Daniel Ek - Enabling Creators Everywhere

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
This episode of Invest Like the Best is sponsored by Canalist. Canalist is the leading destination for public company data and analysis. Founded by a former buy side analyst who encountered friction sourcing, building and updating models, Canalist is now used by over 400 institutions, including the largest money managers globally, and by a number of guests on the show. With detailed company specific models and data on virtually every public company, Canalist clients are able to ramp up faster, update models instantly and incorporate the highest quality fundamental data into any workflow. If you're a professional equity investor and haven't talked to Canalist recently, you should give them a shout. Learn more and try Canalist for yourself at canalist.com/patrick. That's canalyst.com/patrick. If you're curious to hear more about Canalist, stay tuned at the end of the episode where I talk to Canalist customer Brandon Weir from BWCP to discuss Canalist in more detail. This episode of Invest Like the Best is sponsored by 8 Sleep. 8 Sleep's new Pod Pro cover is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at your perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced solution on the market.
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. Invest Like the Best is part of the Colossus family of podcasts and you can access all our podcasts including edited transcripts, show notes and other resources to keep learning at joincolossus.com.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:00)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:25)
Today is a special episode because it marks five years since I released the first episode of Invest Like the Best.
Over those years, I've learned so much from so many investors and builders, but today's guest may have taught me the most. Daniel Ek is the CEO and founder of Spotify, and I find him to be one of the most thoughtful business leaders in the world. Daniel is the perfect guest for this special occasion because he exemplifies the curiosity, humility, leadership and dogged determination that I think characterizes the best investors and operators. In our conversation, we discuss the differences between the world of bits and atoms, how Daniel gets up to speed in challenging new fields, and why Europe might be a sleeping giant about to wake. We then bring the discussion back to Spotify, the evolving creator ecosystem, and Daniel's frameworks for leading the business into its next chapter of growth.
Over the past five years, we've produced more than 300 of these shows, and reached nearly 30 million people. I'm deeply thankful to the guests who have been willing to share their knowledge with us all, and even more thankful to everyone who has taken the time to listen and learn alongside me. This has truly been the greatest pleasure of my career, and I don't plan on ever stopping this journey. Now, please enjoy my conversation with a great friend, Daniel Ek.
So Daniel, I was so excited that you agreed to do this with me. It's the five-year anniversary of the show, which is totally nuts. It's led to all sorts of cool things in my life, including meeting and learning a lot from you. The reason that I hoped to do this with you is as a person interested in a lot of the same things, I would say you've taught me the most in the widest variety of areas. And because of that's how our kind of relationship has gone, I figured I'd structure this conversation in the same way, sort of like a tapas style conversation, a lot of interesting different topics, not just Spotify. An odd and interesting place to begin is in the world of atoms. So the world has been obsessed with bits for a long time. And I know you personally obviously have done very well in that space and remain deeply interested in it, but have developed this burgeoning interest in the world of atoms and harder technology problems. Maybe you could just begin by riffing on that concept, whether or not we're due for a return to focus on atoms versus bits.