Ro's Recz

I have mentioned the Tim Ferriss Show before as one of my favorite podcasts; however, I have a couple of favorite episodes that have really stuck out for me. One of the most recent episodes I really enjoyed listening to was episode #484 with Daniel Ek (the founder of Spotify).

In my opinion, Spotify is one of the most exciting companies today, and it is growing at an incredible rate. It is also one of the most recognizable companies today, especially for people within my age range (almost everyone I know uses Spotify).

In the 90 minute or so episode with Tim Ferriss, Ek goes into a deep dive about his background, how he started Spotify, and what he has learned from his time within the industry. I found it to be a super insightful talk, and one of the main takeaways I had after listening to the episode was how Europeans live compared to Americans.

Ek was born in Sweden, and he mentioned how the Swedish government really helped to give him the opportunity to start something like Spotify. According to Ek, having access to a free education (and also free specialized training, i.e music) helped to define his interests and passions from a young age. Furthermore, Sweden has a generous welfare system, which allowed Ek to take risks in his early life, as he knew even if he failed he would have the opportunity to start over. These 2 factors played a big role in Ek’s journey, and it was such a great topic to hear discussed (Ferriss also did a great job of getting Ek to share these anecdotes).

There is so much more than the brief bit that I wrote about that Ferriss and Ek discuss in their conversation. If you are looking for a good episode to start listening to The Tim Ferriss Show from, Episode 484 would be a great choice!