Founders - My conversation with Daniel Ek: Founder of Spotify

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

I started a new show so I can have long-form conversations with the greatest living founders. You can watch on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, X, or the web.  The new show is on a separate feed so don't forget to follow David Senra so you don't miss future episodes. Nothing is changing with Founders. I will never stop making that podcast.  Thanks for the support!

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 Eck, who's one of the wisest people I know, and I've learned a lot from Daniel and 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 Senora 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 Podcasts. 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 Senora, 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 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, is 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 a novel idea, you know,

every once in a while, but certainly not all the time. Yeah. 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. perfectly 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. I haven't heard anybody else articulate that. And so Darcy says, I was reading about all the issues happening with Uber and 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 Eck, 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 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, my God, this is so obvious, I've got to take a shot.

I knew it was going to be uncomfortable. Can you just explain how you think about optimising for impact over happiness and why? Well, 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,

downs of life, et cetera. 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, you know, I would put it in this case is, you know, what was obvious for me with someone like Adara was he was content. He wasn't happy. And, you know, he had gone through a face, 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'd 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 happening,

it's 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 the way you work? I think of self-motivate myself that way. Okay.

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, joy 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, in many cases, I feel 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 project 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, et cetera. So, wait, you felt like an outsider even at that age? Oh, yeah. Do you still today?

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 were 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 story, some of my conditions, some of the waves, the structures, even how to structure a company, you have to structure differently if you're a European company versus an American

companies. You have to go back to sort of first principles and kind of find this 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 five 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 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 conversations 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, more like myself, that, you know, this is sort of one of those sort of key things. is really consider impact.

One of the things I admire most about Daniel Eck 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 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 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 Eck 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 i like and i was curious if you could say that's like no no i know you have this like inner burning desire and fire inside of you which is to me you're outside is like you're very calm you're very articulate but you have that like the same thing i've reading these books all time. It's just like this person had a burning desire to achieve mission success is the way I think about it. Yeah. 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 it was a 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 worldview. 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? Probably 15. 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 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 and so I I I kind of like okay well what's next what am I going to do because I'm is that 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 to, you know, till four decades to reach. You reach it now. You're going to the clubs. You're realizing these people aren't any, my friends. They don't care about me at all.

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 sometimes we have a sick culture where like people, especially on social media, they glorify like consumption. 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

for hundreds of years. People constantly think, like, oh, we've reached the end. There's no more opportunity. 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. It's 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 the businesses is an idea that makes somebody else's life better. And if you look at it 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. 100%. 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 VCE 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. Like, we shouldn't have 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 or anybody else, right?

And they're always just like, yeah, you know, my belief is something that I repeat on this maximum, that belief comes before ability. It's in these stories every single time. You have somebody, like I just reread the biography, the autobiography of the founder of Sony. Akio at the time was, we're going to start this company in 1946. Yeah. In Tokyo, that's occupied by the Americans, that is completely, has been fire bombed. Yeah.

right he's passing he's going to work and he's passing just burnt out rubble millions of homes of japanese yeah more than half the population has left the city they start what turns out to be sony which is the 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 they need to have umbrellas on their desks because when it rains it comes through the roof oh wow yeah right and yet in his book he says i don't have a promising, 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.

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 computer, 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. problem solved. And so what I keep doing is essentially I've got this tool box 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, 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 five 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 yeah and this is what i draw inspiration off of it's just like going back to what you said earlier about uh impact and 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 basa said on this he's just like he was he tells the people he used to tell people in amazon

on 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. Yeah. I think it became of Spotify, you know, you're guys like, hey, we're going to, 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 day is because Daniel would teach us and tell us that he's building for the long term. Yeah. So there had to be acquisition offers early on.

Sure. And did you ever consider them? Well, I consider 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 an approach, it was always about can this thing further our mission? And if I truly believe 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 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.

What you still do today? Well, I started doing again, which is a very different thing. And I still think the jurors out, by the way, on whether that's a good idea or bad idea. Explain. Well, you know, again, I do believe that, for the jury's out, by the way, on whether that's a good idea or bad idea. I do believe that focusing all your time and effort on this one thing and obsessed 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 coached employer? 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 Jobses or Elon Musk's, et cetera, 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 Danielaq out there, right? We just know that that's going to happen.

There's just 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. Yeah.

And he said this great thing because, you know, at the end of his career is the rise of Kobe Bryant. Yeah. And everybody's, towards his career, they were like obsessed. Like, oh, Tracy me great. He's going to be the next Michael Jordan. And this guy's going to be next Michael Jordan.

and 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. Yep. 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 a pejorative. It's like, you just say stuff that no one else says. And then I'm like, why isn't, why don't more people understand, like,

know about Daniel's very unique ideas? Like no one's concerned about the archetypes. I was like, oh, you just have to be like Steve Jobs. You just have to be like Elon. Yeah. 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. That's very clear that there are.

Yeah. And yet they're all kind of like narrowly focused on this is the one path. And me and you went over this back and forth before. It's just like it's so ridiculous to say like there is this is the way founders should run their company. Because you said it back in 2021 in that series and Spotify, we've had conversation like this. this is something I always say it's like it's tied to the personality of founder. The advice is fucking 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 manage 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 steep jobs. I certainly tried to mimic bases and gates and all of the great ones, you know, 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 really, 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. So 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, there's more of a conversation in an interview because I'm a terrible interviewer and I love to talk. Yeah, sure. I do a monologue show, 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. Yeah. And if you go and read all their biographies, they weren't like laying about doing nothing when they were younger. Yeah. But I, it's very clear, if you look at all of them, Steve Jobs, Enzo Ferrari, Akia Marita, Sam Walton, Estée Lauder, Coco Chanel, Edwin Land. They do their best work when they're much older. And so I thought a lot about them. I'm like, dang, this is like a reoccurring thing over and over again.

Some cases they're 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 sets so you can like practice more uh 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 of my body it's like because you know they knew themselves much more yeah like think about the way you know yourself in your early 40s than you did when you were 23 oh yeah it's like we thought when we're 23 yeah you don't know anything no even the most brilliant 23 year old does not know themselves you need

that comes through time and experience. Yeah. 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 it's authentic to them. Yeah, 100%. He also, the way he says is they build a company that's natural to them. Right.

