I'm starting a new show where I have conversations with the greatest living founders. The show is called David Senra. It will be on a separate podcast feed from Founders. The first episode is with Daniel Ek, who's one of the wisest people I know. And I've learned a lot from Daniel in private conversations. It was actually from one of our conversations that I decided I should start recording these so other people can learn from them, too. You are about to hear the very first episode in full. But make sure you follow David Senra on Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube, or wherever you're listening to this so you don't miss future episodes. I've already recorded a bunch with some of the best founders on the planet. Nothing is changing with Founders Podcast. I'm still making new episodes of Founders and will do so for the rest of my life. I hope you enjoy this conversation and don't forget to follow the new show David Senra.
Now, so I want to consider this conversation like a continuation of the conversation we had last year in New York. It was by far the most impactful conversation I had the entire year. It is in large part the reason we're sitting down and actually recording this conversation. And what I loved was I was I thought about how the advice you gave and the stories you told really fundamentally changed my approach to my work and then also like my philosophy of how I'm living my life. And because you, it's very rare, like this year I'm going to hit over 400 biographies read for the podcast, right? And somebody asked me recently, it's like, do you ever uncover new ideas? It's like, no, I feel like I'm telling the same story, the same personality type over and over and over again, and you'll get a new idea or novel idea, you know, every once in a while, but certainly not all the time. But you shared something at the dinner that was a truly novel idea, and then a few months later, I read this interview and I was like, 'Oh, I'm not the only one that Daniel's advice changed the career.' So, I'm going to read something. There was an interview given by the CEO of Uber, who's a friend of yours, Dara. Yeah. And I'm going to read this excerpt, which was absolutely perfect. And he was talking about contemplating should I take this job or not, like this is a huge opportunity but also like kind of scary. And this is tied to your idea that you should optimize for impact over happiness, which is very, I haven't heard anybody else articulate that. And so Dara says, 'I was reading about all the issues happening with Uber in the news, the various challenges that were coming up there. So when I first got the call to be the CEO, I said heck no, I'm not crazy, I'm not up for this. But I had one particular conversation that really shifted me, which was with Daniel Ek, who's a good friend. And I still remember I was talking to him about my career at Expedia and how happy I was, and he looks at me, and he did this to me too, and he looks at me and he goes, since when is life about happiness? It's about impact. You can have an impact on Uber, which is a really important company in the world that's shaping the future of cities.' And I thought to myself, this is so obvious, I've got to take a shot. I knew it was going to be uncomfortable. You just explain how you think about optimizing for impact over happiness and why?
Well, it first off, it's incredibly kind of Dara to say that. You know, I think about this. I think happiness is a trailing indicator of impact. And I think it can be, you know, you can feel happiness in small bursts, in small moments, and you can have a lot of variance in your life. So you can choose to have that part, which is the ups, the downs of life, etc. So I'm not saying you can't have happiness, but I think truly sustained happiness comes from impact. And impact is something that's deeply personal to you. Only you can define what impact means for you. So I think it means different things for different people, but I do think it's a trailing indicator. So the way I, you know, I would put it in this case is, you know, what was obvious for me with someone like Dara was he was content. He wasn't happy. And you know, he had gone through a phase, knowing him for a while, where he had a lot of ups and downs with Expedia and all that stuff, and he kind of mostly figured it out. And so he was content. And I think that in his case, you know, where he was at his life, it was such an obvious thing that he didn't even realize that he just grown content. And so for me, you know, Uber is a very special company, and to be even be asked to be the CEO of that and the impact I knew he could have on that company just felt to me like an obvious thing. And so I sort of advised him to, hey, you should go for this, and that's a far greater thing and that's going to be far, will lead to much more happiness not just for you but also for other people.
Did somebody do that for you? Did somebody tell you to optimize for impact over happiness or is this just you, the way you work?
