Spotify is truly a game changer for the entrepreneurial ecosystem across all of Europe. With a relentless focus on doing things better and differently, they successfully outcompeted even giants such as Apple, Google and Amazon.

Spotify is truly a game changer for the entrepreneurial ecosystem across all of Europe. With a relentless focus on doing things better and differently, they successfully outcompeted even giants such as Apple, Google and Amazon. The direct listing was another example of Spotify’s famous out of the box thinking. Having concluded that the traditional and outdated way to IPO wasn’t optimal neither for the company nor its shareholders and prospective shareholders, they embarked on a course few other companies would have dared - and succeeded. The founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon had decided already at the get go on April 1, 2006 to go big or go home. They were successful entrepreneurs already then and managed to attract the best talent around when they set out to disrupt a notoriously difficult industry that had already claimed a number of startup casualties. They respected the rights-holders and managed to convince an industry to change its business model over a period of five years. Today, the music business is as healthy as ever, and Spotify enabled that change. I am so grateful and humbled to have played a role as first institutional investor and board member over 9 years in a seminal company.