Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, discusses the ongoing challenge of instilling a culture of openness about mistakes in new employees.
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“In fact, I feel like it's almost a reprogramming for every person that we bring into the company because they sort of Intuitively struggle with this kind of notion about being open with failure and being open with mistakes too.”
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Opinion
Ek: Silicon Valley dogma that founders should always stay CEO is wrong
“I think that the common belief at the moment in, especially Silicon Valley lore, is that the founder should always be the CEO. And I don't agree with that at all. I don't think that that should be the case. When it works, it's incredibly powerful, for sure. So…”
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AssertionContradicted
Ek: US tech ecosystem outside Silicon Valley and Seattle lags Europe
“If you take Silicon Valley and Seattle out of it, the US actually would be worse than Europe if you took those two out of it.”
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Insight
Ek: Evaluate decision-making process rather than judging outcomes
“Rather than looking at outputs, which a lot of people end up doing, like if something went wrong or didn't go wrong, It's way better to think about the input and the process of how that person made the decision, and then kind of do post mortems if the process …”
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PredictionDidn’t hold up
Ek predicts US-Europe tech funding gap will close in five years
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Disclosure
Daniel Ek: Spotify tolerates mistakes, but fails without warning are intolerable
“In Spotify's case, I like to believe that smart people will make mistakes, and if you're pushing the envelope, that's going to happen, and I will tolerate that. What I don't tolerate, however, and that's very clear from everyone who works with me, are two thin…”
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Insight
Ek: Venture capital timeline constraints prevent endless startup pivoting
“I would say generally speaking, I think where the industry has netted out has been good, right? Because if you had unlimited amounts of funding in a limited amount of timeline, it's very likely that you would just pivot, pivot, pivot, and actually never ship a…”
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