And you can't build a company that's natural to you right. 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, 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 saw, I was actually 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, it's like somebody poked you're 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 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 rummaged through your library made me 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 yeah and then building a business and like an apparatus around that so I just wanted to get that out because you you mentioned something like I don't think I should probably talk about more frequently but something I definitely believe it's like you're going to get better at entrepreneurship when you get better knowing who you are and what you actually want to do 100% um and and and 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 um that I've noticed you know obviously like there's this maxim I say we're never again that all of history's great entrepreneurs study history's great entrepreneurs and if you make a podcast on that you get to meet the 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 just like you're lying to yourself you're not like you know you're obsessed with this and you're like fighting with a hand time I 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 it's like in the 50s and they're very primitive devices and what they realize was was they hired a young vocal arts student. And I don't know how to pronounce the name, is Nerea Oga or something like that. And the reason they did is because he was a fan

of early Sony products. 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 Akeo, being the genius, he was, he goes, we hired him as a paid critic.

His job was to attack the deficiencies in our product because 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 what you're doing, right, what you can fix, like, 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. Yeah. And I think what's what I'm curious about with you. you is 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 autobiography's ever written because he tells you about the bad shit the fact that he was 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's when he started CA sure as hell knows himself as like almost I'm 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 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 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 uh yeah and and so oftentimes like when 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 um so that's a great one um i have a very dear friend uh chat who very similarly placed that part in my life.

He's the most realest person. There is my wife. It's another one. Gustav de 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 under-talked 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 does it. And he goes, trust is one of the greatest economic forces in the world.

And he talked about that. Your job, when I actually got to have dinner with him, he's like, your job is to build a seamless web, deserve trust with great people 100% and he's like that's not any he was telling stories like everybody knows that you know I met Buffet when I was when he was 28 and I was 35 they don't understand there's all these other guys around us yep and we built friendships and did deals forever most of them had passed away by the time I met

him yeah that idea it's like trust is one of the greatest economic forces in the world it truly yes and if you think about it why is why is that so rare is it's because it doesn't scale right so trust is the then this notion that you'll keep doing actions that will ladder up over time it really compounds but um 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 where you even start doubting whether you can trust someone or not you have no trust so the the point being is it's 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 it's really kind of like you know what most people will say is either i trust somewhere or don't but even let's say you do trust someone there's degrees of trusting someone um how many people do you trust with your life how many people do you trust with your bank account just handing it over you a trusting person though to a certain degree i think that's one 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 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 you talked about yourself you 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 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 a life is more fun doing the journey with other people around 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 will 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 I like to be the best coach there ever was the best entrepreneur coach maybe that's my archetype 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 gives 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 ships on the table to do new, more cool, interesting stuff. But the real thing for me will be the French. 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 the sad part with 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 isn't it is they exist now and this is where i think it's it's really like uh helpful to again i don't need a bunch you know i don't i don't believe there's a great um quote from the founder of red bull who i came slightly obsessed with um and i'm really proud of the episode i made on it because like we had a literally translate there was no biographies in english and that we had translated a biography from german um and his point was just like i don't need 50 friends like i believe in much like fewer and better and deeper yeah um 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 yeah and yet i still have this like oh like i'll just do it all myself yeah um very related to this another thing that like you said that really surprised me is like when people ask me they're like 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 oh 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 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 to have very few if no friends yeah which is scary to me

and then they kind of like interact with you as if like you're like a 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 don't know one, one thousandth of percent of anything. Yeah. And that's the way I feel. It's because every day I learned something new. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to be, I was so stupid back then. Yeah. You have 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're just like, call up somebody that's running a company and say, what I'm going to come and sit on every single one of your meetings yeah pretty much like that that that's how it goes and 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 for 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 yep I need to get their coffee I'll go get their coffee yep do you understand that's insane like I think that's the right like mindset

but I don't think anybody would believe somebody running a hundred billion dollar company and is done the things that you've done like yeah no I'm fine like I'll shout out of 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 as you have around all the greatest entrepreneurs

but they've read the big ones. Yeah. Certainly of their time. The basis is the Steve Jobs, the Elon Musk's biographies and all that kind of stuff. 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 it's 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 like how it worked. So I'll mention like one. For instance, I do really well in these like one-on-one situations. I might even do well in like three or four person groups and maybe six. But 10 person group, like I don't have the personality where I command the room. It just doesn't work. And then you have someone like a 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. Like, 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. And 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 like, okay, well, what does he get out of it? And can I make myself useful while doing it? So hence, I took meeting notes, you know, if I could get him coffee, I would. You know, 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 around like meta and what was then Facebook is a world-class company. It wasn't like, you know, I miraculously thought I could do a lot of things different or better. But there were things that surprised me around how he managed to company.

And seeing that and hearing that from another founder, hopefully one that he respects too may sort of lead to insights and breakthroughs. And during that 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 caused, from, for instance, 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 this 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 you know 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 I think you're dead right about this the way I would think about like your archetype is I think you nailed it with like coach and then you'll hear people inside Spotify say it's like very you have a very collaborative, like, management style where I don't think anybody is going to describe Steve Jobs as collaborative. Now, he was able to collaborate, but at the end, like, he was, it was kind of like, I'm making all the decisions. So there's actually interesting story.

I'm curious how you think about this. Like, how do you balance, like, the decisions you make specifically on, like, product, right, with, like, your own personal taste and intuition versus, like, being metrics driven? 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 from this guy from this guy named Ken Kens Koseanda who was a programmer and he demoed to Steve many many times and like when they were building their best products right

and then there's another one story in Johnny Ives biography and they talked to they were comparing and contrasting the way like Google would make products versus how Apple did

when Steve John was in charge and you know the guy's like hey you know at Google we have to decide between, like, blue and light blue. And we were on, like, 200 tests of, like, all the different shades in between that. Yep.

And Johnny's, like, we would never, ever do that. Yep. Do you remember, you were old enough to remember this? They create the, the, the, the, the, IMac, but, like, the big, fat bubble one. Yep. You know, probably, like, late 90s? And it was the first time there was going to be all these, like, crazy colors and everything else. And Johnny tells the story, it's, like, you know how we chose the colors?

He's, like, me and Steve went to the design, like, where the Apple Design Center, and we talked about it. And 30 minutes later. the colors you saw, we shift. Yep, yep, yep, that was it. Yep, yep. Where are you on like that spectrum? Yeah, I think the most important thing that you described is it's a spectrum. It's not 100% you know, one way or the other way because, again, sort of like I remember

early on, you know, people talking about that sort of dichotomy of how Google does thing and how Apple does thing. And many founders then tended to gravitate when Apple was at sort of peaks, Jobs to know I run the product review it's only my opinion that matters and is my taste and I've got this articulation all these things and lo and behold like some terrible decisions ended up coming out of this etc and and I think where people sort of 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 doesn't

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 um you know etc but of course he did that right and i i know one of the ways he did it which was brilliant and that don't get talked about he actually called up journalists sometimes and tested ideas on them and and like we might do this kind of thing and then here the journalists react to it and it's like okay that was a bad idea and then go back They describe this as, like, sonar, how dolphins, like, they, like, throw things out. And then they, it might be a crazy idea. And then it reflects back to them.