I think I self motivate myself that way. To do the hard things. You know, like many other people, I'm quite lazy by nature. I try to take the simple road out often enough. But what I've learned that has given me the greatest joys is overcoming the biggest adversities. And overcoming the biggest adversities usually has been solving a problem of some kind for someone or something that no one else had been able to figure out. And for me that's my definition of impact. And it's not right there at the moment that I feel that, actually many cases I feel it much longer. But it's when I go back and I reflect on accomplishments or moments of impact, then I feel true happiness. And so I've just grown to kind of like self motivate myself constantly. And I think this by the way kind of comes from like a much deeper thing, right? Like I came from like pretty much what was the projects in Sweden and I was not the normal kid. You know, I was kind of probably a middle of the pack kind of kid but I certainly stood out. I didn't belong to any social group. There was no social cohesion etc.
So wait, you felt like an outsider even at that age?
Yeah, every moment of my life. Even among other fellow entrepreneurs I sometimes feel like an outsider because like right now for instance you and I, we're in Silicon Valley, I'm not American, so there's an element of myself where I don't belong to the club. And I've always felt that way and because I've always felt that way I've had to, I can't take lessons from other people 100% because some of my stories, some of my conditions, some of the ways the structures, even how to structure a company, you have to structure differently if you're a European company versus an American company. So, you have to go back to sort of first principles and kind of find the sort of principled answer to anything and what works for you. And so, I've had to kind of self motivate myself for most of my life. And only I would say in the last maybe 5 years I've come to realize that, you know, in a way I'm maybe a better coach than I am a player. And so I've kind of understood more and more that actually that sort of drive, that intensity is actually something that can be taught. It's not entirely innate and it's about almost letting people know that that's okay. And so much of that comes from those types of conversations. It's about almost reflecting back. It's not about sort of me projecting onto other people what I think they should do. But in listening to Dara, it was just so obvious to me when he kind of explained because, you know, the conversation started with us talking about Uber and I said, 'I recommended you to the job.' And he said, 'Oh, really? Yeah, I just didn't take the call even.' And I was like, 'Well, why not?' And he was like, 'Well, I'm really happy about this thing.' And I was like listening. And I actually just let him keep talking. And the more he spoke, the more obvious it became. He was content. He lived in, he was running on the downshifted down to the easy gear. Life was good. It was really easy. But there was an element of him and you could hear it in his voice where he's sort of like, 'Okay, well, you know, you've always been running on a higher gear. Do you want to, you know, gear up even more to an extreme level? Why aren't you going to go for greatness? Why aren't you going to test yourself? Because if you succeed, this could be huge and you really don't get many of these chances in your life.' And so much of the conversation was really around that. But with another person, I might have given a totally different piece of advice. So I don't think it's a universal truth, but I do think the universal truth is that happiness trails impact. But impact is something that's highly unique. It could be something innate in you. It could be having impact on other people. It could be, you know, having impact by being a great father around your kids. I don't pretend to know that I think that there's one game to play or one universal truth to life. I certainly believe from entrepreneurial types that probably more to myself, that more like myself, that you know, this is sort of a one of those sort of key things is really consider impact.
One of the things I admire most about Daniel Ek is his relentless dedication to improving his craft and to improving his product. It's a mission that he's still on nearly two decades later. It'd be impossible to argue that Spotify isn't one of the most well-crafted products ever created. And Daniel and his team's dedication to constantly improving their product reminds me a lot of my friend Kareem, who's the co-founder and CTO of Ramp. Kareem is one of the greatest technical minds working in finance. I spent a lot of time talking to Kareem and every single conversation centers around his obsession with crafting a high-quality product and using the latest technology to constantly create better experiences for his customers. Kareem and Daniel both believe that nothing is ever good enough and that everything can always be improved. Kareem is running one of the most talented technical teams in finance and they use rapid, relentless iteration to make their product better every day. So far this year, Ramp has shipped over 300 new features. Ramp is completely committed to using AI to make a better experience for their customers and automate as much of your business's finances as possible. In fact, Kareem just wrote this: 'AI is all I think about these days. It is our duty to be first movers and push limits so we can make the greatest possible product experience for our customers.' Ramp uses a combination of craftsmanship and rapid iteration to invent new products for their customers. Many of the fastest growing and most innovative companies in the world are running their business on Ramp. Make sure you go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. Let AI chase your receipts and close your books so you can use your time and energy building great things for your customers. Because at the end of the day, that is what this is all about. Building a product or service that makes someone else's life better. That is what I'm trying to do. That is what Daniel Ek has dedicated his life to doing. And that is what Ramp has done, too. Get started today by going to ramp.com.
