I’m Roel van der Ven, a Senior Product Manager at Spotify with 20+ years of experience building products across media, music, and platform technology.

Professional Background

My career has focused on zero-to-one product initiatives and creator/platform ecosystems. At Spotify, I’ve worked on initiatives like Spotify for Authors and Spotify Open Access, helping build the infrastructure that connects creators with audiences.

Before Spotify, I worked at:

  • SoundCloud - Building creator tools and platform features
  • tape.tv - Product leadership in music video streaming
  • Various roles across media and technology companies

Technical Interests

I maintain a homelab where I self-host services using Docker and experiment with home automation through Home Assistant. I believe in owning your infrastructure and data, which is why this site is self-hosted on my homelab.

Personal Interests

Beyond work, I’m passionate about:

  • Bread baking - Especially sourdough, which I’ve been perfecting for years
  • Cooking - Vegetarian cuisine and exploring new techniques
  • Music discovery - Always searching for new sounds
  • Sustainable living - We live near Berlin in a passive house with solar panels

Get in Touch