And they used as, like, a form of education. But the hilarious one is they couldn't figure out what they were going to call what turns into the IMAC. He was obsessed with the Kiomarina and Sony. He goes, I have the name for this computer. It's going to be the Mac man. Because of the Walkman. And people are running, we're like, no, please don't do it. There can't be that.

And they're like, this is a terrible. And they kept meeting after meeting. He's like, Steve, this theme sucks. Yeah. And they give him a bunch of lists. and then the first time you hear is iMac he's like don't like it at all yeah and then they're like we like it so like we'll put it in the next group and then like we'll move it like the third one down yeah and then he goes now i don't hate it yeah and then one day he's walking the hall is like

i came over the name but it's iMac yeah and of course yep that's the way that's the way right and and so i feel like that's truly the case i think the the the realization is you tend to over gravitate to one or the other and certainly in spotify's case we we did the same Like 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 the 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 like for me, taste is is sort of judgment plus curiosity. And the more you can sort of like extend the curiosity branch that improves your judgment, which then builds your taste. And and so it's really a question for me about just sort of allowing for as much feedback as humanly possible so that you can, you know, get, you know, 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. Are there any product updates that get pushed live that you didn't like? Oh, plenty. Plenty. And this may be a little bit unique, but, you know, coming back to it, so, you know, I ended up having, you know, so 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, you know, the last stage was more like optimization stage. And you have to like constantly do that and you're going to need different skills at different places.

And this is why, by the way, 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 now met, and he runs product. And he's actually way better than me at doing it. And so speaking about sort of 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 like running it for me, but I still insisted on having product reviews. And sort of 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.

So most of the time, me and the team were kind of like looking and we're trying to basically, you know, a piece 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 like horrible. Like, how could he say that? But I also realized that that was an emotional response.

months. 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 lobehold, he actually did a great job. And so the product team was much happier. You know, 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, you know,

I don't really run product anymore in nutrition. 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 sort of that moment, but it also sort of like, oh, wait a minute.

So what am I really, you know, what's my value at then in this company? and it took me a while and I realized that all the sudden hmm 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 you know and this is the dynamic that's quite unique to Spotify and 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 crater way better than anyone else in the company. And so my product feedback to them comes from that lens. And that became value ad 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 sort of 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 not 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, you know, business or craters meets consumers

and where, you know, there's maybe a third stakeholder we have to consider in all of this. And so my whole sort of experience in all of this has really been around kind of figuring out who I am and what I'm innately good at. And this has been a learning journey for 20 years. Well, you're just describing right now, this unfolded over how many years?

I would say the first 10 years was the zero to one journey. And the last 10 has been that journey where we're not zero to one anymore as a company holistically. But there are elements of the company where we're zero to one where I'm absolutely 100% involved. I think this is a good opportunity to talk about another one of your very unique ideas. that I also, there was excellent, I just did this episode on Jeff Bezos because he doesn't give them any interviews and so I would take transcript of his interviews

and you treat it like a book and just go through it. And he said something like from day one, he knew like he wanted to build a company that could outlast him. Yeah, right? He still loves it. He'll love it forever. And it was very reminiscent of like what we're trying to do as parents

where it's like you're shaping your kid but you're only successful if they can survive without you. Yeah. And when I heard him say that, that was a few months after you had beautifully like articulated this idea it's just like well I think there's a lot of you're going to say better than I did but essentially like there is a very rather clear analogy between the way your

child when they're first born is essentially like a a product of you they're going to mimic their parents their environment that they're in but as they grow older and older I just went through this and I have a 13 year old you know when she was much smaller she's much like me and her mom yeah right And then now she's like, she's got traits that I don't even have. Yeah, 100%. And her own decisions and like doing things maybe I would do or I would not do. And you're like, it's kind of the same for the company. And you had this idea where like, I think at the time, Spotify was 19 years old, or it's 19 or 20 years old.

And it's just like, well, you know, year one or two, it is me. It's like the same way you have a two-year-old. And anybody knows this. But now there's characteristics that emerge from within the company that are separate from the founder. Yep, yep. That's like a fascinating insight. Yeah. I mean, look, there's clearly kind of like three distinct stages of parenthood, right? And the first one is you're literally the person that keeps them alive, right? And you're 100% there. And every, 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 like the last stage, you're not even, 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 with everything, don't take it literally, but sort of the core of the gist of the idea is certainly a larger company becomes more and more and an older company because 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? Like, how do you consistently find lighting in a bottle? like you know and it's also theoretical um at the point of any strategy book talking about how you do it or even when you go behind um i was um the other day i was with um the the guy Hamilton Hamler who wrote seven powers book uh which is an amazing book on strategy by the way um but one of the most interesting ideas um um that i learned after are sort of, again, overfitting the concepts in the book and sort of 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. This is the criticism of like founders and the podcast and the books. But he's not telling me what to do. It's like, this is not a podcast for people that want to be told what to do.

It's here's how this guy or this woman thought about their company. This is what they experienced. You pull out these ideas. I love how you say, you kept saying, don't take it literally. I've told you this before like I drive people crazy

because I tend to turn everything and end of abstraction so like when I hear you I've sent this message to you where like you kind of remind me of James J. Hill which just might be the only person that's ever texted you this

and James J. Hill was the most successful railroad baron of all time and I just thought the way you just said the way he built he essentially was laying railroad tracks right

and he was hit the goal of the company was obviously we're going to have goods and people on the tracks right but this alone is how do I make what I'm doing more valuable? And he's the only railroad founder ever in American history to not go bankrupt.