You mentioned you thought some people don't go for impact because they're content. When was the last time, like, you're definitely not content now, right? So, I've gotten to know you once. We've talked for hours and hours and hours and this is why I wanted you to be the first person I had this conversation with. And like, and I was curious if you could say that, like, no, no, I know you have this like inner burning desire and fire inside of you which is, to me, your outside is like you're very calm, you're very articulate and you're very polite but you have that like the same thing I read in these books all the time, it's just like this person had a burning desire to achieve mission success is the way I think about it. Were you content after you sold your first company? You were like 22, 23.
Well, content is the right word. I wasn't happy. So I was content for a moment of time. I was 22. I never had much success with women because I was the computer geek. And back then computers was not the coolest thing in the world. And you know, so I was like, 'Okay, well now I've got all this money and you know, this was my world view. I can go out in nightclubs and I'm going to be the cool guy.' And I had fun for a while, I'll tell you that. But it also was incredibly hollowing because you know I realized that these girls weren't with me because of me. They were with me because you know I had status and I was able to use money to buy status and be a cool guy for a small moment of time. And so that taught me a lot, right? And actually, you know, I kind of walked away for over a year not doing anything at all. And just sort of deeply reflecting on life, what I wanted to do because for me, you know, I had a magic number which was 10 million. If I got that number, I would retire. That was the goal. And I was thinking to myself,
How old were you when you came up with that number?
You know, someone gave me like this book Rich Dad Poor Dad, I think. I read it.
I think everybody gets it the same age.
Yeah, I read it. It was like really seminal for me. So I kind of made that number. I figured to myself, I worked really hard. I could get there when I was 40. I was 22 when I got there. And so that wasn't really part of the plan, right? And so I kind of like, okay, well, what's next? What am I going to do? Because I didn't have to work for money.
Were you depressed when you don't have your company anymore? You sold it. You have the number you thought it was going to take you two, you know, till four decades to reach. You reach it now. You're going to the clubs. You're realizing these people aren't even my friends. They don't care about me at all. I'm, there's no impact I'm making on the world. I'm just consuming. I'm not producing anything. This is something I talk about all the time. Like I think we have sometimes we have a sick culture where like people especially on social media, they glorify like consumption. It's like I don't care. I don't care what you consume. I care what you produce. You should be proud not that you have money to buy an expensive thing. What did you make? Because the way I think about this all the time, which is always fascinating how many times this comes up in the biographies and for hundreds of years, people constantly think like, oh, we've reached the end. There's no more opportunity. And just and every single time humans keep saying it's like we can't, this is going to be the last company. This is going to be the last technological shift. This is going to be the last invention. And the best description of a business I've ever heard came from Richard Branson. And he said, all a business is is an idea that makes somebody else's life better. And if you look at like that, it's like then you have infinite possibilities and opportunities all the time because there's infinite small and large ways to make other people's lives better. You weren't at that time making anybody else's life better. You were just kind of consuming. Like would you consider yourself depressed? What would you consider yourself?
Yeah, it's probably the most depressed I've been in my life to be honest because you know I knew from a very young age what I wanted to do and it was unlike most other people that I grew up with. I just knew I wanted to build things.
You were doing that when you were like 14, right?
Yeah. But it started like even earlier than that. I just didn't know it was called a company. I had no idea what finances were or VC or any of these things, but I was just building things and I knew I loved computers and I knew I wanted to do that and I knew I would make a living doing that somehow.
