Founders: Ola Sars from Beats Music to the soundtrack of hospitality

**Leanna Byrne** (0:03)
Hello, this is Business Daily on the BBC World Service. I'm Leanna Byrne. Today's founder is Ola Sars, a serial entrepreneur in the music tech sector. Hello, Ola, welcome to Meet the Founders.

**Ola Sars** (0:14)
Thank you, Leanna.

**Leanna Byrne** (0:15)
So Ola, you've spent the last two decades quietly, I feel, shaping how millions of us discover and listen to music. So you've co-founded Beats Music, which laid the foundation for Apple Music to inventing the world's first pocket-sized DJ system. You're also building Spotify Business as well, now known as Soundtrack, which licenses background music for restaurants, cafes, other hospitality businesses. And you've repeatedly spotted where the industry was heading before everyone else. How do you feel about that when you listen to all of that back, what you've achieved so far?

**Ola Sars** (0:50)
Well, I'm Swedish, so we're probably not the best breed in terms of bragging about what we've done or talking about what we've done at all. But no, but I've been trying to contribute in my way in the music industry the last 20 years and I've failed many times. And sometimes I've been somewhat successful. And so trying to be a bit less Swedish, yes, I would take some of the credit for actually creating what is today a quite interesting music industry, but it hasn't been easy and it's been a journey filled with sleepless nights and failures, yes.

**Leanna Byrne** (1:29)
Okay, Ola, let's go back to the very beginning. Take me back to the Stockholm you grew up in. So what kind of child were you? Were you interested in music even in your youth?

**Ola Sars** (1:40)
I was actually. It started very early. I was going to concerts with friends, actually by myself at 15 years old, 13 years old. But I was actually just like browsing through everything, going to see prints, starting to go to see some electronic bands, and just enjoying the opportunity to dig into different genres.

**Leanna Byrne** (2:04)
So your father worked internationally as a water engineer for UNICEF, and he was frequently away. So at the time, how did you understand his absence when you were younger?

**Ola Sars** (2:14)
You know, it wasn't anything like weird back then. I mean, somebody had to pay the bills, and at that time, you know, one of my parents had to work more than the other. We actually moved to the US when I was very small.
So I started school in the US, in New York. Me and my sister didn't speak any English, of course, so we were immigrants in the US without knowing a word of English. And my mother hardly spoke English either when we moved over. So it was quite interesting. But we spent five years over there, and then he took off. So we went to the US, and then he went to Africa for work.
And then we had to kind of take care of ourselves over there. When we moved back to Sweden again, it was kind of her time. And she's like, all right, you've done your thing, it's my time to do my thing. And she started her own business in Stockholm, and kind of ran kind of a secretary service. So she worked really hard by building her own business. My dad was always an employee at some organization, but she actually built her own business. So she was the entrepreneur in the family.

**Leanna Byrne** (3:12)
What did you learn from watching her? Was she the person who taught you about money?

**Ola Sars** (3:16)
Yes, she was. You know, she would teach me very basic stuff, like you need to work hard. And if you work hard, then you can have fun whilst you're working. And I think that's what she did. She was able to build her own business, but she did enjoy it. And I saw that she was a freer and more liberated, happy person working hard than people who would kind of be slaves under the system or under a employment. So I think she opened my eyes to being able to build your own and to entrepreneurship as an option in life, which wasn't that normal back then, it wasn't that frequent, especially among women, I think.

**Leanna Byrne** (3:55)
I want to go back to when you were in New York, you were six years old, and as you mentioned, you couldn't speak English. Did being unable to communicate change your personality? What did that teach you? Did it build resilience within you?

**Ola Sars** (4:08)
Yeah, I mean, I would say almost dramatic, right? You know, you're like six years old, you're leaving safe country like Sweden into, I mean, New York back then wasn't like New York is today. It was quite tough.