFO to be skeptical about the sales Pipeline and a happy-go-lucky salesperson or the inverse. Maybe a like really diligent that and a CFO that maybe sort of like don't worry about it. We will sort it out um.But I but I think so much about that is the subtleties we have. We don't have a perfect model of the world um and uh the more experience I have. It's the cheesy thing to say. But the less I realized that I actually know and so much of this are actually down in the nuances and most people are um above. The nuances don't really understand the issues well enough or too bogged down in the details to understand the bigger picture and 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 um and simplifying very complex. Concepts I think some of the most amazing entrepreneurs in the world are experts at and that is the superpower and that is certainly one that I'm trying to hone um and work on but when you see it like Steve Jobs when you take 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 um made an amazing engineer tick empathize with different Technical Solutions will have different inputs and outputs and he understood it and um 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 cost. I don't know the assistant outside and asking when the CEOs was coming outside so that you could get a meeting with them. Yeah are these Tales true um as with many. They're probably exaggerated a little bit um where's the truth uh well. The the truth is that certainly happened but it wasn't you know I've heard uh people recounted us that I slept outside of the the record labels kind of in a sleeping bag that that didn't happen uh that happened another time in my career. But it wasn't um. It didn't happen there but but it certainly happened that I'd book A Week. A flight to New York with no meeting booked uh with basically an open calendar and about 20 phone calls a day just trying to figure out a time to get on this 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. Um and most people don't care about them at all uh. But they're very influential. They're very powerful um and uh and and you know uh that was hard in the beginning but then I realized that um they got to see me as an individual. I saw them as an individual and eventually you know the this. This is not uh. 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 uh and easy to work with show up with no moments notice even if you know it was 20 minutes before finding out about it. I would show up um and so I was I was easy to deal with so take away all that complexity in order to achieve the out 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 did. You invest your personal Capital into starting Spotify because I I read again that you'd spend pretty much all of your personal wealth to start the company yeah yeah. I did uh so invested not all of it but quite substantial amounts of it uh and my co-founder invested even more. But he obviously had a much larger sum of money um from the beginning um yeah. So all in all I think we invested about 10 million dollars uh into this um by ourselves which was also crazy because you know back then today. 10 million into a startup just was it isn't a big number many startups that have done that before but doing that on a seed stage uh back in 2007 uh that just was unheard of it was usually 500k seed check sums Etc.What if it hadn't worked out what would have been the personal implications for you financially. Uh the personal implications that 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 I'm set for life and I gave that up um in a moment's notice um and um yeah I mean um. I 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. Uh I say I should give advice but it is probably the the best advice I could give. Many people is is you know because especially those that want to invest in various startups Etc. But they may not have a lot of money and then I will say well why don't you just bet on yourself instead. Why don't you just try to like work for one of these startups like you said and 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.A new podcast sponsor that I'm super excited to talk about with all of you is Linked. In jobs hiring as I would know is one of the most important steps in your business without good people. There is no company trust me I found out along the way that your business is nothing without good people. You want to be a hundred percent certain though that you have access to the best candidates available and that's why you have to check out LinkedIn jobs LinkedIn. Jobs helps you to find the right people for your team faster and for free so when I'm expanding my team Linked. In is my first Port of Call I'd highly recommend it on LinkedIn jobs posting a job is super easy and you can add a purple hashtag hiring frame around your LinkedIn profile to spread the word. LinkedIn jobs helps you find the qualified candidates. You want to talk to faster post your job for free at linkedin.com doac that's linkedin.com doac to post your job for free terms and conditions apply as you may know. This podcast is sponsored by if you're living under a rock you might have missed that I've come to learn over time.