This is another thing that like drives me insane because I hear like other people's like advice to entrepreneurs which I hate. I think it's like terrible. An entrepreneur ecosystem especially because most of the media that entrepreneurs are consuming are actually from investors and you have wildly different incentive structure and everything else and it just conflicts with a lot of stuff that's in the biographies and I'll just go with those guys over anybody else right. And they're always just like yeah, you know, my belief is something that I repeat, I murder this maxim, that belief comes before ability. That it's in these stories every single time you have somebody like I just reread the biography, the autobiography of the founder of Sony. Okay, at the time was we're going to start this company in 1946. In Tokyo that's occupied by the Americans that is completely has been firebombed. Right. He's passing, he's going to work and he's passing just burnt out rubble. Millions of homes of Japanese, more than half the population has left the city. They start what turns out to be Sony which is one of the most successful and influential companies of all time in a burned out department store. One of my favorite anecdotes in the book is they need to have umbrellas on their desks because when it rains it comes through the roof. Right. And yet in his book he says I don't have a problem saying even then I knew I had potential and I could be great and I could do great things. He had the belief before the ability. You said I don't even know it was called entrepreneurship. Yeah. And I'm starting to build things. And this is the question I have for you. When did you know you were good?
I don't know that I'm good. I know I'm different. And the, but I have this sort of insane belief that I can get good if I try hard enough. And I still feel that way by the way, because the comparative sets has changed, right? Like you know, it was from everyone in my school maybe in the early days to everyone in Stockholm, somewhat later to everyone in Europe at some point and now it's like the most brilliant entrepreneurs of our time that I'm constantly comparing myself to and obviously I don't believe that I'm as good as them, but I believe I am slightly different than them in some ways and I believe that if I work really really hard on something I can make something really great and that's the sort of bar that I keep for myself. And for me it really stems also from sort of this notion back to what you were talking about, about sort of the realization that through computers, right, Steve Jobs has the saying, it's the bicycle of our mind which was really how I felt about computers like growing up, it's just this magic tool that allows me to solve so many other things and create things.
That's how I feel about podcasts. Yeah.
And so, you know, I knew I wanted to do that. And I also knew that, you know, my co-founder Martin, he has this thing. He keeps saying the value of a company is the sum of all problems solved. And so what I keep doing is essentially I've got this toolbox called a computer. And I got all these problems around the world. Which problems am I passionate about solving? And which problems can I spend the next decade of my life fixing because if I'm not interested enough in it to spend a decade fixing it's probably not worth pursuing.
This is like something I'm super passionate about because you know if you really think about like they don't write biographies about people that like start, scale, sell a company and do it for like 5 years. I'm not interested in that. I don't like, I'm not interested in your startup. I'm interested in your last company. I'm interested in something you're going to do for the rest of your life. And this is what I draw inspiration off of is just like going back to what you said earlier about impact and contentment and how like you're willing to go into an area where it's like you know it's difficult. I love what Jeff Bezos said on this. He's just like he was, he tells the people he used to tell people in Amazon at the very beginning he's like we're trying to build something that we can be proud of, something that we can tell our grandkids about. Anything that you're going to be proud to tell your grandkids about is not going to be easy right? So, we're going into this with, you know, he gave himself like a 30% chance of success. I think it's, it became Spotify. You know, you guys like, hey, we're gonna, I might have to get a job after this, but I have to do this.
Yeah. Like, it is inside of me.
Yeah. There's a bunch of people that say the reason they joined Spotify in the early days is because Daniel would teach us and tell us that he's building for the long term. So, there had to be acquisition offers early on. And did you ever consider them like,
Well, I considered them, but not for money. I consider them because I already had the money that I thought I needed in my life. Right. And that was an incredibly powerful position to be in. It was freeing me of a lot of constraints and for me it was more, you know, as we got approached it was always about can this thing further our mission and if I truly believed that there would have been a company that could further our mission and cared about what we cared about as much as we did I probably would have sold. But I never found that and because I didn't find that we just kept going and it wasn't obvious to me that this would be like something I would do for 20 years. I'll tell you that. But what I did know is that, you know, I came from doing lots of projects beforehand. And so sort of, you know, we talked about the one company I did sell but I that was like my fourth or fifth one. So I'd been doing a bunch of other things and I was doing many things in parallel.
And which you still do today.
Well, I started doing again which is a very different thing and I still think the jury's out by the way on whether that's a good idea or a bad idea.
Well, you know, I again, I do believe that focusing all your time and effort on this one thing and obsess about it and almost to the point where you're not even aware of the rest of the world that goes on is what creates greatness. And I know you can relate to this, but that's how Spotify came to be. I literally couldn't care about anything else for at the very least the first 15 years. Only now am I foolish enough to believe that actually, you know what, I might be able to do multiple things at the same time again, which was sort of my spirit in my 20s.