They all went bankrupt. It's crazy. What he realizes is like he has to spend just as much, if not more time, developing and nurturing the communities that are springing up around it. And if he builds these communities around it and that makes his railroad more valuable. But I love this criticism because it's like, oh, you got to find a different show or you got to find a different thing. Because like entrepreneurs don't want to be told what to do. I've never met.

an entrepreneur it's like give me a list it's a it's a profession for people that don't take don't direct you very well exactly it's hilarious about this I want to I think this is tied to something also that is very fascinating with you is you have a high and most people again like the

I think the more control you have over your life the more success you have people make the mistake of like eliminating any people with timing truth any inconvenience and you come like really brittle you have an insane high tolerance for crazy people okay um somebody told me somebody works closely with you that you judge people on their best idea

not their worst and i just finished rereading jim simons founder of rednessed technologies uh really creator of a magic money machine is really we think about the guy yeah um and they said something very similar they're like it doesn't matter he's like if there's a single good idea in your pile of horse manure like he'll find it like he will go through yeah he all he cares about is the very best ideas he will willing to go through 99 shitty ideas yeah to get the very best because he understands how powerful is are can you explain like how you develop this tolerance because most people like ex-sicious companies age too yeah you know you're built usually you have a lot of variance in the beginning yeah and then they get more successful when they kind of they make the corporations make

the mistake of like no we need like we need all the edges we need high and the low yeah out of there yeah you embrace that you you the way you put it to me when we were talking about this is like high temperature people. Yeah. For like, in like training AI. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I actually think LLMs and the latest advancement in AI kind of have, have created an excellent framing on this and to talk about this sort of high temperature

notion. So in LLMs, you can basically tune up the temperature. And if you tune up to temperature, you know, it basically start hallucinating. so you know the bad thing with the hallucination of course is you have no idea what's true or not but there is spurs 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 safe to train 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 actually crazy and that's just turning up the temperature. And I believe that you know, one of the and this is by the way something that I intend to focus

a lot more on in the next decade. You know, I'm very reflective at the moment because I am in my 19th year. And I think it's interesting you sort of talked about big companies because I used to think before I sort of ran a bit company myself. I just think, you used to think they're bad, period. And what I've sort of revised

my view and, and now I think they're really good at doing what they're already doing and doing it better. So back to that point, like 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, you know, that also means minimize billions, 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 how 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,

any more 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 to 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. I think it's the same thing. Filmmakers, like athletes.

100% of the same thing. Yeah. 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 even even the most terrible one, there may be a nugget. You and I, we talked about this over breakfast where, you know, there was a person who sort of gave some bad. that advice to you. But sometimes even, you know, the insight behind the advice, sort of the question behind

the question can lead to some really interesting things. And so what I've come to do realize is most people, one, conformity, and they value sort of a reliable consistency of, you know, giving X amount of impact per seconds or a minute or, you know, truthfulness, you know, over X percent, they have some sort of heuristics for what is valuable person from a business context or whatever sort of context you're judging it on, but certainly in a business concept, it's conformity. You want to sort of put people in about it. This person is good, and they're always good.

But, you know, what I'm more interested in these days is I'm interested in this idea I've never heard about before and I find it with with you know some people you know that even in an hours 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 you know completely worthless not that interesting for me but then there's a spur of the moment two three minutes of brilliance, which I've 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've, I'm looking forward to spending more time with those people in the coming decade. And it's sort of one of those things that I've sort of want to do more of and learn more from.

I think this is related. One of your oldest friends texts me the other day. And it was a screenshot of this episode I did with Chung-Juyang, who's the founder of Hyundai. And it's probably the most, I think it is the most inspiring autobiography I read because the guy writes the book when he's like 90. And he grows up the son of a poor farmer. You know, they had to eat tree bark to survive. He dies. The richest person in South Korea builds this huge conglomerate.

I thought I was going to read a book about a guy making cars. I didn't realize that was like nothing. Yeah, like he was building, did all the construction, built some of the biggest ships in the world. Like he was just, his nickname was the bulldozer. And the reason he sent me a screenshot and it was a specific part of the podcast, he's like, this is just like Daniel. And one thing that Chung would talk about is as the more you progress in your career,

the bigger the company gets, the more like rigid it gets. Yeah. They go from like default optimistic, default risk taking to any new idea. No, no, no, no, no. Like, no, we're not doing that. It's too risky. Like, I can't build a car like we're a tiny little, you know, island. And he goes, Daniel Dutt gives me the same exact advice where he will say something.

I will say no. And he goes, but did you even try? Yeah. And then he goes, it's related to his ability, if you actually analyze his willingness to go into all these different industries where he doesn't know anything about the industry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that sort of comes back to the George Bernard Shaw quote, right, The Unreasonable Man.

Let me read the full quote because it's an excellent quote too. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. I haven't painted on my wall at home. Yeah. And I'm just reminded of that. Because I think the reality is, it is really, really tough to not conform, to not be part of a group.

And it's so easy. And there's so many temptations in life that draws us back to that conformity, right? Money is another one. When you make a lot of money, you tend to make life more comfortable. So you tend to spend more time golfing. You spend time doing all these other things. But the reality is you become distracted. and you're not going to be on your eight game anymore.

And so the hard thing then is to keep going and keep improving and keep doing these things. But you're going to have to sacrifice a lot in doing so. You're going to sacrifice people's birthdays, social commitments. You're not going to show up, you know, for a lot of things. You told me a funny story one time about how committed you are to your work and your friends know this about you that sometimes you'll be in a middle of a dinner and then some like an idea comes to mind or something you need to pursue

and they just know oh he he's gone and he's not coming back to that yeah yeah I'm not that is an unreasonable yeah you know people like oh I can't do that social etiquette like I even sometimes I find myself to 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 like 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 and like this sucks i don't i remember one time it would they like it was in a private room and they shut the doors and within like 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 you know never go back i was like so i stand i go where's the restroom like yeah it's right in the room like oh no 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 yeah instead of just being the unreasonable man yeah like i'm now going to say like what would daniel act definitely he would get He would get our avoid the dinner in the first place. Yeah, yeah, I would say, you know, I'm not proud about sneaking out sometimes on that. But look, I mean, at the end of the day, I think that that's less about sort of being, protecting my time and more sort of 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 sort of a lot of entrepreneurs seem to be obsessed about time. I'm really not. I'm more obsessed about energy management. Wait, wait, yeah, let's get into now. What do you mean? Well, I mean, you know, you constantly hear this thing about all these, you know, you're supposed to wake up at 4 a.m. in the morning

and you're supposed to do all these things, et cetera. It's like, first of the foremost, there's no rule. Like, I know a lot of successful people, as I'm sure you do too, it's like some of them wake up at, you know, noon, some of them wake up at 4 a.m. It's like, you can do a lot of different things. The obsession with morning rituals is stupid. Yeah. But the other thing is about sort of you're supposed to pack every, like, you're supposed to have meetings every 15 minutes. And like if 15 minute increments is better than the 30 minute increments, so on and so forth, look, it might work for you.

And for some people, it might be like the absolute best thing. I've become more obsessed about sort of managing my energy. Because like if you have time but you have no energy, you're not going to accomplish anything anyway. So how do you manage your energy then? 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.