01:01:59 Not all of the products they have are for me but the ones that are for me have really really changed my life in a profound way. All of the products are designed for different use cases and different people for me as you'll probably know the ready to drink. Bottles are a staple of my life at the moment and they have been for many many years but for a lot of other people. They have the hot and savory which is a five minute hot meal that's nutritionally complete. It contains all the good stuff that all your products contain which is the 23 vitamins and minerals and the wonderful balance of sort of nutritional completeness and then you have the bars as well. If you've heard about fuel on this podcast you've heard me talking about it. A lot you're aware that I'm an investor in the company. You're aware that I'm on the board of the company and you're not sure where to start. I would highly recommend starting with the bestseller bundle. Basically. We'll send you a package in the post containing all of the favorite products that people love and then you try them all and stick with the ones that really really fit you. The link is in the description below to try the best seller. Bundle 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.Um 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 yeah. I think I was even concerned as a very loyal Spotify user. Yeah I thought you know they have all the phones yeah. They have they're kind of like the mafia they could just squash you yeah most companies when Apple comes into their territory shaking their boots yeah. 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 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 have the Beats acquisition beforehand and we were hearing all sorts of rumors Etc. About what it was so 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 um uh and we were kind of doubling down on what our positioning was going to be so you kind of like double and triple checked. Whether or not um you know you were deluding yourself into believing things to be true and and so for instance in our case one of the big things we had a 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 we thought that consumers would value the ability to work across all devices and all ecosystem and our bet would be that um 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 um and so you know 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 um and so so it was kind of like reiterating that. But I felt pretty good about that position um 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 uh and I remember we were constantly talking to the product teams about this uh and like what what if they come up with this and we're literally trying this every game theorizing every possible angle um on it um. But I think at the end of the day we we kind of went through the Thousand scenarios kind of thing we knew we'd prepared as well. As we could um we um anticipated a certain type of product. There was this kind of one percent or ten percent chance whatever you want to Quantified as where it 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 uh and then seeing the walkthrough of the product and realizing that okay well we prepared. For this we thought about this Etc and so weirdly enough as the rest of the world kind of like gasped for air um we were thinking about it okay well. This was what we expected um 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 um on the personalization side. The fact that you know if you have a Windows machine and an iPhone um Spotify would work but Apple music um wouldn't at that time so there were many of those things that we um I thought had a better positioning than they had I've long thought that I've tried. Both I mean I've tried it when it came out and I couldn't stick to it um and I think me and my friends who are in my music group. We all concluded that the personalization how Spotify understands me yeah is really the thing it's hard to know why you do what you do as a consumer yeah but from analyzing it a bit more deeply um. It just felt like I'd 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 um 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 I just stuck with Spotify um Apple.Uh I use the word Matthew earlier on a lot of people don't know this. But they take 30 revenues on pretty much every new app in the store yeah. They've rejected your audio book app multiple times um. 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 um. It's um as a consumer uh. Let's start off with apple is a fantastic company and they make amazing products. I really do believe that um I've been a Mac User since I can't even remember probably late 90s when I could first afford one uh all the way to now and obviously use the iPhone and Apple watches and all that stuff so let's start with that. And I think that's hard to square then that there's this other company that's fiercely um focused on just um itself and constantly trying to do things by itself and not working well with others um and um. Those are perhaps two different sides of the same coin but um you know the the way that manifests itself. Um. 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.It's a great extent with the 30 you talked about with the fact that you know Spotify can't um or any developer. If you don't pay the 30 you can't even speak to your consumers. It is kind of absurd um so you know there. There's a ruthlessness um on the business side of Apple um and and perhaps it's always been so I don't know. I never got the opportunity to meet Steve Jobs but um um where just from an ethos point of view. It's just not me um and um um. I have a hard time squaring that with me as the consumer and me as the business leader um and needless to say I I do believe that apple can and should play fair and I think it would be way better for the world if they did um and I think um that it would actually help them in many regards to switch their tactics and realize that they are the Goliath.

01:10:27 At this point they're not David um and so yeah one of the things I want to close on um 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 and um more broadly towards life. But when I sit here and I think a lot of people will sit here and say um 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 um. No. I don't think so but I think you're right in that um you know the the way I would describe Spotify um to people you're right that it is scary sometimes watching Spotify uh 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 how did people know that we were supposed to do it this way um and it would be how I would approach solving a problem and it's kind of how um you know.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 uh. In fact it is this much broader uh different being uh. There are aspects of it that um hasn't taken after me at all in um product development. You know 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 today and they're certainly instilling their personal uh values and their personal. Uh perspective of the 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 um 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 but it's certainly not directed and the other part is I started this as a 23 year old and the 23 year old Daniel while many parts are the same. Uh the 40 year old Daniel with two kids having seen that have changed perspectives as well. I have a different feeling about work and and the importance of that in my life still very important but may not be the sole most important thing that I do so just to mention one and so it has similarities uh. But there's differences to me as an individual too. But I think if you compare me to 23 year old Daniel the 30 year old Daniel's a 40 year old Daniel um I've evolved to and 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 um. Maybe. It's subtleties but um I think in quite a big way also and just thinking about something like a culture. The 23 year old Daniel culture was having a ping pong table uh 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 um. 