Is that connected to what you were saying earlier that you might be a better, you think you might be a better coach than player?
Yeah. I certainly think so. And because my leadership style is so different than many of these sort of entrepreneurs that most of us sort of look up to and hail, whether it's the Steve Jobs or Elon Musks etc. I just don't feel like there's a vague resemblance with them but it's just not me. It's like I'm a very different archetype of entrepreneur.
We were texting back and forth about this, so we should just talk about this now so we don't forget. We were talking about like maybe we should talk about like the archetypes, different archetypes of entrepreneurs because like there could be, you know, there could be somebody like a young, there's undoubtedly a young Daniel Ek out there, right? We just know that that's going to happen. There's this great thing. I'm slightly obsessed with Michael Jordan. He's the lock screen on my phone. He's my contact card. So when people like they start texting me, it's like Michael Jordan with his eyes like this. Like I'm kind of setting the tone and he said this great thing because you know at the end of his career is the rise of Kobe Bryant and everybody's towards the end of his career they were like obsessed like oh Tracy McGrady is going to be the next Michael Jordan and this guy's going to be the next Michael Jordan this guy's next Michael Jordan and he's like first he's like you don't have to worry about finding the next Michael Jordan. He goes first of all you didn't find me I just happen to come along and that will happen again you don't have to find the next person they will come along and I always say they will reveal themselves. So I do think this is fascinating and no one else talks about this. Again, the weird thing about talking to you, and I don't mean that in a pejorative, it's like you just say stuff that no one else says. And then I'm like, why don't more people understand, know about Daniel's very unique ideas. Like no one's concerned about the archetypes. Everybody's like, 'Oh, you just have to be like Steve Jobs. You just have to be like Elon.' And your point is like, 'No, there's like multiple different archetypes.' Obviously, like I've studied this maybe more than anybody else in the world. It's very clear that there are.
Yeah. And yet they're all kind of like narrowly focused on this is the one path and we went over this back and forth before. It's just like it's so ridiculous to say like there is this, this is the way founders should run their company because you said it back in 2021 in that series and Spotify. We've had conversations like this. This is something I always say. It's like it's tied to the personality of the founder. The advice is useless unless it's tied to who you are as a person. Spotify is a reflection of you.
Now, I do want to talk also about this other great idea that you gave me and that now I heard Jeff Bezos echo recently about the fact that there's similarities between like the way your child develops and the way company develops. That was very fascinating. Yeah. But where are you like explain why you would even want to broach the subject of like talking more about the different founder archetypes?
Well, I think you know again as a young entrepreneur myself, I went through the book like so many of us by becoming enamored by an entrepreneur and looking up to them in many cases because they had traits that I didn't have. And so we read all these stories whether it's biographies or articles about how they managed their company and how they live their lives and the routines that they have. And certainly in my case like, you know, I certainly tried to mimic Steve Jobs. I certainly tried to mimic Bezos and Gates and all of the great ones, the very charismatic ones like Howard Schultz of Starbucks and you know, I've learned from all of them and in a way I've tried to imitate them right, because I've thought that they were so great at what they do. But every single time I've walked away being disillusioned because I realized obviously that it didn't work for me. And so this sort of idea of this archetype is like I bet you that there's plenty of entrepreneurs out there that read about currently whether it's Mark Zuckerberg or Jensen or any of these things and they're like that's not me. I guess I'm not as good as them and I can't do what they're doing. So clearly I don't have it in me.
I think you were spot on when you said it's like the hardest single thing really for a founder and entrepreneur in a much different way I think than a normal person but I think every normal person goes through this is finding yourself.
That's literally what I just wrote down.
