There was no Netflix, no YouTube – nothing where you could consume content. It was just the Nordics and South Korea then. They wanted everyone to have a PC in their home with broadband access, and for me that was a glimpse at the future. First, back in 1997 I already had access to fiberoptic internet, 100 megabits downstream and 100 megabits upstream, funded by the Swedish government. He recently committed $1.2 billion of his personal wealth to funding 'moonshot' projects in Europe that use deep technologies such as artificial intelligence to build the next 'super-companies.' These businesses will work with governments, scientists, universities and investors to make a significant positive dent in solving 'the infinitely complex problems' that confront us, whether in health or in climate.Ĭould Spotify have become the success it is had you been born in the United States? Now he's putting his own hard cash to work by fighting what he sees as the continent's lack of drive to build the world-class companies of tomorrow. He's famous in tech circles for railing at Europe's entrepreneurs for selling out too early or, worse, relocating to the United States. Today, Ek's unreasonable side is focused on raising European companies' ambitions.

Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.' No wonder he hung a George Bernard Shaw quotation on the wall above his desk in his Stockholm office, alongside a Fender Stratocaster, the iconic archetypal electric guitar: 'The reasonable man adapts himself to the world the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. But Ek, who is now 38, isn't ready to stop pursuing his own agenda. Since then, Spotify has become the world's largest music streaming service, with 155 million subscribers and 345 million users in 170 markets. At one point he was reportedly earning $50,000 a month through the enterprise and had hired a team of 25 by the time he was 18. Before starting the company in 2006 at the age of 22, he had already created a web development empire out of his parents' house, starting at just 13 years old. Daniel Ek is the co-founder and CEO of Spotify.

Daniel ek