And it's, again, innately about understanding yourself. And what the whole world tries to do is get, to conform to their schedule. Oh, you 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 a big corporation. And it's about conformity to like the average

or to an okay standard instead of going for excellence. And what truly, truly is unique. And I think the truly, truly unique thing is you've got to just figure out what works for you and you've got to do more of that. And that's more about energy management. believe and it's so much more about like even before this thing i think both you and i we went worked out right you know that that gives me energy yeah 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 in 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 Don't try this. But I sort of learned that you can, you can, like, Daisy Shane sleep together by doing, like, these 50 minutes. Oh, it's like polyphasic. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So the basic gist is you're supposed to be able to last, like, on four hours of sleep. 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 on holy shit. I was, like, completely suicidal for, like, weeks afterwards. It was like not a great thing at all.

But the point being is, you know, it's about sort of finding that energy management for yourself. I think certainly there's common wisdom around sort of what an average good sleep should look like, et cetera. 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. I wish I was like that. Like if I can have a superpower, I always say like the first thing, I don't want to fly like Superman. If I can't do that, I just want sustained high energy levels 24-7. Because I need a ton of sleep, and I felt bad about this because the same exact reason you're describing. It's like, people's like, no, you've got to get before 30 or you got to sleep less or sleep faster.

Or no, Tristanegger would say, you've got to sleep faster. And then I'm reading James, that is James Dyson's first autobiography. And, you know, like, I made one of the most successful companies of all time. He's still doing it at 76 years old. And he goes, I need a hell of a lot of sleep, 10 hours a night or my entire next day. is ruined. I'm like, wait a minute, this guy built, he's a single shareholder of a multi, multi, multi-billion dollar company

built some of the best products in the world. And he's sleeping 10 hours a day. There are no, you just said, there are no rules. No, it really isn't. And so, I mean, look, you're just going to find that thing, right? But when you realize that, if you start with that as the basic thing, like all the

things you and I have been talking about for this time now, you know, the reality is, it's like, it's about knowing yourself, which is really hard, and you get to know more. 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. I, you know, there's actually something. So I text a mutual friend of ours, Patrick Boshanasi. And I was like, I'm talking to Daniel. And Patrick, I think, asked the best questions in the world. And so obviously I need to, like, use, like, phone a friend. For, for. That one lifeline.

Yeah, exactly. And he's a good mirror too because, like, he, it's almost like a therapy session. Like, he'll be very quiet, doesn't like tension on himself. and yet he'll, like, hit you with a question. Like, I didn't even think about that. Yeah. And he has this great way to describe you. Because my guess is that, like, not even guess.

I'm pretty, I think you're obsessive, like, learning and understanding the world around you. And, like, that drives, like, a huge part of what you're doing in this exploration. And 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 adulation I'm still going to do it because I think it's fascinating where it's like

everybody focuses on Spotify which is marvelous achievement that very few people on the planet are capable have been experience and yet they like also because it's not

really talked about it's like all this other success that you're having outside of this too because you have this like you're very curious about things and now you have a network

and knowledge and news sources is that you can actually impact and try to make the world a better place. And you're not going after easy shit by any means, which I also admire about you. It goes back to the impact over happiness thing.

And so we're talking about this. And I'm like, were you, because usually true interests are revealed early. So if we go and look at your life story, just like, people are like, oh, what hobbies 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 it's like, I was like that when it was five. I didn't, I wasn't like five years old. 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, like you're starting companies and you don't even know what it was a company. It's just like trying to do something. So I was like, oh, you must have been interested in like investing forever. And you're like, no, I never even thought about it until 2018. Then you said the funniest thing. You know, how did you learn about it? He goes, I started a list of 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 you start reading books. And then you're

just literally taught yourself. You weren't interested at all. And, and And now you're essentially world class at it in a very short amount of time. And this is just the face again. Yeah. You just did the same face. Yeah. But like explain how like you think about this where it's like 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 like you. It's like I'm not just like listening to this podcast for shits and giggles. Yeah. I'm not reading this book. Yeah. Even if you find it enjoyable.

Yeah. Like I'm looking to like apply this. Yeah. Well, I think it's back to that, like sort of these two concepts we talked about. My whole journey is one of self-mastery and finding out how it 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. Like, I loved, I didn't know it was companies, but I loved.

like sorting out problems for other people. I've been doing my entire life, whether it's a relationship advice, whether it's all these other things. This is why I think these conversations are important to have because, like, you are the personality type that I've read about. It's just like now, instead of reading about you

when you're 80, you're dead, you're like in the middle of it. So it's very fascinating to me because I'm like trying to balance like my understanding of this they're reading with like an actual person where it's like most of the people, they're not like,

I'm starting a company for somebody's sake. Just that what you said. I like solving problems. Yeah, that's it. That's all. So if you look at, like, the video games, I actually think what kind of video games are like is a pretty good revealer of your things, too.

Like, I wasn't playing any kind of first-person shooter games or any of that, some of it, but not much. Most of what I was playing was strategy games, you know, civilization, business strategy game. I played every tycoon game of how to run businesses better. Of course you did. So those were sort of my favorite games, you know, growing up. I love SimCity. SimCity was amazing.

This is what I would say about entrepreneurs is like, it's the best job in the world. I don't understand the people that give it up. Like, I hate even saying this because like rule number two in the center of family, right, is what I teach my kids is mind your own business. So it's like I don't, I think you're very similar. It's like, I don't have any suggestions on how you should live your life. Like if we're friends, we can talk and go back and forth because like, I just mind my own business. Yeah. but sometimes like I just I don't have any other way like I meet so many entrepreneurs and they're like I sold my company I'm like sorry to hear that yeah I'm like why would you get out of the game and then they sell their company and then you go be a VC I'm like oh my God yeah this is the best game in the world it's never ending yeah it's not like sports where like no you you can get better with time yeah you can solve problems you can build your own world if you think about what we were doing in the computer at Sim City it's like oh like I

Like, I'll put a highway there. That's, like, we're world builders. You get to control, like, who's around you, what you're, what, like, what are the rules in the world that happens? Yeah. What's the outcome of the people in the world? Yeah. And you get to make, and hopefully you're doing it for, like, benevolent and good reasons where I do think, like, one of my favorite quotes from our maxims from the history of entrepreneurship comes from Henry Ford, where he's like, money comes naturally as a result of service. Yeah.

And the crazy thing about Henry Ford is by 1919, he owned 100% because he bought out his investors of one of the most valuable companies in the world. And he didn't do it to start a company. He had one idea. I've read 10 books on this guy. And people knew him forever. He's like, one idea. It's kind of weird that we're putting together cars. They're really expensive.