So I don't want, again this is more of a conversation interview because I'm a terrible interviewer and I love to talk. Can I do a monologue for God's sake? But I had this theory too because it's obvious in the books like there's this like myth. It's like of like the genius young entrepreneur. And if you go and read all their biographies, they weren't like laying about doing nothing when they were younger. But it's very clear if you look at all of them. Steve Jobs, Enzo Ferrari, Akio Morita, Sam Walton, Estee Lauder, Coco Chanel, Edwin Land, they do their best work when they're much older. And so I thought a lot about I'm like, dang, this is like a reoccurring theme over and over again. Some cases are in their 40s, 50 years old, and they're at the top of their game. And I and then, you know, I was wondering like what is this? Okay. Well, obviously like it is some skill set so you can like practice more. You have more experience so then you can make better decisions. You have a better network. You have resources. You have all that. But one thing that I believe that I cannot prove but I believe with every bone in my body, it's like because you know they knew themselves much more. In your early 20s, 23. You need that, that comes through time and experience. And it's like no no, this is something I learned from Michael Dell's autobiography which was excellent. I used to say it's like they build a company that's authentic to them.
He also, the way he says they build a company that's natural to them and you can't build a company that's natural to you if you don't know who you are.
100%. And so I have this belief that's like you're, and I think like your accomplishments are freaking crazy and I know you like to downplay them and it's just because you're very polite and everything else. I was watching this funny interview with you and they mentioned something like you're the most successful person to ever come out of Scandinavia and your face, your words were very polite but your face was like somebody poked you like oh I don't want to be like described though but your response is like I know that face. I know exactly what you said, but this idea that like the, you are the sum of like your accumulated experiences, right? That is one form of education, but the form of education is like I know I went to your house. I rummage through your library maybe kind of rudely, but I loved how you're obsessed with history and philosophy, too. Yeah. And I was like, 'Oh, this is a person that's, he's curious about the external world, but he also wants to know like who he is, what's important to him.' Oh, yeah. And then building a business and like an apparatus around that. So, I just wanted to get that out because you mentioned something like I don't think I should probably talk about more frequently, but something I definitely believe is like you're going to get better at entrepreneurship when you get better at knowing who you are and what you actually want to do.
100%. And as you say, it's like, you know, I think the game I'm playing now is just being the best version of myself. And the best version of myself is one that will have even more impact than the one that had before because it will be even more true to who I am.
So what is your archetype? I mean, do you even know?
No, I don't know. Which is why I was asking you because I figured who's the person in the world that probably has a better idea of like all the different archetypes. Because you, I can still learn how to like, you know, do the game better if that makes sense. I would say there's a very interesting idea and that I've noticed, you know, obviously like there's this maxim I say over and over again that all of history's greatest entrepreneurs study history's greatest entrepreneurs and if you make a podcast on that you get to meet the living versions of that now and what I'm struck by and I'm like this myself I have all kinds of blind spots which you like picked away the first time we had dinner and you're just like you're doing this wrong and you were very polite but you're just like you're lying to yourself you're not like you know you're obsessed with this and you're like fighting with your hand behind time had it back. But I'm so amazed. It's exactly what you said. It's like it's almost like they need a mirror. So there's another great idea that I've seen a few times, one of the truly novel idea. It's this idea of hiring a paid critic. So Sony is making, you know, audio equipment like in the 50s. This is like and they're very primitive devices. And what they realized was they hired a young vocal arts student and I don't know how to pronounce his name, Norio Ohga, something like that. And the reason they did that is because he was a fan of early Sony products. Yeah. But he also had very fine refined taste and everything else. And so he would just light them up about, he's like, 'I'm a big fan of Sony, but your products aren't good enough. You have all these deficiencies.' And Akio being the genius that he was, he goes, we hired him as a paid critic. His job was to attack the deficiencies in our product because if we don't even see them. Yeah. And the paid critic his point was that hey if you're a ballet dancer you have a mirror right your mirror tells you whether what you're doing right what you can fix like your what you need to do he's like I'm your oral mirror. Yep. And then fast forward to when the book is published in like 1986 that paid critic is now the president of Sony. And I feel exactly, I'm this way, it's like we need a mirror. And I think what's, what I'm curious about with you. It's like, I remember I just had dinner with Mike Ovitz and you know he's, I think his autobiography is one of the best entrepreneur autobiographies ever written because he tells you about the bad stuff. The fact that he didn't like who he was. He was depressed. He was doing this making bad decisions based on the opinions of other people which entrepreneurs cannot do. Yeah. And I was struck by like the fact that he didn't know himself at, you know, 25 or I think he was 27 when he started CAA. Sure as hell knows himself as like almost an 80-year-old man. But I asked him about, you know, he's had some people I know have been friends with him for 25 years. And I was just like, why? What do you think has enabled you to maintain that relationship? And he said, he tells me the truth. Yeah. And he's like, you get into my position. Yeah. Where you know, he's famous, he's wealthy, most of the people that he interacts with are on his staff. Yeah. And he's like, 'You, it's very dangerous.' And he said, he's like, 'There's not many people in my life that tell me the truth.' Yeah.