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 um secondary if not even tertiary to that um and what he wrote Daniel's all about culture yeah way more so what is the culture well and 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 or company every person. That's joining every person is leaving is impacting culture and so um in its Essence. I believe culture is about rewarding the positive behaviors who want to see in the company and obviously dissuade the negative for the positive behaviors. You want to see well. One of them is taking risks um and failing and how do you do that when you have eight or nine thousand 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.Any Duke has this thinking in bets. She talks about I love that is thinking about poker ships on the table and and she said one time when when we spoke she said to me. It's like a company is like um. 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 um and perhaps have a less 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. They impact things too so then the the Counterpoint to that would be well. How do you then create an environment where people um are allowed to take risks and then balance that with say a 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 them platform. So we can just experiment with how we're paying out and so on and so forth right and the 550 million consumers 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 um. There's this constant tension between being Innovative taking risks um and um you know at the same time obviously being responsible and 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 under underappreciated factor in um and 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 yeah and so um and having sat here and interviewed like Sir Alex Ferguson's ex-team mates yeah. You just come to learn that sir Alex Ferguson's greatness wasn't a strategy right. They all say to me. I remember Patrice and ever said to me that he walked in on a we were playing Arsenal yeah on a Sunday in London yeah and he walked in and just said Lads listen beautiful weather outside don't 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 is always stayed with me is Rio Ferdinand said to me how many times do you think he came into the training ground dressing room yeah in 26 years like I don't know they said twice really they 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. Uh. I was being told an Arsenal story that I probably can't share but uh you could see bits and pieces of. Mikhail's um. You know how he's pushing that team culture at the moment too which seems very fascinating uh with some of the almost Antics uh it seems to be doing this. All or Nothing season that was I think last season um as well um so you can see that and I love studying that with sports teams because you know it's 11 placed on the pitch. How do you make these people gel together um and form a team um hugely important thing so I agree but but also like imagine if you had 11 new players uh um. You know yeah can you even form or Chelsea. These days yeah right um can you. Even uh create a culture that way uh or is it something that should be done intentional um. I mean if you're growing a company you're 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 will uh. It's easier. I'm not saying. It's trivial but to 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 um you don't like giving advice so yeah.This is a perfect one for you um. 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 um I think uh we we spoke about it. I've gone through iterations of uh trying to learn from other people a model that a huge part of that has been kind of um optimizing for my strengths and not covering my weaknesses and I wish that I um realized much earlier on that perhaps my superpower is that I'm pretty good all around her 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 product person in the world. It just wasn't me and it took me a while to realize that and be comfortable um saying that right um. But um I I have realized that I do like a lot of different things I love learning about new things and perhaps that is my superpower uh 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 you the list goes on and on and on and I love that um 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 but somehow be more introspective and listen to myself. And I think that's really one of the things I I take away from you said very eloquently is that your 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 um and that there's many ways to be a successful entrepreneur and it really from what you've just said there. The most sure-fire way of becoming a successful entrepreneur is actually looking inward versus looking outwards at like oh how does Elon do it or how does Daniel do it yeah um 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 limit. I've been limiting myself on um Daniel thank you so much thank you so much for having me thank you building such a great business and building a business that that is um I guess it. 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 people 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 yeah and they're like really nice people that are very open books. It doesn't feel like a big corporate to me yeah um. It's very humble in its in its approach. But it's also very ambitious yeah and it strikes that balance really wonderful wonderfully well and it's some. It's a company in a brand that I deeply resonate with for that reason. It's a wonderful wonderful thing and I think um 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 in 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 thank you an important one thank you that means a lot to me and you're right um. You know it's about being humble while doing it. But um you know ambition and humbleness may not seem like they go hand in hand and so I think you capture the essence of what we like Spotify to be at its best which is super ambitious but yet humble uh with all of its past success. All of that stuff that we're still learning super curious. I I 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 this 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 and they sat me down at a table for for about 30 minutes or an hour yeah and said you're a podcaster. Steve yeah tell us everything we need to know about podcasting yep. How can we make um 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 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 don't need it because you've got a wonderful culture of um people and great people around you but just wanted to say thank you for that well. No thank you and I mean again yes we listen but it's also because you are innovating on your side and uh uh with all the aspects even seeing your studio. Here. Today it's kind of like bringing it to the next level so that's 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 going to bring a lot of growth. Journeys uh for a lot of people too so thank you we've got an exciting new sponsor on this podcast and I couldn't be more excited to announce that we're now working with Shopify and if there's one tool that I use pretty much every single day of my businesses. That is certainly Shopify. I'm sure you've all heard about Shopify but for some reason if you haven't then. Shopify is the Commerce platform that is revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you're starting a side hustle a new project with a friend or a global business. Shopify has you covered you guys may know that we recently sold a product on this platform called the DAR overseer conversation cards which featured questions from the guests in these episodes and from start to finish from launching that product we used Shopify. A total Game Changer makes life incredibly incredibly smooth when it relates to business and a tool that my team have absolutely loved using which is not always the case with technology. We couldn't have launched those conversation cards without it and if you guys haven't tried Shopify out for yourself. Then I highly suggest you do head to shopify.com Bartlett to take your business to the next level today and let me know how you get on that shopify.com Butler let me know how you get on foreign.