He was obsessed with machinery and essentially outsourcing human labor to machines. Started on the farm. Yep. Right. And he's just like, I want to build a car for the every man. Yep. You said something very, in the early days of Spotify. He's like, I have this goal of, you know, this celestial jukebox or whatever the cases.

And you said at the very, I don't know how I'm going to do it. He said the same thing. But I learned how to do it. He's like, oh, well, how can I make a car cheaper? Sure's hell can't put him by hand. So we've got to learn how to mass produce something. We don't know how to do yet. That took a decade and a half of failure or whatever.

And then what happens is he didn't start the company to make money, but he made millions of people's lives better. He changed the geography of the world, for God's sake. 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 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 what did you say earlier too you're like I forgot how to you how you phrased it but in my mind when I interpret it what you said it's this idea of not being a go-getter but being a go-giver saying something like the more problems you solve yeah the more comes back to you was that the well so these are two different ideas okay but sort of closely 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. I keep saying you think like Bezos. So there's a great line. Same thing where he says, I'm reading his shareholder letters for the fourth time. And it's like, these are so good and so clear and concise, I should read them every year. And I was like, I feel like I just read them. And I looked it up. I haven't read them since the end of 2022.

But there's all these stories in Basel's early career where people in Amazon would come to him with a huge problem. They thought maybe they'd get fired. And he got excited. Yeah. Because he's like, oh, great. Like, we had a problem we didn't even know. If we solve this, our company gets even more valuable. Yeah, exactly.

There's this guy named Henry Kaiser, who was as famous in his day as maybe like an Elon is today. And he built 100 companies. one of them so exists Kaiser Permanentente. He built the Hoover Dam. He built the Liberty ships in World War II. And he has this great maxim that people would come to him and they'd be all depressed and he'd be excited. And I'm like, what the hell's going on here, Henry? And he goes, problems are just opportunities and work clothes.

Right. This is a great way to think about it. If I can solve this problem for other people, I make other people's lives better. I make the company more valuable. 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 so, yeah, I mean, like, I get excited today.

You sort of ask 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, 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 the intricacies of solving that problem because it's oftentimes very very complex because it's not like other people don't know this problem exists there's probably even a lot of people that would agree that if we could figure it out that would be really valuable but you know I find this all the time and you said it yourself it's like sometimes they're really small these problems sometimes they're gigantic and sort of earth shatteringly different.

It's everything around, you know, life extension to, you know, just walking into a store and you see things you don't like in the store. Well, those are problems. If you could do those things better, you could probably build a business. And so the biggest thing, however, is that people have this misconception about what 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. 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, it's like laying a puzzle or anything else. It's like I get to sit around and because of the meeting so many billion people, I get to listen to problems all around me all the time. And I try to distill and figure out, okay, well, this person said this thing, but what if you're actually particular the problem like this instead? Okay, well, what does that mean? And what does that unlock? And that for me is just, it's so much fun. And I couldn't imagine, you know, not spending every single day doing this.

And, you know, 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 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. And that's really the genesis of the story. But even today, you know, I'm thinking about this. And I said, even if you remove all the money, even from the beginning, even in the middle and even now, there's no way I wouldn't do this. It's been much of my awakened time thinking about this stuff.

Just sort of like, for me, this is impact. And this is what leads to happiness in my life. story. I read something Jeff Bezos said that changed my perspective on the importance of high quality sleep. He said that he makes sure he gets eight hours of sleep a night. And as a result, his mood, his energy, and his decision making is improved. His point was that you get paid to make high quality decisions and you can't do that if you're sleeping terribly. And the product that has made the biggest impact on my quality sleep for years is eight sleep. I'm lucky enough to be friends with the founder of Eight Sleep Mateo and we live in the same city. A few months

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You said something in the early days of Spotify it was very fascinating. You wanted to build like an enduring an impactful company that did something that no one else did, right?

It's remarkable also like when I'm listening to this series that was created in 2021 how much you guys are talking about AI and how early you were and you understood the impact

which is like you kind of saw clearly like where we're going. But you said something that I didn't actually understand because the way I think about technology is like technology is just a better way

to do something, right? And you're like at Spotify though like at the very beginning It's like, I think you've nailed it. You're like, the decisions that were made have to do with the DNA of the founder because we're the only ones there. But you said, I like technology for technology's sake. Yeah.

What does that mean? I like the process of science. I like the process of discovery. I like the process of understanding how things work. You know, I've been wired this way all my life. I've been pulling apart computers. I've been trying to understand why. why a semiconductor works, the way it works, all these things.

And I'm intrigued about that. Just this thing about understanding everything, understanding life, understand where we come from, understanding all these different things. But I'm equally interested in solving problems. And when you're curious about both of those two angles, you can end up finding these sort of connection points

where those two things meets, where it's obvious that there is something over there 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. And I think you have to love technology in order to go to the depth of understanding what's possible. And because it's oftentimes like the greatest ideas

is truly inately understanding something and truly innately breaking constraints around that something. by understanding of rules and knowing when you can... Yeah, to break them. Yeah. And so, like, what are the greatest entrepreneurs, really? Well, the greatest founders are the people

that kind of have this one idea of what they can almost internalize the consumer, right? Like, what is someone willing? What do they need? Even if they can't articulate themselves? And then have this entire field of amazing brilliant engineers and scientists and mathematicians

and all these groups of people that are doing various things and then sort of figure out the intersection and then you actually have to make it viable too which is you have to have some sort of business model because if you don't have that eventually this thing won't be sustainable so you know

it's sort of the trifect of those three things and that makes it even more interesting because now we're talking about a really complex equation trying to get these things together with multiple unknowns and you're trying to configure these things by locking down constraints on one side and then you're trying another side. And the amazing thing about early stage entrepreneurship is, you know, we talked about this Google example of trying to earn different colors.

You can't do that early on. That is the amazing thing. Every decision you make is life or death. And that makes sort of the stakes even higher because you may literally, try one thing and then you run out of money. And so you've got to make sure that is the right thing. And it's just such a fascinating process. But it comes back. It's a process of creativity. It's a process of trying things out. And I'm more and more enamored and more and more in love with this idea that creativity itself is this really, really powerful thing. Maybe the thing that's

makes us unique as humans relative to everything else that exists in this world and kind of going deeper and deeper into creativity itself. And it doesn't conform and it doesn't scale and it doesn't behave in any of these other things. And then you have this other side, which is all about scale, which is all about conforming and sort of navigating that sort of dynamism between these two things and polarities between these two things. two things is is you know very few people that I think can do and it's really really

really well classed at doing it I think most of us that you can't even describe why you're doing what you're doing at the time and what it mean by that is like you hinted on this earlier it's like it's so easy to kill new ideas right the arrow on the side of no we can't do this it's it's amazing to me how many times this comes up in all these biographies or just like this is a skill you have to learn and a lot of it is, like, being comfortable with the messiness of the creative product process, but it's also entrepreneurs by definition, impatient, patient. Yeah.

