My conversation with Daniel Ek: Founder of Spotify

Yeah, pretty much. 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.

Yeah. But I don't think anybody would believe somebody running a hundred billion dollar company and has done the things that you've done like, 'Yeah, no, I'm fine. I'll shout this guy and I'll do whatever I need to do.' Yeah. Well, I mean, look, I just realized it 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.

But there's a certain thing around reading it and internalizing it and seeing the culture up front. And what I realized was building Spotify, obviously it's the biggest company I've ever built. So I'm learning on the job and I don't know what I don't know because I've never really worked at a company, right? And in a way, what I realized as we hired people from these other companies is that there were all these things that they were doing that they kept telling us about and I didn't really understand how it worked. So I'll mention one for instance. I do really well in these one-on-one situations. I might even do well in like three or four person groups and maybe six, but a 10 person group, I don't have the personality where I command the room. It just doesn't work. And then you have someone like Mark Zuckerberg who literally has this thing called large group where he has 20 to 25 people that he runs every week. And for me it sounded absolutely awful. How does he get anything done in that meeting?

And so lo and behold, I asked him, 'Hey, can I come and learn from you?' And he was incredibly gracious and we've obviously been friends for a long time and he said sure. So I spent the better part of what I believe the first time was like a week literally in pretty much all of his meetings from start to finish. And the big question obviously for me is, okay, well what does he get out of it and can I make myself useful while doing it? So hence I took meeting notes. If I could get him coffee, I would. It was literally these types of things. But at the end of it, the most interesting thing was obviously trying to distill down what surprised me about the culture. It wasn't really brand like Meta and what was then Facebook is a world-class company. It wasn't like I miraculously thought I could do a lot of things different or better, but there were things that surprised me around how he managed the company and seeing that and hearing that from another founder, hopefully one that he respects too, may lead to insights and breakthroughs. And during the week, it's not just that I follow people around. I actually meet with their entire executive team and interview them too. So sit down and try to learn from them to really truly internalize the culture and try to understand it. And so all of a sudden you do realize for instance how you can make a large group team meeting work. And there were lots of other things which I shamelessly copied from that experience. And it just turned out for me to be an amazing way to learn by seeing the culture up front that enables the certain practices to work. It almost comes back to kind of these two things we talked about already, which is this mirror of reflecting it back and then the sort of second notion I think which is it's got to be true to you. So there are many things where you can copy a specific way for instance Elon does things, but if it's not truly innate to you and your personality, I promise you it will not have the same impact as when Elon does it.

But at the end like he was it was kind of like

Specifically on product, right?

There's this hilarious story. It's in two different books. One's in this book called Creative Selection, which is excellent. I've read three times. It's about this guy named Ken Kocienda who was a programmer. He demoed to Steve many, many times when they were building their best products. And then there's another story in Jony Ive's biography. And they talked about comparing and contrasting the way Google would make products versus how Apple did when Steve Jobs was in charge. And the guy's like, 'Hey, you know, at Google we have to decide between blue and light blue and we run 200 tests of all the different shades in between.' Yep.

Ever do that. Do you remember you were old enough to remember this?

Yeah. I think the most important thing that you described is it's a spectrum. It's not 100% one way or the other way because again, sort of like I remember early on people talking about that dichotomy of how Google does things and how Apple does things. And many founders then tended to gravitate when Apple was at sort of peak Steve Jobs to, 'No, I run the product review. It's only my opinion that matters. It's my taste and I've got this articulation.' And lo and behold, some terrible decisions ended up coming out of this. And I think where people break down on almost all issues is they take it literally. I don't believe for a second that Apple was 100% in the camp where Steve Jobs just had universally the answer to everything. He didn't listen to anyone else's opinions. He didn't try things out. Sometimes maybe trying it out by testing his ideas on multiple people inside and outside. But of course he did that, right? And I know one of the ways he did it which was brilliant and doesn't get talked about. He actually called up journalists sometimes and tested ideas on them. And like, 'We might do this kind of thing.' And then the journalists react to it and it's like, 'Okay, that was a bad idea,' and then go back.

Mac. Yeah. Of course. Yep. That's the way. That's the way, right? And so I feel like that's truly the case. I think the realization is you tend to over gravitate to one or the other. And certainly in Spotify's case, we did the same. We were early on very much so. I mean, the first user interface was pretty much designed by myself and this guy called Rasmus. So much of that you could describe was my taste. But sooner or later what ends up happening is you get into a space where you don't even know anymore because your current feedback loop of where the world is and the customer you're designing for starts becoming a little bit different. And then you need to get to a point where you start incorporating some feedback mechanism. So for me, taste is sort of judgment plus curiosity. And the more you can extend the curiosity branch, that improves your judgment which then builds your taste. And so it's really a question for me about just allowing for as much feedback as humanly possible so that you can get yourself or a small team to some level of taste. The best leaders in business are able to spot patterns. But you can't spot patterns if you can't see your data. And most businesses are only using 20% of their data because 80% of your customer intelligence is invisible, hidden in emails, transcripts, and conversations unless you have HubSpot. HubSpot is where all of your data comes together so you can see the patterns that matter. Because when you know more, you grow more. And that is a pattern that never fails. Visit hubspot.com today. That is hubspot.com.

