YouSaid · the spoken record

Niklas Zennström

lines on the record: 85
first: 2025-03-17
most recent: 2025-03-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Record companies that needed to make an example of us, but at some point we realized we don't want to become martyrs and we don't want to kind of prove a point useful to proving a point. And we realized that we have such conviction in peer-to-peer. So at some point we decided, you know what, let's just move to the next chapter with peer-to-peer.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So we realized we got nothing to lose. That's a pretty interesting thing when you're in a battle with someone that's kind of liberating when you realize that. And the other thing was we realized that these guys are big, but they're also really slow. One thing that I learned from the company I worked with in my first job, one of the kind of phrases was used internally was that it's not the big that beats the small, it's the fast that beats the slow. That's kind of what I took on. It's like, we're just going to be faster than them and we have nothing to lose. Have a lot to lose. We have nothing to lose.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was extremely stressful. But what we realized were a few things, right? One was like, well, I don't have a lot of assets. The only thing we had was our company.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So we, it's like Sudan, let's not use credit cards, let's use pay cash. So what we did was like first like paid credels and then what hotels in Los Angeles take cash. They're not the nicest hotels. Put it that way. But that was fine. We did a few nights and then we went to LAX and we bought tickets like as late as possible for takeoff, right? So that there was no chance that it would have a chance to pick it up. So yeah, so we're happy to get out of US. And that was like the last time I was in the US until 2006, I think.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we didn't show up ourselves to the meeting. So our lawyer, he says, I can produce you my client, but we need to sign something first that you are not going to be serving them. But we were around and we were like basically driving around or sitting around next door trying to not be visible. So we kept a really low profile. So for us, what's all about not being served while we were there?”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's what we thought it would do, right? Or the lawyer thought it's possible. For us, it was interesting because we were like, wow, this is like a Grishan book kind of not as dangerous, but the thrill was there for sure.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, someone mailed us, I think it was. Somehow we got this email with an internal memo from RIAA outlying that I think the title was public enemy number one. So we didn't, as like, we speak to our lawyers who then advised us, they're very likely going to try to serve you in the meeting.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so you had a business meeting really, really nice. And then a bit later, you get in kind of C and Desist letter from the legal department of the same organization or from RIAA, so the record industry association of America.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And they were like interested to come up with solutions because I think they understood The internet is not going to go away, that you need to work on solutions. But the follow up from them also was then from the C and Desist letters, right, basically from the lawyers.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exploding, exactly, exactly. Music. So as Napster got more and more crimpled because of the restrictions, eventually kind of pretty much closed down. Those users were looking for alternatives. And it happened to be because I was the best alternative. So we got more and more users, you know, basically we got all the Naptor users and then more, I guess. Which was great because, of course, if you provide any consumer service who doesn't love users, right? So that's great. But you're also realizing it's like they didn't really do what we asked them to do. They were sharing music.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so what we did was like when we launched, we put up this notice on the homepage. It's like we're working on a solution with the rights holder companies. Stay tuned. So please don't use this for music.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rice holders organization say, hey, there's opportunity here. Actually, we can provide a solution to what Napster is doing where you can actually provide your content online on our platform, and then you can actually have different business models. You can have paper, play, you can have subscription, or advertisement.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. So RAA were suing Napster, and they had to kind of put some restrictions. So we said, hey, there's no opportunity here because for us was so obvious that you're not going to put Genie back in a bottle. Music's going to be online and the use need to be the right solution. And we said that we actually could have that solution. So we went to the local kind of music rights or, you know,”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. So exactly. So again, things were quite fluid because when we started, we thought like, well, surely we're not going to exclude music because it's a general tool. But over the time, as we were developing this during the summer, Napster got into more and more trouble.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, our business model was advertisement. So we put in ads, we had banners in CASA, in the software, and that was something that was controversial at the time, because some of those things were also tracking users' behavior. And at the time, people did not like. Of course, now everything you do is being tracked all the time, so now it's okay. But at the time, it was like controversial. And it was a bit of an issue because when people use a peer-to-peer... Software, and then there was advertisement there. There was something that people didn't really like so much. But we actually, because our costs were so low, we just, you know, the when it started to grow, with advertisement just we could sustain ourselves actually.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, probably something like that range. But it was really tight. Money was tight. And that was always the thing that was a challenge. And that was the thing that caused stress a lot. Like how are we going to pay the bill? Yeah. We also hired two people in Amsterdam. So they came to the interview to my apartment. And then when they started to work, they were a little bit kind of uncomfortable. It's like, you know, around six, seven. It's like because we were basing on our kitchen and like, should we continue to work?”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly Complete limb. So those were things that worked against us, right? But of course, we were optimistic. We're almost there. We're going to raise money. And so we, I think that, well, the reality was that I used my savings. I had an apartment that had sold. So I think they used some of that to fund us some good friends of mine where kind of gave us some angel money. But it was hard to get money. And then I ended up doing a little bit of consulting work also on the side just to kind of pay the bills.