When Jessica Steel asked a crowd a few years ago who had heard of Pandora, only a few raised their hands. When she asked a classroom of Penn students on Monday who hadn’t heard of Pandora, no one raised their hand.
Steel, Pandora’s executive vice president of business and corporate development and a 1996 College graduate, came to speak in Huntsman Hall to a group of about 40 students. The event was organized by the Women in Leadership Series and Students for Tech and Entrepreneurship at Penn.
Steel spoke about the lessons she has learned throughout the growth of the start-up from a musician’s dream to a public company. Her advice ranged from “business strategy should not be reactionary” to “success comes from a combination of a ‘best in the world’ product focus, an established business model and good timing.”
She also mentioned that a key step of Pandora’s success was cutting off less successful ventures, like MSN Radio and Yahoo! Radio. In addition, she emphasized the need to exceed expectations for customer service since people have such low standards for the internet that “it takes casual fans and turns them into die-hard fans.”
When asked if she views Spotify as a competitor, she said “it’s a really complementary experience” in that Spotify is an on-demand service, whereas Pandora occupies a different niche as a radio.
Steel emphasized the notion, “Do less and do it better.” With regards to Pandora’s Music Genome Project — which selects music based the user’s preferences — she said while the model could potentially be used for many other products like movies and wine, Pandora’s roots are in music and radio and it’s important to keep a narrow focus.
Engineering senior Shantenu Agarwal said Steel’s explanation of why Pandora was not expanding resonated with him. “If you expand too quickly or too fast, you’re not going to be able to focus,” he said. “As a freshman or sophomore, I came here and I tried to do everything and now that I’m a senior … I see that it’s finding that focus.”
WILS organizer and College junior Lakshmi Sivaguru saw Steel as a fitting introduction to a new aspect of leadership. “The field of technology and entrepreneurship is not one we’ve really highlighted in past semesters,” she said. “We thought it would definitely be an incredible opportunity to breach the topic of women in this field that you don’t really hear about and bring that aspect to life.”
Wharton junior Omar Qari agreed. “I’m really happy to see Penn shifting a lot of its focus towards start-ups, entrepreneurship, the tech side … and opening up this whole other aspect which I think is awesome.”
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