Oh, plenty. Plenty. And this may be a little bit unique, but coming back to it. So I ended up having, you know, the typical thing is that the founder needs to be the product person, right? By the way, it's 100% true. I totally believe that. I think it's the most important thing in the zero to one stage. But what a lot of people don't talk about is the fact that there isn't one stage of this journey. It's like you're oscillating between zero to one, one to 100, and then the last stage which is more like optimization stage. And you have to constantly do that and you're going to need different skills at different places. And this is why I believe it's so important for entrepreneurs to realize when to apply what tools in this journey. So what happened with Spotify is sort of against all the common wisdom and wealth which is I don't really run product anymore. Because what happened was I got this guy called Gustav that you've now met and he runs product and he's actually way better than me at doing it. And so, speaking about being truthful, what ended up happening many years ago was I was running these product meetings. He was sort of running it, but I wanted to run it. So I kind of interjected myself over him. But I didn't have the time to really spend all this time. So he was sort of running it for me but I still insisted on having product reviews and talking again about the importance of having people who give you candid feedback. He took me aside after one of these product sessions and he's like, 'You know, you're not really that good in doing these things and you're not really that helpful. Most of the time me and the team were kind of looking and we're trying to basically appease you in the meeting but you're not really adding as much value as you think.' And not surprisingly, my first instinct was to be really pissed off. I sort of went home. I was like, 'Man, I'm going to have to fire this guy. It's horrible. How could he say that?' But I also realized that that was an emotional response. So again, I wasn't fully convinced that this was true. But I sort of went back and said, 'Okay, well, you know what? I'm going to give you three months where I don't do the product reviews.' And then we evaluate how this worked. And lo and behold, he actually did a great job. And so the product team was much happier. He was making more of the decisions without me. I wasn't meddling in. There wasn't two different people deciding what worked, but it was really him. And ever since that moment, I don't really run product anymore. I'm involved in the product and he solicits feedback from me all the time, but I don't run the product meetings. And I say that because what happened for me was a real setback, not just in that moment, but it also sort of like, 'Oh wait a minute, so what am I? What's my value then in this company?' And it took me a while. And I realized that all of a sudden, actually, you know what? That won't be it. But maybe I can add value in this place. And I sort of oscillated to this different place in the company, which was much closer to understanding the creator and spending more time with the content people, etc. And so my product feedback ended up being, and this is the dynamic that's quite unique to Spotify in that we have these two stakeholders. We have consumers on the one end and we have creators. And so I just made it my effort to understand and know the creator way better than anyone else in the company. And so my product feedback to them comes from that lens. And that became value add because again, that's a very different thing. That's an outward-facing thing. You actually have to sit down and meet with creators. It is so much more about innately understanding their needs and talking to them and understanding not just how they use the product but their business, what problems are they facing that's not just how they leverage the product but actually holistically around them. And so that was just one of those things. And then subsequently what ended up happening is I got this guy called Alex and he's now doing that part better than me too. And so I was like, 'Okay, well, now I need to find a different way to add value.' And now it turns out that my value add is the sort of in between between the two, where business or creators meets consumers and where there's maybe a third stakeholder we have to consider in all of this. And so my whole experience in all of this has really been around figuring out who I am and what I'm innately good at. And this has been a learning journey for 20 years.

I would say the first 10 years was the zero to one journey.

Yeah. I mean, look, there's clearly three distinct stages of parenthood, right? The first one is you're literally the person that keeps them alive. You're 100% there and you pretty much make every decision for them because they can't make it themselves. And then gradually the next stage is you're there. You're quite involved. You probably step in when they're doing something which would be terrible and would create bad long-term consequences. And then the last stage, you can't even do that. So the job is much more subtly to just be there when they need you. And I'm somewhat simplifying it. But I think that as with everything, don't take it literally, but the core gist of the idea is certainly a larger company becomes more and more and an older company becomes more and more of that. And so much of what I do today is literally that. I try to be there for people when they need me in various fields, which happens but it's not as often as every day all the time. And what I deeply care about today and I do spend a lot of my time on is this notion around this first seed of a new idea and protecting that idea. And I think it's probably the most underreported, talked about way is how do you do that? How do you consistently find lightning in a bottle? And it's also theoretical at the point of any strategy book talking about how you do it or even when you go behind. I was the other day with the guy Hamilton Helmer who wrote the Seven Powers book, which is an amazing book on strategy by the way. But one of the most interesting ideas I learned after sort of again overfitting the concepts in the book and teaching people about it is you can only tell that you have power when it's there. It doesn't tell you how to get there.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. You know, you're built usually you have a lot of variance in the beginning and then they get more successful and they kind of, corporations make the mistake of like, 'No, we need all the edges. We need the high and the low out of there.' You embrace that. The way you put it to me when we were talking about this is like high temperature people in training AI. Yeah. Yeah. I actually think LLMs and the latest advancement in AI have created an excellent framing on this. So to talk about the high temperature notion, in LLMs you can basically tune up the temperature and if you tune up the temperature, it basically starts hallucinating. So the bad thing with hallucination of course is you have no idea what's true or not, but there is spurts of vocational brilliance that comes out of there and the truly new ideas that come out of there. So the criticism of the current generation LLMs is they're not very creative and that's ultimately because we've kind of turned down the temperature on them and we've safety trained them to the point where we keep them within the guardrails. So there is a way when you train these things to be highly creative but bat shit crazy, and that's just turning up the temperature. And I believe that one of the, and this is by the way something that I intend to focus a lot more on in the next decade. I'm very reflective at the moment because I am in my 19th year. And I think it's interesting you talked about big companies because I used to think before I ran a big company myself, I just used to think they're bad, period. And I've sort of revised my view and now I think they're really good at doing what they're already doing and doing it better. So back to that point, a large scale corporation, what they do is they just get better and better and better at doing what they already do. And the way to do that is obviously minimize mistakes. So that also means minimize brilliance, minimize waste, minimize all these other things. So naturally what you end up having is more and more capitalism, public markets, all these things drives you towards one thing: optimize what you're doing to the point where it's the most efficient thing that it can possibly be. But that is not conducive to how you get the best ideas. And what I'm greatly satisfied and happy with and I've been fortunate enough as I don't anymore run Spotify as much day-to-day as I used to. I'm still very involved but I'm not involved in all the team meetings and doing all the things that I used to do. I was like 90% internally focused on just getting the machine to run. Is that I've been more and more able not just have the free time to think, but I've been more able to meet more people. And part of the beauty of that is that it brought me back to music again. And it brought me back to the creative process of music again. And it is something remarkable in a studio where you have a bunch of people just throwing ideas at each other. And musicians actually in many ways know more about the entrepreneurial process than most people give them credit.

