Read Online You Only Have to Be Right Once by Randall Lane - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Randall Lane
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they have a Thomas Edisonâlike opportunity,â says Thrive Capitalâs Joshua Kushner. âAt some point . . . youâll go onto Instagram and see whatâs happening in real time anywhere in the world, and thatâs world-changing.â
Then thereâs the whole revenue thing. Facebook does not break down Instagram revenue, but the platform has won large marketing campaigns from the likes of Heineken, Mercedes-Benz, Oreo, and Armani. Systrom predicted this back in 2012: âI think the visual format works well with advertisers. If you follow Burberry or Banana Republic, you see their Instagram posts are really adsâbut theyâre also beautiful. Right now weâre focusing on growth. Itâs not about squeezing a buck out of an advertiser.â
Heâs similarly cash-oblivious at home. Systrom, who still lived in the same one-bedroom apartment, relished his relatively shoestring life. On another night I headed with the Instagram gang to the old Army bowling alley in San Franciscoâs Presidio to celebrate an employeeâs birthday. Four Instagramers and I squeezed into Systromâs black 2002 BMW that he had bought used when he worked at Google. The carâs GPS was broken, and the $400 million man almost mistakenly steered us across the Golden Gate Bridge. âI think not focusing on money makes you sane,â he said. âBecause in the long run it can probably drive you crazy.â
  CHAPTER 5 Â
Daniel Ek, Spotify:
Hacking the Music Industry
To a stunning degree, the business disruption caused by this coterie of Internet-savvy enfants terribles is an all-American affair. No one proves that better than Spotifyâs Daniel Ek, the only non-U.S. citizen to belong in the company of this book. While this shy founder, who just passed thirty, is in fact Swedish, with headquarters in Stockholm, his base of operations increasingly shifts toward New York, with his money now flowing from Silicon Valley. While many of his digital peers feel the need to destroy the old economy village in order to save it, when it comes to the songs business, Ek has a distinct advantage: Hackers had already started that job, and Steve Jobs and iTunes largely finished it. When Steven Bertoni began hopscotching across the Atlantic with him in the second half of 2011, Ek was regarded by many as the most important man in music, perhaps even the person wearing the white hat. By 2014, when Apple bought Spotifyâs largest competitor, Beats, for a staggering $3.2 billon (that number buttressed, of course, by their high-end headsets), almost 25 percent of recorded music revenues was generating via streaming.
Â
O n a typically damp, dark November afternoon in Stockholm, Daniel Ek was ill. Over the past month, the chief executive of Spotify, then twenty-eight, had worn himself down jetting from his Swedish base to San Francisco, New York, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France to visit his expanding sales force and launch his music service in one or another of the dozen countries in which it now operates.
But there was no rest for the weary. Heâd scheduled a return to New York the following week for his first-ever press conference, to unveil Spotifyâs new platform. A platform that he privately admitted still wasnât ready for a public debut. âI should be home in bed,â sighed Ek, his voice weak and scratchy, âbut we need to get this thing perfect.â So the bald, barrel-chested Ek zipped his white hoodie to his chin, swapped tea for his morning cup of coffeeâthe first of six he throws down in a typical dayâand headed into an office that resembled a university library during finals. The pool table had been traded for more IKEA desks, and gray daybeds offered a place to nap between all-nighters. Forgoing his large office, which he mostly used as a meeting room, Ek plopped himself down at an open desk. Around him, a dozen engineers from
Then thereâs the whole revenue thing. Facebook does not break down Instagram revenue, but the platform has won large marketing campaigns from the likes of Heineken, Mercedes-Benz, Oreo, and Armani. Systrom predicted this back in 2012: âI think the visual format works well with advertisers. If you follow Burberry or Banana Republic, you see their Instagram posts are really adsâbut theyâre also beautiful. Right now weâre focusing on growth. Itâs not about squeezing a buck out of an advertiser.â
Heâs similarly cash-oblivious at home. Systrom, who still lived in the same one-bedroom apartment, relished his relatively shoestring life. On another night I headed with the Instagram gang to the old Army bowling alley in San Franciscoâs Presidio to celebrate an employeeâs birthday. Four Instagramers and I squeezed into Systromâs black 2002 BMW that he had bought used when he worked at Google. The carâs GPS was broken, and the $400 million man almost mistakenly steered us across the Golden Gate Bridge. âI think not focusing on money makes you sane,â he said. âBecause in the long run it can probably drive you crazy.â
  CHAPTER 5 Â
Daniel Ek, Spotify:
Hacking the Music Industry
To a stunning degree, the business disruption caused by this coterie of Internet-savvy enfants terribles is an all-American affair. No one proves that better than Spotifyâs Daniel Ek, the only non-U.S. citizen to belong in the company of this book. While this shy founder, who just passed thirty, is in fact Swedish, with headquarters in Stockholm, his base of operations increasingly shifts toward New York, with his money now flowing from Silicon Valley. While many of his digital peers feel the need to destroy the old economy village in order to save it, when it comes to the songs business, Ek has a distinct advantage: Hackers had already started that job, and Steve Jobs and iTunes largely finished it. When Steven Bertoni began hopscotching across the Atlantic with him in the second half of 2011, Ek was regarded by many as the most important man in music, perhaps even the person wearing the white hat. By 2014, when Apple bought Spotifyâs largest competitor, Beats, for a staggering $3.2 billon (that number buttressed, of course, by their high-end headsets), almost 25 percent of recorded music revenues was generating via streaming.
Â
O n a typically damp, dark November afternoon in Stockholm, Daniel Ek was ill. Over the past month, the chief executive of Spotify, then twenty-eight, had worn himself down jetting from his Swedish base to San Francisco, New York, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France to visit his expanding sales force and launch his music service in one or another of the dozen countries in which it now operates.
But there was no rest for the weary. Heâd scheduled a return to New York the following week for his first-ever press conference, to unveil Spotifyâs new platform. A platform that he privately admitted still wasnât ready for a public debut. âI should be home in bed,â sighed Ek, his voice weak and scratchy, âbut we need to get this thing perfect.â So the bald, barrel-chested Ek zipped his white hoodie to his chin, swapped tea for his morning cup of coffeeâthe first of six he throws down in a typical dayâand headed into an office that resembled a university library during finals. The pool table had been traded for more IKEA desks, and gray daybeds offered a place to nap between all-nighters. Forgoing his large office, which he mostly used as a meeting room, Ek plopped himself down at an open desk. Around him, a dozen engineers from
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