Who tells you the truth? Many people, which is the good news for me. You know, it starts with my family, my mom. You know, my mom is the most normal person you would be. She's proud of her my accomplishments. But in sort of the standoffish way. She couldn't care anything about the impact of it. It is more like that I've overcome obstacles for myself that she knows matters to me.
So oftentimes that's great.
Yeah, and so oftentimes like when I may bring an issue home because she doesn't really know what's going on in the business world and she doesn't really care. She kind of like gives me this mirror back where most of life actually doesn't revolve around technology or the business world etc. It's like this is the life. So that's a great one. I have a very dear friend, Shaq, who very similarly plays that part in my life. He's the most realest person there is. My wife is another one. Gustav that you met is another person. He will tell me the truth even when I don't want to hear it. And yeah, I've been incredibly fortunate that like many of the people I just talked about are people that have been around me for 20 years. My mom obviously my entire life but many of these people have been around for a very very long time. And I think that's, you know, I really believe trust is one of the most undertalked about things, you know, because it's not easy to scale and it's incredibly hard. It's the number one thing why most organizations break down and why you need processes and all the other bureaucracies ultimately because there's no trust. If you had 100% trust, you wouldn't need any of this stuff and you would move much faster.
It's crazy. Munger again, like I literally get emails every week. They're like, 'Why do you mention Charlie Munger on every episode?' I'm like, 'He's the wisest person I've ever come across. What do you want me to do?' Like, 'I'm sorry. He has so many good ideas.' But he said something again and he's another person where he like points things out that once he says it it's obvious but no one else says it. He goes trust is one of the greatest economic forces in the world and he talked about that like your job when I actually got to have dinner with him he's like your job is to build a seamless web of deserved trust with great people.
And he's like that's not, and he was telling stories he's like everybody knows that you know I met Buffett when I was, when he was 28 and I was 35. They don't understand. There's all these other guys around us and we built friendships and did deals forever. Most of them had passed away by the time I met him. But that idea, it's like trust is one of the greatest economic forces in the world.
It truly is. And if you think about it, why is that so rare? Is it's because it doesn't scale, right? So trust is this notion that you'll keep doing actions that will ladder up over time. It really compounds. But you're going to add maybe 1% of trust for each positive interaction you're going to do, but it takes one interaction that's bad to ruin all of it. The moment where you even start doubting whether you can trust someone or not, you have no trust. So the point being is it's like absolute trust. If you really think about it, there's this sort of final gradient. Most people define it as this binary thing, but it really isn't. It's really kind of like, you know, what most people will say is either I trust someone or I don't. But even let's say you do trust someone. There's degrees of trusting someone. How many people do you trust with your life? How many people do you trust with your bank account? Just handing it over.
Are you a trusting person though?
I think that's one of like from what people that know me. So, I have, I actually had breakfast with a good friend of mine, and you know, he's slightly older, but he tells me the truth, and he is very nice, but he'll point out the problems that like are going to stop me from going to where I want to go. And one of his points, because I would answer like if I asked that question myself, I was like, I don't trust anybody. Yeah. I think I'm getting a little better with that, but I am concerned that like I'm going to be one of my own worst enemies because of this like I can't let go.
Yeah. But look, I mean, you talked about it yourself. It started in your childhood. Like in my case, I grew up without a father. For sure, but I have the most loving mother. She gave me everything. And to have that start in my life, I've always felt that whatever I do, whatever the failure is, she will always love me. And to have that in your back pocket, I think it means you've automatically come from a different vantage point than what I believe you had in your childhood, right? And then my approach to life is just like, okay, well, you know, by again, I'm not saying I have absolute trust in every person. But I choose to believe that trusting people makes for a much more fun, rich and rewarding life than one that doesn't. And I believe that.