100%. And so this point then is that what I truly believe the very best musicians do and the most creative people do is they are not afraid of throwing out ideas, even terrible ones. And it's in even the most terrible one there may be a nugget. You and I talked about this over breakfast where there was a person who sort of gave some bad advice to you. But sometimes even the insight behind the advice, the question behind the question, can lead to some really interesting things. And so what I've come to realize is most people want conformity and they value sort of a reliable consistency of giving X amount of impact per second or minute or X truthfulness over X percent. They have some sort of heuristic for what is a valuable person from a business context or whatever context you're judging it on, but certainly in a business concept. It's conformity. You want to sort of put people in a box: this person is good and they're always good. But you know what I'm more interested in these days? I'm interested in this idea I've never heard about before. And I find it with some people that even in an hour-long conversation with the best people in the world where I've learned the most, it may be 55 minutes of that conversation that honestly was completely worthless, not that interesting for me. But then there's a spur-of-the-moment two or three minutes of brilliance which I never heard before which will deeply and profoundly impact my life. Those are my people. That's what I'm interested in. And I've come to learn that most people don't like to be around those people. But I love it. And I think it's such a rewarding and interesting thing, and I'm looking forward to spending more time with those people in the coming decade. And it's one of those things that I want to do more of and learn more from.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not that is an unreasonable you know people like I can't do that social etiquette. Like I even sometimes I find myself do this because we're both introverts. We've talked about this before. But like I kept getting invited to group dinners and I just felt like, 'Oh, this is a prestigious group dinner. This person's really successful, people would love this opportunity.' And so at the beginning when I first started doing this, I started going. I'm like, 'This sucks. I remember one time they were in a private room and they shut the doors.' And within five minutes, I knew I was like, 'I got to get out of here.' I was like, 'Don't worry. I'm going to pretend to go to the bathroom and just never go back.' So I stand up and go, 'Oh, where's the restroom?' Like it's right in the room. Like, oh no. And what I did, which I wouldn't do today, is I sat down and I wasted an hour and a half of my time instead of just being the unreasonable man. Yeah. Like I'm now going to say like what would Daniel act? He would get out of the dinner in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. I would say I'm not proud of sneaking out sometimes on that. But look, at the end of the day, I think that's less about protecting my time and more about protecting unique and novel ideas and how rare they are. And by the way, we'll hopefully get into that, but I think less about a lot of entrepreneurs seem to be obsessed about time. I'm really not. I'm more obsessed about energy management.

Well, I mean, you constantly hear this thing about all these, you're supposed to wake up at 4:00 a.m. in the morning, you're supposed to do all these things, etc. It's like first and foremost there's no rule. I know a lot of successful people in bed. I'm sure you do too. It's like some of them wake up at noon, some of them wake up at 4:00 a.m. You can do a lot of different things.

Yeah. But the other thing is about you're supposed to pack every meeting into 15 minute increments, and 15 minute increments is better than 30 minute increments. So on and so forth. Look, it might work for you. And for some people it might be the absolute best thing. I've become more obsessed about managing my energy. Because if you have time but you have no energy, you're not going to accomplish anything anyway.

Well, it's about finding out what gives you energy, right, to begin with, and what drains energy. And it's about finding out which time during the day you're most productive. It's again innately about understanding yourself. And what the whole world tries to do is get you to conform to their schedule. 'Oh, we have an 8 a.m. morning meeting because that's when you get into the office.' Or you're supposed to do this and that and all these other things again in big corporations. And it's about conformity to the average or to an okay standard instead of going for excellence. And what truly is unique is you got to just figure out what works for you and you got to do more of that. And that's more about energy management, I believe. And it's so much more about, even before this thing, I think both you and I went and worked out, right? You know that gives me energy. It's what's going to sustain the rest of my day. I used to not do workouts at all because I thought I don't have time, there's no productivity. I used to go for, the worst productivity thing I did was I was at one point doing these 15-minute naps. I don't know if you've heard about this exercise. No, it's a really bad idea by the way. So don't try this. But I sort of learned that you can daisy chain sleep together by doing these 15-minute naps.

So the basic gist is you're supposed to be able to last on four hours of sleep a night. And I was like, 'Oh, this is great.' So I did that and actually the interesting side part is it worked for about three weeks. And then I missed one of these 15-minute increments and holy shit, I was completely suicidal for like weeks afterwards. It was not a great thing at all. But the point being is it's about finding that energy management for yourself. I think certainly there's common wisdom around what an average good sleep should look like, etc. But the reality is there are some people that will work on six hours of sleep and they'll do just fine and may even be more productive that way.