Like, they have this, this, what looks like a paradox where, like, they want shit done now. I love, Jeff Bezos says about this, step by step ferociously. Yep. You know, that's the, I'm willing to plan, you know, to, for take two decades or three decades to solve the problem that I'm trying to go after. Maybe in some cases, stuff that he's working on might even outlive his lifetime. But it doesn't mean I'm, like, dilly-dowling on a day-d-day basis. I heard you say something one time.

You're like, I promise you, I don't think I'm the smartest. I don't think I'm the most talented. If I have one superpower, it's like, I just have super, like, I have super patience. Yeah. I think NECO is like an example of this. I met your co-founder on it. And I got to see this, too. And I was like, oh, like, this is cool.

Like, who made the machines? Yeah. It's just like, we did. Yeah. And then I didn't know it was like, I don't know if stealth is the right. but from the idea to the first time the customer happened

it was like six years or something or four years no it's 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 tackling one something that's yeah I like what you just said like innovation and creativity is actually a combination

of things that occurred before yeah that were combining yeah right and 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 it's such like it's not it's kind of a bland read

God bless his heart but like it's just him going through like little Wikipedia pages or like 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 1700 or whatever and I'll just take like that little piece

out here and I can find 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 problem 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 that you're trying to figure out 100% now you have like you can you have more resources you can be patient like you couldn't have done NECO 20 when you were 23 yeah 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's the high like if you compare your competitors like it's just in a class by itself yeah so it's obviously very important to you yeah 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 there's so many strands of quality right um 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 is, I think so much of your early life, certainly in my case, was the formulation of just trying to go for more.

And the further I've gotten, I've realized, and it's about everything, right, you mass more stuff. You try to do more things at the same time. try to do all of these things at the same time. And the further you go, you realize that it really is about sort of ultimately this very simplistic try thing, less is more. And the older again, I feel more and more. You know, we talked about it with friends. I think most people start out thinking having more friends is better.

But I think more people are happier with fewer but better. friends than many friends and and so I think qualities ultimately this sort of notion around focusing distilling getting to the essence we can even talk about like quality in communication is often trimming things down and saying less things right why is it for instance that when we're talking about very hard of 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 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 part of why I sort of liked investing has nothing to do with money. It started with 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 without understanding anything about it. But what sort of got me deeper curious about it is I realized that investing is actually more about learning about your temperament than it is about the specific action that you're doing. Your temperament actually, it's more about being in line with your temperaments than the nod 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. And so one of the concepts is obviously around that Munger talks about

coming back to Munger reference again is diversification right. And he calls it somewhat simplified diversification because the Common wisdom, of course, is, in theory, diversification is the best thing you can do. But the truly greatest people financially, if that's the only yardstick you use, typically do completely the opposite of that, which is they have oftentimes only one asset.

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? Because I read something, you read a line, and you're like, okay, let me filter it out through like how I would say it. So 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 the town.

I was like, what's occurring there? Can I put it into one sentence? And one thing I stumbled upon about this was that sometimes the Nick Sleep has this great quote where he's like the best investors or not investors at all, their entrepreneurs never sold. And me and you have talked about this, the fact that there's a lot of people that have sold way too early and they're like lauded. And it's like, if you just didn't do that, everything else you did, like you, if you just didn't sell.

So Nick Sleep talks about this. And in other books, it was 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 their ownership, the concentration of ownership in Walmart. And Sam talks about this. 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 more portfolio.

I need to worry about capital allocation. He's just like, I believe 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 Sleep 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 the stock, put it 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 financial firm one day where they're like, okay, we owned IBM in the 1950s. And I didn't know it to 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. And Michael Dell's like, do 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 a 19 year old in my dorm room with $1,000. Like, what kind of grandiose ambition do you have? I witnessed, it was like, why is it 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 $100 billion in market cap, right? And this little 19 year old kids, like, no, I think I can.

like have a go, have a go with them. But Nick Sleep talks about, he came into this firm and he's reading their, how they talked 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. Yep. And the leadership of the financial firm is like, how do we avoid not doing this?

That one, they said, if we just held that, it would have, the gain would have been more than all the assets we have in our management. Like, we can't do this. Yep. That same year, they sold Walmart. They had Walmart. in the 1970s. So they made the same mistake.

And Buffett, obviously, greatest investor of all the time. He met Walt Disney. He went and talked for Walt Disney in like the 60s. And then I think that he bought the sock at like 62 cents or something. Right.

And he had like a 2X or 4x game. He's like, yeah, why I sold Disney. Yeah. So 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 is exactly what you said. It's like all Sam had to do was just keep doing Walmart. is exactly what he did. I remember I obviously live in Miami on a friend's boat in 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, yeah. It's crazy. But I think you're on to something important which is this notion around just innately focusing and solving problems day by day builds quality.

Right. and and so quality for me is less quality for me is focus quality for me is improving day by day all of these things build quality and quality is rare quality in people is rare quality in ideas is rare and we tend to make these things binary and we talked about it with people like I'd rather have that person that has one good idea 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 so important and it's so important to understand. And I think it's, it's, we again take it literally, 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 I'm more and more drawn towards that it is, for me, at least, very much looking at the people in it 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. So perfection just doesn't exist. But the aspiration towards perfection is a remote. remarkable thing. I mean, I love Japan for this reason, right? You find these amazing individuals that

literally spend their entire life. I was in Japan maybe 10 days ago or something, and I was in one of these temples with a tea master who literally all he's done for the past, Vastom, for the past 34 years, is perfecting how to make tea. That's it. Nothing else. 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 0.1%, or 0.1% or 0.1% in something. And I think feel like you sort of asked about AI and all these things. And we can talk about art too, but like 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. what to do with AI. 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 by you is just the relentlessness every single day towards the long term. It's like, as you say, it's the paradox about the long-term mindedness,

but the obsession on the daily basis. and against conventional odds, against all these other things, because I would imagine, I don't know, but I would imagine, like, when you started founders, probably not many people knew who you were, right? Nobody. Nobody, right? And so the competition for your time was, there was none.