I think you're definitely right about that.
Yeah. And I believe that life is more fun doing the journey with other people around that than doing it in single player mode. And that doesn't mean that I'm not also a person that likes my own spare time, my own comfort, my own solitude. I have that part and that's the duality in my personality. But I really do believe and it'll go back to philosophy, but the more I give away, the more I get back. And so I just keep focused on doing that. And for me, the ultimate impact at this point why I said, you know, I'd like to be the best coach there ever was, the best entrepreneur coach. Maybe that's my archetype, but than a player because I've come to see that these people that I've done Spotify with for the past 15 years as an example, seeing their success, seeing their impact, seeing their growth is the thing that gave me the most amount of pride at this point. It really isn't anything else. Like, you know, financially I couldn't care. Not that important. It's great to have a lot of money to have as a currency to then have more impact. It's more chips on the table to do new, more cool, interesting stuff. But the real thing for me will be the friendships that I built. You know, the trust that other people placed in me to allow me to help them on this journey, help me on my journey and us doing it together. And I've just seen it so many times. I've been burned by it for sure. Sometimes when people have broken that trust that I put in them, but I will honestly say that's been like one or two percent negative experience relative to all the positive things that come out of it.
The sad part about this, I can't think of anybody that's like betrayed me in like two decades.
Yeah. So it's like I'm just making up this problem, this imaginary problem that maybe used to exist but certainly doesn't exist now.
And this is where I think it's really like helpful to again, I don't need a bunch, you know, I don't believe there's a great quote from the founder of Red Bull who I became slightly obsessed with and I'm really proud of the episode I made on it because like we had to literally translate, there was no biographies in English and that we had translated biography from German. And his point was just like I don't need 50 friends like I believe in much fewer and better and deeper and as long as you make those like choices correctly. You know, again, like I can't think of a single person I feel is in my life that doesn't want the best for me.
And yet I still have this like, oh, like I'll just do it all myself.
Very related to this, another thing that like you said that really surprised me is like when people ask me, they're like, I obviously know who Daniel is. I use Spotify. I know everything going on, but like why do you talk about him so much? And I like mention you on the podcast and like I was like, well, because I've learned a lot from you. You're very very careful what you want in life. Like and I get to meet pretty crazy people and most of the times like it's they're great but then you see like there's like a lot of negativity to them. One, there's a shocking amount that have very few if no friends which is scary to me. And then they kind of like interact with you as if like you're like an asset. And once I suck that asset like get everything out of the asset then like you will be disposed and I feel the same people that do that have almost no intellectual humility right where I always say it's like every single person I read about is smarter and more productive than I am the way I look at this. The world in general is very much in the same way like Thomas Edison has this great quote. He's like, 'We know what we don't know one one-thousandth of percent of anything.' Yeah. And that's the way I feel. It's because every day I learn something new. I'm like, 'Yeah, I'm going to be, I was so stupid back then.' You have in extreme levels of intellectual humility. I don't even know if many people know this, but like you would like go in shadow and spend time, I don't know if you have a term for this. You just like call up somebody that's running a company and say,
"What? I'm gonna come and sit on every single one of your meetings."
Yeah, pretty much. Like that's how it goes. And look, it comes back to this. I mean, I don't believe that I know much. Let me just set the table for this real quick. The way you put it to me, like I'll go get them their coffee. Yep. I don't care. Yep. I'm there to learn from them. If I need to go get their coffee, I'll go get their coffee.
Do you understand that's insane? Like I think that's the right like mindset.
Yeah. But I don't think anybody would believe somebody running, you know, a hundred billion dollar company and has done the things that you've done like, "Yeah, no, I'm fine. Like, I'll shout this guy and like I'll do whatever I need to do." Yeah. Well, I mean, look, I just realized it sort of started from this thing, right, where you and I have both read all the books and actually many of the entrepreneurs have read not as many books about as you have around all the greatest entrepreneurs, but they've read the big ones.