No, it really isn't. And so look, you just got to find that thing, right? But when you realize that, if you start with that as the basic thing, all the things you and I have been talking about for this time now, the reality is it's about knowing yourself, which is really hard, and you get to know more, and it's about building a system that works for you. What's giving, I know hanging out with crazy people gives you energy. Yeah. Right. Yeah. There's actually something. So I texted a mutual friend of ours, Patrick, and I was like, 'I'm talking to Daniel.' And Patrick I think asks the best questions in the world, so obviously I need to use phone a friend for that one lifeline. Exactly. And he's a good mirror, too, because it's almost like a therapy session. He'll be very quiet, doesn't like attention on himself, and yet he'll hit you with a question like, 'I didn't even think about that.' Yeah. And he has this great way to describe you. My guess is that you're obsessive about learning and understanding the world around you, and that drives a huge part of what you're doing. This exploration, you can build companies around the stuff you're interested in, and that's kind of like this compounding learning machine. Yep. But he goes, 'Out of everyone I know, Daniel has the ability to apply what he learns the fastest at the highest level.' And this was actually related to a conversation that we had at your house, which is fascinating. Because again, I know you don't like public aggrandizement. I'm still going to do it because I think it's fascinating. Everybody focuses on Spotify, which is a marvelous achievement that very few people on the planet are capable of. And yet, because it's not really talked about, all this other success that you're having outside of this too, because you have this curiosity and now you have a network and knowledge and resources that you can actually impact and try to make the world a better place. And you're not going after easy stuff by any means, which I also admire about you. It goes back to the impact over happiness thing. Yeah. And so we're talking about this and I'm like, 'Were you, because usually true interest is revealed early. So if we go and look at your life story, people like, 'Oh, what hobbies do you have?' I'm like, 'I like to read.' Yeah. 'And like what else?' I'm like, 'I like to read. That's it.' And I was like that when I was five. I wasn't like, 'What's a good hobby for my future self-development?' It's like no, I just like reading. I like books better than people in general. And so you see that in your early life. You're starting companies and you didn't even know it was a company. It's just trying to do something. So I was like, 'Oh, you must have been interested in investing forever.' And you're like, 'No, I never even thought about it until 2018.' Then you said the funniest thing. You go, 'How did you learn about it?' He goes, 'I started listening to Patrick's podcast.' And then I'd hear an idea like, 'That's a good idea. I would try that. Oh, I don't like that idea.' And then I started reading books. And then you literally taught yourself. You weren't interested at all. And now you're essentially world class at it in a very short amount of time. And this is the face again. You just did the same face. Yeah. But like explain how you think about this. I always say learning is not memorizing information. Learning is changing your behavior. And I think if I thought of anybody else I know that personifies that, it's you. It's like I'm not just listening to this podcast for shits and giggles. I'm not reading this book even if you find it enjoyable. I'm looking to apply this.

Yeah. Well, I think it's back to these two concepts we talked about. My whole journey is one of self-mastery and finding out how I can become the best version of myself. And meanwhile, what gives me energy is solving problems. And as you say, I think this is revealed early. I loved, I didn't know it was companies, but I loved sorting out problems for other people. I've been doing my entire life, whether it's relationship advice, whether it's all these other things. And this is why I think these conversations are important to have because you are the personality type that I've read about. It's just like now instead of reading about you when you're 80 or dead, you're in the middle of it. So it's very fascinating to me because I'm trying to balance my understanding of this through reading with an actual person. Most of the people they're not like, 'I'm starting a company for company's sake.' Just said what you said. I like solving problems. Yeah. That's it. That's all. So if you look at the video games I actually think what kind of video games you like is a pretty good revealer of your things too. I wasn't playing any kind of first person shooter games or anything, some of it but not much. Most of what I was playing was strategy games, Civilization, business strategy game. I played every tycoon game of how to run businesses better.

You know, so those were sort of my favorite games growing up.

Sim City was amazing.

Yep.

And as a result, money came naturally as a result of service. That's 100% how I think about it. And I think this is the beauty of capitalism, right? Because ultimately at the end there has to be someone willing to pay for what you're doing and the reason for them to pay is obviously you're solving a problem for them and the better you're solving that problem or the bigger the problem is that you're solving for people the more valuable it becomes.

Well, so the these are two different ideas but but sort of closely related. So, it was actually my co-founder who sort of said the value of a company is the sum of all problems solved. And if you really think about it, it is exactly what it is. So like I tell this to the team because when we face very difficult problems, it is great because again if we solve these problems we will create a lot of value.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. There's this guy name Henry Kaiser who was as famous in his day as maybe like an Elon is today and he built a 100 companies. One of them still exists, Kaiser Permanente. He built the Hoover Dam. He built the Liberty ships in World War II. And he has this great maxim that like people would come to him, they'd be all depressed and he'd be excited. And you're like, what the hell's going on here? Uh Henry, and he goes, problems are just opportunities and workflows, right? There's a great way to think about like if I can solve this problem for other people, I make other people's lives better. I make the company more valuable. And like and then you also have to feel good about what you're creating into the world.

100%. But I think it comes from solving problems and and and and so yeah I mean like I get excited today you you sort of asked like about the other stuff that I get focused on. It's I don't focus so much about the solution. I focus on the problem. I try to find really interesting problems that um and and figuring out even if there's like a five or 10 percent chance of solving that problem and I know that would be huge for humanity or society if we figure it out then it's amazing like that gets me fired up and and the intricacies of solving that problem because it's often times very very complex because it's not like other people don't know this problem exists. Uh there's probably even a lot of people that would agree that if we could figure it out that would be really valuable. Um but um you know I I find this all the time and and you said it yourself. It's like sometimes they're really small these problems. Sometimes they're gigantic and and sort of earthshatteringly different. Um it's everything around you know life extension to um you know um just walking into a store um and you see things you don't like in the store. Well, those are problems. Uh, if you could do those things better, you could probably build a business. And and so, um, the the biggest thing, however, is that people have this misconception about what what, um, innovation is, and they somehow think that they got to try to figure out something entirely new. But the history of the world is we build on other people's ideas. Um, so an innovation is actually taking two or more things that were already well-known and putting it together in a new way. It's really what it is. And so for me the most interesting thing is like laying a puzzle or anything else is like I get to sit around and um because of the meeting so many brilliant people I get to listen to problems uh all all around me all the time and I try to um distill and figure out okay well this person said this thing but what what if you actually articulate the problem like this instead uh okay well what does that mean and what does that unlock and and that for me is just Um it's so much fun and I couldn't imagine you know not spending every single day doing this and you know we we we started this journey by telling my story that I didn't have to work and that's why I started Spotify because I love music and and I wanted to figure out a way where consumers got what they wanted and creators were able to get paid by doing what they love to do. Um and that's really the genesis of the story. Um but but even today you know I'm thinking about this and I said if even if you remove all the money even from the beginning uh even in the middle and even now uh there's no way I wouldn't do this uh and spend m much of my awaken time thinking about this stuff um just sort of like for me this is impact and this is what leads to happiness uh in my life story

Um I I like the process of science. I like the process of discovery. I like the process of understanding the how things work. Um you know I've been wired this way all all my life. I've been pulling apart computers. I've been trying to understand why a semiconductor works the way it works. All these things. Um, and I'm intrigued about that. Just this this thing about understanding everything, understanding life, understand where we come from, understanding all these different things. Uh, but I'm equally interested in solving problems. And when when you're curious about both of those two angles, you try you you can end up finding these sort of um sort of um connection points where those two things meet where it's obvious that there is something over there um that no one's really kind of applied in this way before and maybe there's not one idea but two ideas over there. It's quite interesting. Um and and I think you have to love technology in order to go to the depth of understanding what's possible and and because it's often times like the greatest ideas is truly innately understanding something and truly innately breaking constraints around that something um by understanding the rules and knowing when when you can Yeah. to break them.

Yeah. Um, I think Neco is like an example of this. I met your co-founder on it and I got to to see this too and I was like, 'Oh, like this is cool.' Like who made the machines? It's just like we did. Yeah. And and then I didn't know it was like I don't know if stealth is the right word, but from the idea to the first time the customer happened, it was what, like six years or something or four years. No, it's uh the company's eight years old and we barely began. Yeah. And it's like, okay, that's an insane love. That's an understanding like we're t tackling one something that's Yeah. I like what you just said like uh innovation and creativity is actually a combination of things that occurred before that we're combining. Yeah. Right. And um when when you mentioned that I thought of like you know James Dyson is one of my entrepreneur heroes. And what I love about one of the hidden things that people don't know is he wrote a book called the history of great inventions. And he it's such like it's not it's kind of a bland read, right? God bless his heart. But like it's just him going through like little Wikipedia pages or like my ver his version of like Wikipedia pages about like what this inventor did, how he did it, and what the result was. And then you see him take these ideas from like 700 or whatever. And I was like, 'Oh, I'll just take like that little piece out here and I'll combine it with this piece.' And then what's what's the new technology today that enables me to solve this problem that didn't exist a few years ago. So you have this patience, right? You have this desire to solve problems. It's almost like it sounded like to me and maybe you could disagree with me like you're sounding like you see a giant puzzle. Yeah. 100%. Now you have uh like you can you have more resources you can be patient like you couldn't have done neco 20 when you were 23 y right but you have this great quote that I know is important to you and it says quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort. Yeah. We haven't talked about quality at all. Even though like Spotify is the high like if you compare your competitors like it's just in a class by itself. So it's obviously very important to you like we can't we have to talk about quality. So like do you want to like just pick up where that quote leaves off?