So you could probably sit for six hours or eight hours and et cetera, but today it's much harder 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, you know, a business opportunity that shows up. And maybe people are asking, look, maybe you should invest and maybe you're tempted about it even. But 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.

A lot of the stuff, like when I talk on the podcast, or everything I say on social media is like reminders to my. because I just read reread past highlights because like we forget that we forget and so I need a reminder and it just came across one it's just like 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 it was a difference between successful people and really successful people is really successful people say no to everything yeah and this is exactly the constant thing we're like I do have a question for you um one going back to that is like I can't even explain why I did what I did because like I had close to no traction for five and a half years and now I look back as like there's no way I would do that today yeah but somehow that person yeah who I now greatly appreciate the love 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 really Spotify you do all these things it's an active service other people but you're also doing it because like you have to it has to come out yeah but I just cannot

believe that I did that and I'm just like that's the thing I'm 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 right you have a ton of stories of Spotify with that there is no line I feel between like your work and your life like they're 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, 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 and not working.

Yeah. 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. I do feel the same thing, of course. But I'm back to sort of time versus energy management. And 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 but just changing a scenery being in a different frame of mind pausing giving you know it's in the creative process

you know the greatest artists talk about some of the greatest songs literally take five minutes to write which is amazing right but some songs are the ones you like work on it you put it in a drawer and six months later

totally unbeknown notes to you if 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 intimately, right? So I don't know if you've heard of this, but going back to sleep, there's been this kind of thing around more recently, which I was surprised. One of my 10-year-old daughter told me about this is around that actually, you know, she sort of said, like, we have this idea of eight hours and she actually mentioned instead that the real notion is that we kind of did it almost like fasting like Ramadan is based on the sun. Sometimes it could be six hours or something it could be 12 hours. So it used to be the sleep was actually in two periods. So you didn't sleep

one consecutive thing. You sort of had a three, four hours sleep and then you know you woke up and then you had another three, four hours to sleep again. And so much of that was based on light. And, you know, maybe it was driven by other things that were happening in our life too. And for Nordic people, what it actually meant, going back 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 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 of this sort of innate knowledge about listening to ourselves, understanding our innate personality, understanding hunger, like I can tell you someone, I've gained in periods of my life like 40 pounds in my worst negotiations, et cetera. 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 understanding when I'm hungry and when I'm not hungry. So, you know, a 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 I didn't like sort of eye what I should eat, I would just keep eating way more than I should. And so much of me has just been portion-sizeding 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 life is not one game, but it's a, thousand games and there's this brilliant quotes um by this guy called kwame apia 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 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's just been eye-opening, right? It's another one that's on my wall. Because I feel like quite often when I'm talking to people and they're talking and trying to get life advice, they're not playing their game.

They're playing someone else's game. 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 right game for you. and so yeah I keep coming back to that like energy management is the same thing you gotta like create the environment

around you that you want to do you have to choose your game 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 self-talk today than you did 20 years ago I was I'm more comfortable with who I am than I was 20 years ago I was still very much my whole life I've been a searcher I've been you know when I was really young in my teens I went to every possible religious meetup you could be I went to everything I went to harry Krishna centers I went to to you know um you know um um it's

Jewish centers, you know, mosques. I went everything. And I try to learn as much as possible because I truly believe not enough people are like, I've always been surprised why more people aren't interested in where we come from and what the purposes 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 will happen.

But I think they're really important. So I've always been a searcher. And I think that actually sort of led me to sort of also be a searcher about myself too and trying to find sort of who I am. But the older I've gotten, the more and more things I 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 as an entrepreneur

and my interests were widely different than my social circus. growing up and all these things but the second thing is I'm an introvert so you know that doesn't help so most people like being around a lot of people and they get energy from it I didn't so that obviously naturally gets you to question yourself and you know against many others as an entrepreneur I'm not the most eloquent person I'm not the smartest you're pretty damn eloquent well I had to work on it that's still like the hard thing I've really really listen I've listened to all all your episodes 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 you're not giving yourself enough credit like

you are very clear communicator like thank you yeah um but but it's really a work product like i i wish there was more recorded stuff on myself when i was like 20 and 21 because not me 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 whatever thing we're trying to will into this world. I have two more questions that I'm personally curious about.

One is going to be a very weird question. But the first one is, do you feel different? 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 because like the idea that you even like come from this tiny little island which I was like you know 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 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 yeah but it's a undeniable effect Like, do you feel different? I think yes and no.

So I feel different in the same way a 40-year-old would feel different than a 10-year-old would do. I feel different in I'm a product of all the experiences of my life. And obviously, I've been incredibly fortunate to, 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. I don't feel difference because innately, many of the things, the drive, the long-termness, the obsession, the, this sort of willingness on the paradox of winning on the one hand, but then also trying to truly find a win-win and work with people to try to find a win-win, which is really important to me. has always been there and it's always been these things and like you said you know you kind of look

back at yourself a few years back when you started off and saying wow how did I do this 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 I worked every weekend, you know, nonstop, 24-7, sacrificed so many things, so many summer or so many other things. You know, I had a blast doing so, but I didn't have a normal upbringing just because I was so obsessed about learning, so obsessed about making it. And it put me in the position of where I am today. 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 sort of downshift gear into an easier gear because life would be a lot more comfortable that way. This is not a comfortable thing. No, it goes back to impact, impact to happiness. So I think I text this to you, but. one of the roles you play and I'm very grateful that you allowed us to like record this conversation because essentially what I texture 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 I obviously like I take notes of like what I learned from the conversation we have after the fact and I interpret it's like obviously not verbatim I'm saying like what did I just learn from Daniel what does apply to me he's like oh you have all these so you think you don't I thought like I was ambitious and I like I like I didn't even realize until 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've rewatched a 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 and fiction and and my job and my obsession requires me to 99% of my reading is nonfiction and i don't I want to read more fiction. And I came across something recently because I'm going through Jeff Beaz's 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 story in the prequels Game of Thrones where two brothers

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. He wind up dying in the war that he didn't want to

fight in the first place and his brother just 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 so hopefully you don't a hundred 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 don't think too much anymore. I used to think a lot about how other people saw me or see me. I don't do that anymore. So I would choose more of a self-reflective one. And I wish only one thing on my tombstone and future one, it feels absurd talking about it, but it would be that he lived. That's a great one.

That's a great way to end it. Daniel, I'm thankful for your time. Thank for your friendship. You're one of the people I most admire, and I really appreciate you doing this. Well, thank you so much, and it's such a huge honor to be your first guest in this series. Of course.

Thank you so much. It would have it any other 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.