You Only Have to Be Right Once by Randall Lane

really interesting,’ or ‘Send me over some stats,’ which really means ‘There’s no way in hell we’re going to do this,’” Ek said and laughed. “But I was twenty-three at the time, and I thought, Wow, this is great, we’re going to get this done.”
    Ek eventually loaded Spotify with pirated songs and sent demos to industry execs. That got them noticed. “With Spotify people don’t get it until they try it,” Ek said. “Then they tell their friends.” As Ek negotiated with the music companies, Spotify burned through cash. On top of salaries and overhead, Ek and Lorentzon were pledging million-dollar advances to labels for access to their music catalogs. VCs wouldn’t touch them. To stay afloat they plowed nearly $5 million into Spotify, atop the $2 million Lorentzon had originally seeded. “We bet our personal fortunes, and sometimes we bet the entire company,” said Ek. “We led with our conviction rather than rationale, because rationale said it was impossible.” In October 2008 Spotify went live in Scandinavia, France, the U.K., and Spain. It took nearly three more years to finalize deals in the U.S.
    â€œHe’s the only tech entrepreneur who’s had the patience to achieve what he has with the record business,” said Sean Parker, now a Spotify board member, who helped open the door to U.S. deals, including one with Facebook. “He has this Zen-like patience and an ability not to crack under pressure or get frustrated. Over and over again he puts himself in a situation where a normal person would have thrown in the towel.” As I talked with Ek in his office, he sat straight and motionless like a Swedish Buddha; the only thing moving was his mouth; he wasn’t even blinking his icy blue eyes.
    Such calm helps him manage the chaos: In 2011 Ek was on the road 100 days—mostly a triangle between Europe, New York, and California, a schedule that cost him his girlfriend of two years. When he’s in Stockholm, Ek wakes around 8:30 a.m., answers e-mail for an hour, then takes the five-minute walk to Spotify. He spends about 25 percent of his time recruiting; otherwise he’s at his open desk or walking the floor. “Ek’s one of the few people,” said Parker, “who can handle the technology side, the strategic side, and the deal side of the business.”
    Ek works in the office until 8:00 p.m., eats dinner out and then returns home to unwind, either by playing guitar for a few hours or juggling a rotating trio of books (when we spoke, the Steve Jobs biography, a primer on typography, and a guide to bonzai trees). Then he hops back on e-mail, before typically turning in around 2:00 a.m. Lorentzon wants Ek to find a balance: more exercise, less junk food, more sleep, less work. The last goal will be tough to achieve for the foreseeable future.
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    EK BOUNDED UP ONTO the sleek white stage in Greenwich Village’s Stephan Weiss Studio right after Thanksgiving in 2011, as dozens of typing journalists and rows of live TV cameras stood ready. Though thrilled that the new platform was set for launch, he couldn’t wait for his first press conference to end. When Ek operated just in Europe, he could lie low. But with Spotify’s entrance to America—home to the cults of Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, and Jobs—Ek had to switch from programmer to preacher. For Spotify to scale, he needed to hype his platform, generate buzz, and get labels, artists, and developers excited to partner up.
    He didn’t need to win over investors. Ek’s roster had surged over the past few years. Spotify went from some smallish Swedish funding to a heavyweight round from social media elite (Li Ka-shing, Sean Parker, and Founders Fund), who collectively put in more than $50 million at a roughly $250 million valuation. A few months before the press conference, DST, Accel, and Kleiner