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So it got worse and worse. No one really wanted to invest anymore. And the other thing is that we were doing something that was similar to Napster. And as you remember, and you mentioned that Napster had started to get a lot of legal problems with the record industry.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They were cheaper, but the reality was they were excellent. And the core three key people, they had a company called Blue Moon, and they were just brilliant. So Blue Moon are the people that Janice and I call when we wanted to develop Kassam.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Completely. We thought this is amazing, but we thought, like, why stop there? You can do so much more. And this is what the internet should be. It should be peer-to-peer. And we thought this huge opportunity to take this to the next level, to build basically a peer-to-peer network for anyone to search for any type of rich media content, whether that is digital photos, digital videos, shareware, whatever PDFs.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Course was a huge aha moment for a few reasons. One was a technical reason that actually it worked that you can actually connect and use your own computer as an uploading server. That was fascinating on a technical level. But more on a social level, what was fascinating is that this was, again, there was users communicating directly with each other and sharing their content.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the kind of 1.0 version of the web was very much still company to consumers, even like something like Yahoo, there was not a community. And we thought the interesting thing with internet when the end users can be connected. And that's something that we felt that was the right thing to do because it's like it was kind of bypassing the corporations and empowering the end users. That's what we thought was a beautiful thing with internet and it was yet to be happening. When we saw Napster,”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gee, that's a long time ago. So, what we create, first we kind of thought of like, we're going to have so many ideas. So we're just going to do a studio. And we call that fast track. And we're going to come up with a lot of different businesses. And the first thing that we wanted to launch was more of like a consumer comparison site, not only price comparison, but also reviews for e-commerce.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, he moved into a guest room. We took our kitchen table, became the office table. So the living room became the office. And it was awesome.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, to be honest, I did not consult my parents. I informed them. I think they always believed in me and trusted my decisions. But I think it was an interesting conversation I had with my wife because we had just moved to Amsterdam. We were there for a year, a nice place to live. And I said, hey, I told her, you know what? I think I really think I'm going to quit my job and start a company. And she was the one who actually told me, I think you should do it. Because I don't want when we're older, I don't want you to tell me I wish that I tried to become an entrepreneur. So she was probably more like, go out and do it, get it out of your system, and then you'll figure it out. But we also had such an Great opportunity because she had a good job. We realized we could support ourselves on her salary.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think certainly that's what happened. We had a lot of conversations and for me I was kind of much more into my career and I think he was much freer. And I think it's easier to leave something that is like not a secure thing, but to become an entrepreneur if you do it together with someone else. So, you know, I don't know if I would be by myself, would I have done this?”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so then he learned everything by himself, but he was also very quick to understand what was happening online. And this was just really, really good to learn from. So, yeah, he was definitely not your typical corporate person.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, exactly. And it's like I'm almost getting too old and it's happening right now. So at some point. It was time to decide to jump ship.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lycos, exactly, and all those kind of things, but so exciting. And at the same time, actually, there was a dot-com boom also in Europe, in particular in Sweden. There were quite a few online companies that were set up at the same time. And at some point, I realized I'm missing the gold rush. This is an opportunity of the lifetime. Why am I an employee? Of course, yes, I had stock options, and I had a nice career. I was like getting increased salary. It's like I was on a good career path.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. And you know what was interesting because it was so exciting to try out all the new, you know, the first really internet services like Yahoo and Alta Vista was a big moment.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it was. I really think that was part of the reason why Sweden is punching above its weights in terms of kind of unicorn companies. Part of that is because a lot of those founders, if you look at Donnie Leck, of course, you know, and Spider-Man from Spotify or Sebastian Chemkowski, they were kids when this was happening. So they benefited of having those computers at home and with internet dial-ups, right? So for sure it was a good thing.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the other side business that they had was data networks, a commercial internet offering. And that was exciting because it kind of coincided with mosaic browser come out and where the company offered dial-up internet to consumers. And that really, really took off. And it coincided with a campaign or initiative that actually the Swedish government was doing where if you bought a computer for home through your company, it was tax deductible. So you had this boom of two things happening at the same time in Sweden during the 90s was people bought this home PC because it was subsidized and you got your dial-up internet.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, like one and a half years, and it was compulsory service. This was also, again, this was in the 80s where we still had the end of the Cold War. And Russian submarines was routinely doing their exercise in Swedish territorial water. So it was actually quite exciting to be in the Navy Dennis. We tried to find Russian submarines, but we were not successful. I was quite happy afterwards not to continue I was really keen to start studying, so I kind of moved on”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We spent most of the summers sailing in our little boat with my parents, my sister, and the dog. And I spent a lot of hours just making drawings of sailing boats.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was walking out with my wife and then someone comes up and calls my name, so I start running because I didn't want to be served. Then someone else steps in in front of me and then there's a motorcycle coming. So there's all these people from all different directions and of course a slip and you get this thick pile of papers with a lawsuit.”
2025-03-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT