Gustav Söderström

And the other thing I've tried to push as a thesis is that I'm a big fan of Socratic debate. I'm amazed, like many other people, how far The Greeks and the Romans came with just discussion, even though they didn't have science, just reasoning. Strong reasoning is very useful. So I try to push this provocative line of talk is cheap, so we should do a lot of it.

And the other thing I've tried to push as a thesis is that I'm a big fan of Socratic debate. I'm amazed, like many other people, how far The Greeks and the Romans came with just discussion, even though they didn't have science, just reasoning. Strong reasoning is very useful. So I try to push this provocative line of talk is cheap, so we should do a lot of it.

That's a counter to like moving fast and breaking things. It's so cheap to talk, so we should actually do a bit more of it. It took the Greeks to the concept of the atom. So we do a lot of talking and ideation that is quite structured. And I do that with my leadership team and often the leadership team sort of plus one. which means the VP layer and sort of the director plus.

That's a counter to like moving fast and breaking things. It's so cheap to talk, so we should actually do a bit more of it. It took the Greeks to the concept of the atom. So we do a lot of talking and ideation that is quite structured. And I do that with my leadership team and often the leadership team sort of plus one. which means the VP layer and sort of the director plus.

And I have a lot of time just for discussing concepts. Back to one of my heroes in life, David Deutsch, his book, The Beginning of Infinity and the Fabric of Reality shaped me quite a lot. And he talks about something called good explanations. And he has a list of what a good explanation is. It obviously needs to be falsifiable and so forth. But it also needs to have reach. It needs to scale.

And I have a lot of time just for discussing concepts. Back to one of my heroes in life, David Deutsch, his book, The Beginning of Infinity and the Fabric of Reality shaped me quite a lot. And he talks about something called good explanations. And he has a list of what a good explanation is. It obviously needs to be falsifiable and so forth. But it also needs to have reach. It needs to scale.

An OK explanation explains this phenomenon, but it doesn't scale to other phenomenon. It doesn't scale up and down. Really good explanation scales from explaining how the Earth works to the solar system to the planets. But it's also very hard to vary, which I think is often underestimated. If you have an explanation, you can switch it out for another explanation that explains the same thing.

An OK explanation explains this phenomenon, but it doesn't scale to other phenomenon. It doesn't scale up and down. Really good explanation scales from explaining how the Earth works to the solar system to the planets. But it's also very hard to vary, which I think is often underestimated. If you have an explanation, you can switch it out for another explanation that explains the same thing.

If you explain the weather using gods, you can switch out this god for that god. It's probably not a good explanation. It needs to be very hard to vary. If you vary it, it doesn't explain it anymore. The last thing he says is that explanations should not just be predictive. That's not an explanation. That's a model. An explanation needs to explain why. So I try to push my teams.

If you explain the weather using gods, you can switch out this god for that god. It's probably not a good explanation. It needs to be very hard to vary. If you vary it, it doesn't explain it anymore. The last thing he says is that explanations should not just be predictive. That's not an explanation. That's a model. An explanation needs to explain why. So I try to push my teams.

Even if something works in an A-B test, I tend to say, I don't want to launch it until you have a good theory of why it works. Because if you figure out the why, it's the difference between pattern recognition and actually understanding something. Pattern recognition is useful. That's called seniority. I love people with good pattern recognition.

Even if something works in an A-B test, I tend to say, I don't want to launch it until you have a good theory of why it works. Because if you figure out the why, it's the difference between pattern recognition and actually understanding something. Pattern recognition is useful. That's called seniority. I love people with good pattern recognition.

But if they can explain why it works, it scales to the entire org. Other people can use that knowledge. It's much, much more valuable. So those are some of the concepts that I've tried to put into the org over time. So I think that's important because that shapes the culture. Then we have the structured process, which is we execute for six months at a time.

But if they can explain why it works, it scales to the entire org. Other people can use that knowledge. It's much, much more valuable. So those are some of the concepts that I've tried to put into the org over time. So I think that's important because that shapes the culture. Then we have the structured process, which is we execute for six months at a time.

We have something called a bets process, where All the VPs, which is about 14. So one of the benefits of Spotify is they're so small that all the VPs, the entire company can fit in one room. And we meet three hours every Tuesday. So the company is completely synchronized for good and bad. And we can talk about that later.

We have something called a bets process, where All the VPs, which is about 14. So one of the benefits of Spotify is they're so small that all the VPs, the entire company can fit in one room. And we meet three hours every Tuesday. So the company is completely synchronized for good and bad. And we can talk about that later.

But so every six months, these VPs, they pitch, literally pitch, as if we were a VC and they were a startup. The bets that they think the company should do and why. It's very much like a startup process. You don't get to use the fact that Gustav or Alex or Daniel may like you. This is like a VC meeting. You have to convince us. So they pitch.

But so every six months, these VPs, they pitch, literally pitch, as if we were a VC and they were a startup. The bets that they think the company should do and why. It's very much like a startup process. You don't get to use the fact that Gustav or Alex or Daniel may like you. This is like a VC meeting. You have to convince us. So they pitch.

Then me and the other co-president, Alex Nordstrom, we decide based on these pitches, a global stack rank. This time we have 44 bets. That's usually between 30 and maybe 50. We stack rank them from one to 44 and we go out to the org and say, now try to resource this. And they start from the top and then maybe they get to 30 and say, this is what we can do in the next six months.

Then me and the other co-president, Alex Nordstrom, we decide based on these pitches, a global stack rank. This time we have 44 bets. That's usually between 30 and maybe 50. We stack rank them from one to 44 and we go out to the org and say, now try to resource this. And they start from the top and then maybe they get to 30 and say, this is what we can do in the next six months.