Spotify founder Daniel Ek to the CEO of Uber: “Since when is life about happiness?”

When Dara Khosrowshahi was offered the job of Uber CEO, he consulted his long-time friend Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify.

Dara told Daniel that he was already happy being the CEO of Expedia, to which Daniel replied, “Since when is life about happiness? It’s about impact. You can have an impact on Uber, which is a really important company in the world that’s shaping the future of cities.”

Daniel expands on what he meant by his advice to Dara:

“I think happiness is a trailing indicator of impact . . . and impact is something that’s deeply personal to you. Only you can define what impact means for you . . . What was obvious for me, with someone like Dara, was he was content. He wasn’t happy. Knowing him for a while, he had gone through a phase where he had a lot of ups and downs with Expedia, and he mostly figured it out . . . Life was good. It was really easy. But there was an element of him — and you could hear it in his voice — where he was sort of like . . . ‘Why aren’t you going to go for greatness?’ ‘Why aren’t you going to test yourself?’ Because if you succeed this could be huge and you don’t really get many of these chances in your life.”

Daniel continues:

“But with another person, I might have given totally different piece of advice. So I don’t think it’s a universal truth. But I do think the universal truth is that happiness trails impact and impact is something that’s highly unique. It could be something innate in you. It could be having impact on other people. It could be having impact by being a great father around your kids. I don’t pretend to know that there’s one game to play or one universal truth of life. I certainly believe for entrepreneurial types — probably more like myself — this is really one of those key things: consider impact.”

Full video: David Senra “Daniel Ek, Spotify | David Senra“ (Sep 2025)