The Exchanges

Q Spotify for over 14 years, which is a rare feat in the tech world, and you've held a lot of different roles while you've been at Spotify. Can you just start off by giving us a sense of what these various roles and what you've done over the years at Spotify, and then just what are you, what are you up to these days? What are you responsible for now?

A So I came into Spotify in Early, 2009, late, late, 2008. And my job then I had been an entrepreneur, started some of my own companies in the back then very, very early sort of feature phone, smartphone space. So I had a bunch of knowledge there. I had sold the company to, to Yahoo in the mobile space. I worked there for a while. I came back to Sweden and then I met through a mutual friend, Daniel Ekta, the CEO and co-founder of Spotify. And they had built the desktop product already, the free streaming desktop product, and it was amazing and I could try it, but they needed someone to figure out what to do with mobile. And because I had been an entrepreneur in that space, I got that job. So my job was to, to head up mobile for Spotify and figure out what the mobile offering would be, which was a challenge because obviously Spotify desktop was a free on-demand streaming application. And back then specifically with edge networks, You couldn't really stream at all in real time. The performance wasn't there. And also you could, you couldn't fund that with an ads model. So it was a product and business model innovation that was a lot of fun. So that's how I started. Then after a few years, I took on all of product development for Spotify. And then a few years later, I actually took on the technology responsibility, sort of the CTO role for Spotify as well. And recently my official ti…

AI assessment note: “recently my official title is co-president of Spotify... I run the product and technology side”

Q Who I think is going to come on the podcast someday. Um, what does that mean in terms of autonomy for her? What practically?

A So it means that, um, I would ask Maya. To define a strategy for what we do in podcasting. How are we going to be different? Why would a podcast want to be here? Whereas in another company, I will make that strategy or in another company, Daniel would make that strategy. Same with the, the AI DJ, for example, came from, uh, one of, from our personalization team. And so that was a bet that they made. So they have autonomy to make those kinds of, of bets and define strategies. Same with the user interface. We have an experience team can talk about the org structure later, but I put a lot of autonomy on the VP of experience to, to define and suggest what it is that we want To do. And in other companies, I, I would define all of that myself, for example.

AI assessment note: “I would ask Maya. To define a strategy for what we do in podcasting.”

Q Did it have the effect that you were hoping after looking back?

A I think it did. Uh, the podcast did well and, and no, we did not give it our, our own sort of promotion. I had to compete as everyone else, which also gives you a lot of empathy for the problem of like, okay, now you have a product. What about user acquisition? How do you actually get people to listen to it? So it did achieve what I wanted in the sense that, uh, we have, we have this thing called intro days where, especially in the, in the past few years, when we've hired a lot, we actually fly people to Stockholm for sort of an onboarding session to learn about Spotify. And, and the leadership is on stage talking about what they do and their departments and strategy and so forth. And, um, It's very common that people come and tell me that, oh, you know, I listened to this podcast or this in the episode, and it's, it's at least one of the key reasons why I joined, or sometimes the reason why I joined. So it's sort of anecdotal, but it, it may be in the Many tens of people at least have said it. So that seems to work.

AI assessment note: “I think it did... So it did achieve what I wanted in the sense that”

Q I asked a few PMs what I should ask you. PMs that work at Spotify, actually, that I haven't told you. And someone pointed out that you, you always bring a lot of energy and clarity to a room. That's something they see you as really strong at. What have you learned about just the importance of that or just how to do that well as a, as a leader?

A Well, that's great to hear. Um, I didn't know that, so I'm trying to figure out what to answer. I think that the energy, I don't know. I guess I'm just excited about what I do. Uh, I've always been excited about technology. I love, um, seeing new things. My, my core drive is still this notion of, you know, you, you see something which I think you'll, you'll empathize with that doesn't exist yet. And you're like, wow, I wonder if that could exist. That would be so cool. And then in order to get people to do it, you try to share that excitement. So I don't think I can be, bring a lot of energy for something I'm not excited about. So I kind of have to work on things I actually believe in and that I am excited about. And so maybe then the, the energy comes more naturally. Unfortunately for me so far, Spotify has been in this phase where a lot of innovation is allowed, and I'm even asked to try to do new cool things. Maybe I would have less energy for a pure optimization phase. Uh, on the clarity, I've always liked trying to explain things. It's, it's a, you know, well-known fact that the best way to understand something is to try to explain it to someone else. So I try, I go around explaining things to people who didn't ask for it and not to sound smart, but to see if I actually understood it. And so maybe it's that practice. And on that note, I actually do ask my leaders that work…

AI assessment note: “I don't think I can be, bring a lot of energy for something I'm not excited about.”

Q I love this story. I so appreciate you sharing it. I imagine also with a big launch like this, you can't actually AB test it ahead of time because of the press season. They're like, oh my God, look what Spotify is doing. And so you're kind of limited there. Imagine, right? You couldn't really test this ahead of time.

A The hardest thing about this is if you're trying something completely new, The, the MVP needs to be very big so you can build a new UI, but if you didn't do algorithms for a single item feed, you can't tell if it was the right idea, but, but poor machine learning, right? You have poor machine learning or the other, you have to build a lot. I mean, that gets quite expensive. That's actually the biggest, why it's painful is not really the feedback from the outside. It is the cost you have to take on the inside. You know, you incur a lot of cost as you're really hoping you're right. And in our cases, the, the changes on the homepage aren't that hard for us to do. The important thing is that the underlying hypothesis of can we help you break out of your taste bubble actually works. And then, you know, you update the, the acquisition funnels into that experience. But I think the problem is That you need to get so many things in place to be able to say, if you get, you know, you might get a false negative. Just because like you didn't do it well enough. That's the biggest chance I think with these big rewrites where everyone has to update everything before you can know if you're right or wrong.

AI assessment note: “why it's painful is not really the feedback from the outside”

Q No, I don't know if that's good. That sounds pretty good. Next question. What's something relatively minor you've changed in your product development process that's had a tremendous impact on your team's ability to execute?

A I'm not sure I've done anything minor that had a tremendous, uh, impact. Uh, usually it takes something bigger to get big impact. I think maybe one thing that I've tried to do Back to like clarity and so forth is, um, this thing I mentioned about I'm trying to push a lot for what I call Socratic debate. Uh, where the idea is obviously that the best idea wins, not the most, um, senior idea and so forth. And, and trying to push for this, uh, notion of, uh, having people explain themselves, not saying like, I think there's something there. I have a feeling or something like that. And, and apparently as, as you said, that has had some impact because people apparently say that about me. So that's probably the biggest thing.

AI assessment note: “one thing that I've tried to do... is... what I call Socratic debate”