Daniel Ek: Life After Spotify, Broken Healthcare Incentives, Catching Disease Early & AI's Potential

The episode opens with Daniel Ek’s Spotify origin story, from music piracy and tense label negotiations to the company’s U.S. launch and early scaling. The conversation then shifts to his move into healthcare and the founding of NECO, with a focus on chronic disease, prevention, and using smartphones, sensors, and AI for predictive care. They dig into NECO’s end-to-end checkups, early results, dermatology use cases, wearables, and the challenge of funding preventive care in the U.S. The back half covers AI’s impact on healthcare and music, open source and compute, Spotify’s podcasting strategy, and lessons from Ek’s early startup years in Sweden.