Well well there there's so many strands of quality, right? Um um it it it is both um sort of the distinction of taste whether taste is subjective or objective. You can go so many ways with this question, but um the way I think about quality um is um I I think so much of your early life um certainly in my case was the formulation of just trying to go for more. And the further I've gotten uh I've realized um and and it's about everything, right? You mass more stuff. uh you mess uh you try to do um you know more things at the same time. You you try to do all of these things um at the same time. And the further you go, you realize that um it it it really is about sort of ultimately this very simplistic tribe thing, less is more. And and the older I get, I feel it more and more. Um you know, we talked about it with friends. Um, I think most people uh start out thinking having more friends is better, but I think more people are happier with fewer but better friends than many friends. Um, and and so I think quality is ultimately this sort of notion around um focusing um distilling uh getting to the essence. Uh we we can even talk about like quality in communication is often trimming things down and saying less things, right? Um why is it for instance that when we're talking about very hard things, most people's instant reaction is just to try to add more complexity to the issue instead of just simplifying it. They're just trying to um be courageous and just trying to say the thing right out loud. the older I get, the more my instinct is towards turning towards that. And I'm reminded even if we go back to investing because like part of why I sort of liked investing has nothing to do with money. It started with uh honestly this fact that all of a sudden I had more money than I knew what to do with and I sort of didn't want to just hand it off to a bank and and uh without understanding anything about it. But what what sort of got me deeper curious about it is uh I realized that investing is is actually more about um learning about your temperament than it is about the specific action that you're doing. Your temperament actually it's it's more about being in line with your temperament than than not or which game you're picking needs to be suited to you and your circumstances and how you want to play this than anything else. And so again we come back to philosophy. Um and so uh one of the concepts um uh is obviously around um that Mer talks about coming back to Mer reference again is it's diversification right and and he calls it somewhat simplified diversification because the common wisdom of course is in theory diversification is is the best thing you can do but the truly greatest people um financially if that's the only yard stick you use typically do completely the opposite of that which is they have often times only one assets maybe they'll have two or three but they certainly don't have more than that and they just go for that there's a realization you have right cuz like I read something you read a line and you're like okay let me filter that through like how I would say it so I I do this all the time where like I'll take notes on all the books that I read and then I'll reread them I'll just jot it down it's like what's occurring there can I put it into one sentence and one thing I stumbled upon about this was that sometimes The uh Nick Sleep has this great quote where he's like the best investors are not investors at all. They're entrepreneurs never sold. And me and you have talked about this, the fact that there's a lot of people that have like sold way too early and they're like lauded and it's like what if you just didn't do that everything else you did like you if you just didn't sell uh so Nick talks about this is like and it's in other books it's like if Sam Walton didn't give away the stock in Walmart to his kids before it appreciated you know you have one of the largest fortunes by a single person ever for the ownership the concentration of ownership in Walmart and Sam talks about he's like I didn't really do investing in anything but Walmart Right? And it's like he wasn't waking up saying, 'I need to diversify my portfolio. I need to worry about capital allocation.' He's just like, 'I believe in what I'm doing. I'm going to keep doing it. I'm going to throw all my money in there.' And he's just like, 'I' doing it because I love to do it.' And spending time doing anything else would be an absolute distraction. And Nick Sleeve talks about this because he's a capital allocator. He's not building a product, but he's making capital allocation decisions like, 'Do I need to sell this stock, put into another one? I'm weighing my opportunity costs.' And he was haunted almost by this idea. If you look at financial history, it's like he talked about a firm, a financial firm one day where they're like, 'Okay, uh, we owned IBM in the 1950s.' And I didn't know until I read Michael Dell's autobiography, right? Because IBM was it's like they're the most powerful and wealthiest company in the world. When me and you were born, okay? And Michael Dell's like, 'You have to understand like 1987 for me to like yell out to my dad.' He's like, 'What do you want to do for a living?' He's like, 'I want to compete with IBM. I'm in I'm a 19-year-old in my dorm room with a thousand dollars. like what kind of grandio ambition do you have? I went and like why is this so crazy? And I started it was the most valuable company in the world by market cap at the time. It was the first company to go over hundred billion in market cap, right? And this little 19-year-old kid's like, 'No, I think I can like have a go have a go at them.' But Nick Sleep talks about he came into this firm and he's reading their their how they talk about their investments and like we made a massive mistake. We owned IBM in the 1950s and we sold. and they're having this conversation in the 1970s and the leadership of the financial firm is like how do we avoid not doing this that one they they said if we just held that it would have uh the gain would have been more than all the assets we have under management like we can't do this that same year they sold Walmart they have Walmart in the 1970s so they made the same mistake and Buffett obviously greatest investor of all time he met Walt Disney he went and talked to Walt Disney in like the 60s and then he I think the he bought the socket 62 cents or something, right? And he he had like a 2x or 4x game. He's like, yeah, I sold Disney. So, it's that's why I was like, 'Oh, the best financial decisions are not financial decisions at all. You're doing it for another reason.' Which exactly what you said. It's like all Sam had to do was just keep doing Walmart. It's exactly what he did. I remember um I obviously live in Miami uh on a friend's boat in uh the marina there and there's like the boat like bigger than anything else around there. It's like and you can Google like who owns it. It was like it was Sam Walton's brother's daughter. Right. Right. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. It's crazy. But but but I think you're on to something important. Um which is this notion around just um innately focusing um and and solving problems day by day builds quality, right? Um and and so uh quality for me is is less. Quality for me is uh focus. Quality for me is improving day by day. Um all of these things build quality and quality is rare. Um quality in people is rare. Quality in ideas is rare and we tend to make these things binary. Um and u we talked about it with people like I'd rather have that person that has one good idea in um in an entire hour and the rest is crap than someone who has you know 10 decent ideas but nothing is amazing. So that sort of differential equation between the 1% versus the rest is is so important and it's so important to understand and I think it's it's we again take it literally uh and we know about it because we can explain it in hindsight but we don't know when it's happening. So what is that qualitative process? What defines quality as it's happening before you can see it objectively from the outside. Those things are interesting and um I'm more and more drawn towards that um it is um for me at least very much looking at the people um in it um and looking at how they build judgment over time, the sort of feedback loop they create, the curiosity that they have about this and the obsession they have about trying to achieve the impossible. And for me, the impossible is something that's perfect. It's never going to exist. The whole universe is this thing where the only thing we've learned, we keep debating all these things about the universe, but the only thing we know is it's not static. It moves. It cannot by definition be like this one thing. It's just constantly expanding or contrasting or it's moving. It's it's um so so perfection just doesn't exist. But the aspiration towards perfection uh is a remarkable thing. I mean, I love Japan for this reason, right? like you you find these amazing individuals that literally spend their entire life. I was um in Japan maybe 10 days ago or something and I I I was in one of these temples u with a tea master who literally all he's done uh for the past uh I've asked him for the past 34 years is perfecting how to make tea. That's it. Nothing else. Uh and yes, the tea is amazing. But it's not just that. It's just seeing that obsession about quality, seeing that obsession about being not even 1% but like .1% or point.1% in something. And I think feel like you you you sort of asked about AI and all these things and and we can talk about art too but like uh for me like that is going to be even rarer like average is going to be possible to do even better than average is going to be possible to do with AI. But but that sort of thing about this guy doing this for 30 years just becoming the very very best about what they do or even what I find incredibly inspiring about you is just the relentlessness every single day towards the long term. It's it's like as you say it's the paradox about the long-term um um mindedness uh but the obsession on the daily basis u and against conventional odds against all these other things because I I I would imagine I don't know but I would imagine like when you started uh founders probably not many people knew who you were right nobody nobody right and so the the competition for your time was there was none. So you could probably sit for 6 hours or 8 hours etc. But today it's much harder um because there's many other things. There's people like myself and other people and you're like, 'Oh, wait a minute. Maybe this is a good idea to meet this person or there's a uh you know um a business opportunity that shows up and maybe people are asking like maybe you should invest and maybe you're tempted about it even but it's this is the thing that happens all the time and this is how greatness gets evaporated is you lose focus.' That's a great line. Greatness gets evaporated. the a lot of the stuff like when I talk on the podcast or everything I say on social media is like reminders to myself because I just read reread past highlights cuz like we forget that we forget and so I need a reminder and I just came across one. It's just like uh I have them presented to me in a random order. So it's like I never know what I'm going to read that day and it said uh it was Buffet. It's like the difference between successful people and and really successful people is really successful people say no to everything. Yeah. And this is exactly the constant thing where like I do have a question for you. Um, one going back to that, it's like I can't even explain why I did what I did because like I had close to no traction for 5 and a half years. Mhm. And now I look back, it's like there's no way I would do that today. Yeah. But somehow that person who I now greatly appreciate a lot that he feels like a different person. Yeah. that I cannot believe that is like what I'm most proud of is not like trying to make something that's great which I think is a selfish thing for us is like yes when you release it to the world you release Spotify you do all these things it's an act of service to other people but you're also doing it because like you it you have to it has to come out but I just cannot believe that I did that and I'm just like that's the thing I'm most more mo most more most proud of than anything else just like I had to do this I was willing to like drive Uber if I had to 10 bar do literally whatever I was like just give me enough time I'll figure it out. Now I didn't think it was going to take half a decade to figure out you have a ton of stories with Spotify with that line I feel like your work and your life like they're [snorts] one and the same. Yeah. The issue that I'm having now and in general is that I feel a lot of pressure because like I'm trying to change not just my life but like literally the trajectory of like my entire family and I feel very guilty when I don't work to the point where like you know I just got back from a crazy trip that people would love to go on and like I just felt guilty for not for like taking time out and off not working and I feel like this is like almost like a compulsion like I don't have control over it. Yeah. Do you have anything like that?

