Anything For You All: Spotify opens for trading, landing a $30 billion valuation

April 03, 2018

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Spotify started trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, offering a chance for investors and insiders to sell their shares on the public market. The stock opened at $165.90 after a lengthy pricing process, giving it a $30 billion valuation.

But there's one early backer that apparently won't be selling its holding: the European venture-capital firm Lakestar.

The firm's founder and CEO, Klaus Hommels, who also invested in Spotify personally in 2008 before founding Lakestar in 2011, told Business Insider he was committed to a future vision of Spotify as a "$100 billion company" with an eventual subscriber base of 700 million users.

Here's our story: Spotify investor Lakestar won't be selling its shares — and thinks it should be a $100 billion company. Elsewhere in tech news:

Back in finance news, David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital is having a rough 2018 so far, and started out his latest client letter with an explanation.

"In our history, we've had five other quarters with a greater than 5% loss," Greenlight told clients in an April letter seen by Business Insider. "In four of those, there were clear world or market events that provided a simple explanation, and in one, a few positions in our portfolio went wrong at the same time. This period has not been like any of these."

Elsewhere, Steve Cohen's VC firm led a $21 million investment in a startup that wants to power free stock trading.

And in markets news, an unconventional hedge has been creating "turbo-charged" returns for worried stock traders. And a $700 billion investor explains why traders should brush off an ominous market signal that's flashing.

Lastly, in Business Insider news, I'm very excited to welcome Olivia Oran to Business Insider as a senior editor. Olivia's the latest in a series of hires to BI, with Greg Sandoval joining as a senior reporter on the tech beat, and Daniella Greenbaum joining as a political columnist.