Sure. Um I do feel the same thing of course. Um but I'm I'm back to sort of time versus energy and management and um I don't know about you but I feel like the greatest ideas I've had comes from the most weird and wonderful places where I expected nothing out of it. So quite often when I do take some time off, I come back with like two or three some entirely new insights that just wouldn't have come if I just kept grinding that thing by just changing a scenery. Uh being in a different frame of mind, passing, giving um you know it's it's in the creative process, you know, um the greatest artists talk about some of the greatest songs literally take five minutes to write. Yeah. Which is amazing, right? But some songs are the ones you like work on it. Um you put it in a drawer and six months later totally unbeknownst to you. It clicks. You're not even working on that thing. It just sort of like, oh, that's it. And they go back and they do the song and it's like the greatest song ever. Um there's not one path to greatness. Um there's many. Um and I feel like the that's that's why I'm so obsessively focused on energy. So, you mean energy is like you just let that guide you? Yeah. It's like, hey, if I need a break right now, if I need to go for a walk or if I need to go spend time with my wife and kids or like Yeah. Is that what you mean? Yeah. 100%. Um and and I try to uh feel that. I feel like so much of our our um life just rips us apart from this thing and tries to get us on a schedule, per se. Um and it's not like I don't have a schedule. Of course, I do have one. And um but but I feel so much of it should be more guided by trying to understand ourselves more um intimately. Right? So, I I don't know if you've you've heard of this, but um going back to sleep, there there's been this kind of thing around um more recently, which I was surprised. One of my my 10-year-old daughter told me about this is around um um that um actually, you know, um she she sort of said like we have this idea that of eight hours and and she actually mentioned instead that um uh the real notion is um that we kind of did it almost like fasting. um like Ramadan is you know how it's based on the sun sometimes it could be 6 hours sometime it could be 12 hours so it used to be the sleep was actually in two periods uh so you didn't sleep one consecutive thing you sort of had a um 3 4 hours sleep uh and then you know you woke up and then you had another 3 4 hours sleep again and so much of that was based on light um and you know maybe it was driven by other things that were happening in our life too and for Nordic Well, what it actually meant uh going back as as late as the you know 18th century before we started having electric lights and candles and all these things is we actually slept a lot uh less on the summers and we slept a lot more in the winters guided by lights. So we keep thinking it's the static thing but it's actually again driven by the environment around us and so much um of this sort of innate knowledge about listening to ourselves understanding um our um innate personality understanding hunger like I can tell you as someone I've I've gained in periods of my life like um 40 lbs um in my worst negotiations etc. And and one of the problems I have now is that I literally don't know when I'm hungry because I ruined that sort of natural feeling in my body of of understanding when I'm hungry and when I'm not hungry. Um so um you know huge part of losing weight for me over the past few years was just really kind of innately starting to listening to my body again and like starting to figure out what satiation means because for me for instance I don't feel it until 20 minutes after. So like if if if I didn't like sort of eye what I should eat, I would just keep eating way more than I should. Um and so much of me has just been portion sizing of like understanding, okay, well that's probably going to be enough. And it doesn't feel like enough at that moment because I ruined my body, but 20 minutes later I understand it. And so I'm just trying to sort of again convey this sort of thing about understanding who you are, choosing the game you're playing, and realizing that there's life is not one game, but it's a thousand games. And there's this brilliant quote um by this guy called A Opia that there's another one of those things. I just circled it. Perfect timing. We're No, we're in perfect alignment. Go ahead. Well, I'm probably going to ruin the exact one. So So maybe you can read it. Okay, I'll read it. It's in life, the challenge is not so much to figure out how best to play the game. The challenge is to figure out what game you're playing. Yeah. And and for me, uh realizing that, um it it's just been eye opening, right? Uh it's another one that's on my wall. Uh because I feel like quite often when I'm talking to people um and and they're talking and trying to get life advice, they're not playing their game. they're playing someone else's game. Uh they're certainly not playing the game they want to be playing, but they somehow think that life is just one game where actually so much is about choosing the the right game for you. Um and so um yeah, I keep coming back to that like energy management is the same thing. You got to like uh create the environment around you that you want to do. You got to choose your game. Um, and when you do that and you start understanding that, you start becoming superhuman in your ability to get things done. Do you have more or less negative selft talk today than you did 20 years ago?

I I was I'm more comfortable with who I am um than I was 20 years ago. I was still very much my whole life I've been a searcher. I've been um you know uh when I was really young in my teens I went to every possible religious meetup you could be. Uh I went to everything. Uh I went to Hari Krishna centers. I went to to um you know um Jewish centers um you know mosques. I learned everything and I try to learn as much as possible because I I truly believe not enough people are are like I I've always been surprised why more people aren't interested in where we come from and what the purpose is of life. For me, those are sort of some of the greatest questions that I like many others don't have any idea obviously what what will happen but I think they're they're really important. So, I've always been a searcher and I think that naturally sort of like led me to sort of also be a searcher about myself, too. Um, and and trying to find sort of who I am. But the older I've gotten, the more and more things have started clicking about myself and the more unapologetic I am about. And so, your inner monologue gets less harsh. Yeah. because like you know not only do you stand out quite a lot um as an entrepreneur um and my interests were widely different than my social circuit growing up and all these things but the second thing is I'm an introvert um so um you know that doesn't help um so most people like being around a lot of people and they get energy from it I didn't so that obviously naturally um gets you to question yourself and you know against um many others as an entrepreneur I'm not the most eloquent person I'm not the smartest. You're pretty damn eloquent. Well, I I had to work on it. That's like the hard thing. I really really I'm not Listen, I've listened to all your episode or all your interviews and I did this before we were friends and I every time something comes out I was like, 'Oh, I got to watch that.' You're you're very you're not giving yourself enough credit. Like you are a very clear communicator. Like thank you. Um but but it's really a work product. Like I I wish there was more recorded stuff on my myself when I was like 20 and 21 because [laughter] I I was I was not great. Uh I was quite terrible. Um and and so I've just learned that it's a superpower. Uh and something I have to work on is getting my message across to other people to believe what I'm believing and see what I'm seeing in order to get them to want to come and join uh whatever thing we we're trying to will into this world. I have two more questions uh that I'm personally curious about. One is going to be a very weird question, but the first one is do you feel different? Okay, so like most of the people watching this are listening to this like so few people are going to be born in the projects in a tiny little we didn't even we'll have to do like this every year if you're fine with it. Uh because like the idea that you even like come from this tiny little island which I was like uh you know uh like got to visit and then you like competing with the biggest companies in the world and you win. It's just doesn't like we we didn't even get there. Yeah. But like you grow up, you have a great mom, you know, single family, not a lot of money, but and then now what I'm curious about is like your lived experience is so there's so few people alive that can actually empathize with that as because they also had it. So I'm very curious, do you feel different? Um, and what I mean by is like as you've grown from, you know, a kid in the projects. Yeah. Even if you had early success to now being, you know, one of the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet, which I know, don't do the face, [laughter] but it's undeniable fact. Like, do you feel different?

I think yes and no. Um, so I I feel different in in the same way a 40-year-old would feel different than a 10-year-old would do. I feel different in um I'm a product of all the experiences of my life and obviously I've been incredibly fortunate to uh I was counting the other day I've been to like 130 countries or something in my life. I've seen so many cultures, so many people. I have friends all over the world. All of that has shaped me into who I am. um I don't feel difference because innately many of the things the drive the long-termness the obsession the um um this sort of willingness on the paradox of winning on the one hand but then also trying to truly find a win-win um and work with people to try to find a win-win which is really important to me um uh has always been there uh and it's always been these things and like you said, you know, you kind of look back uh at uh yourself a few years back when you started off and saying, 'Wow, how did I do this?' Um and and you're amazed at that. I can feel the same way about young Daniel. I can feel myself about the young Daniel that worked every weekend um um you know non-stop 247 sacrificed so many things so many summers so many other things um you know I had a blast doing so but I didn't have a normal upbringing uh just because I was so obsessed about learning so obsessed about uh making it um and and it put me in the position of where I am today Um, and I actually feel like I owe that guy to keep pushing myself, right? Because there's so many things, there's so many demands of my time, so many things that tells me to to sort of downshift gear uh into an easier gear because life would be a lot more comfortable that way. This is not a comfortable thing. Impact to happiness. This is what so I think I text this to you. Um, but one one of the roles you play and I'm very grateful that you allowed us to like record this conversation because essentially what I text you is like you seem to have like no self-imposed ceiling on what you can learn or achieve and that spending time with you then transfers that belief to other people. And so like every single time, you know, obviously like I take notes of like what I learned from the conversation we have after the fact and I interpret it, it's like obviously not verbatim. I'm saying like what did I just learn from Daniel? What does apply to me? like, oh, you have all these. So, you think you don't I thought like I was ambitious and I like I didn't even realize till you kind of pulled the scales off my eyes. Like, you have this like limiting belief that you have no limits. There is no limits in life. And so, like you're hell of inspiring. One other question for you. Um, I'm obsessed with Game of Thrones to an unhealthy degree. Um, I rewatch the series all the time. I've read all the books. I read the encyclopedia. I'll read the family histories because I do think like like you can learn a lot from human nature in fiction and and my job and my obsession requires me to 99% of my reading is non-fiction and I don't I want to read more fiction and I I came across something recently because I'm going through Jeff Bezos shareholders again and then I read like what was my interpretation of this in the past and then I came across something that was fascinating. There's a there's a story in the prequels of Game of Thrones where uh two brothers um are fighting in this war. One of the brothers was pulled into the war that did not want to be there and he made the sacrifice because it was for the good of his family. Y he wind up dying in the war that he didn't want to to fight in the first place and his brother survived, got his remains, buried him and then put him in a grave with only one word on his tombstone and that one word was loyal. M. So hopefully you don't you 100 years from now when you do have a tombstone, if there was only going to be one word on that tombstone, what would you want it to be?

Um I I don't think too much anymore. I used to think a lot about how other people saw me or see me. Um, I don't do that anymore. Um, so I would I would choose more of a self-reflective uh one. Um um and I wish um only one thing um on my tombstone future one feels absurd talking about it, but uh would be that um he lived. That's a great one. That's a great way to end it. Daniel, I'm thankful for your time. Thankful for your friendship. You're one of the people I most admire and uh I really appreciate you doing this. Well, well, thank you so much and it's such a huge honor to be your first guest in this series. Yeah, of course. Thank you so much. Would have any either way. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders, for almost a decade. I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders.