Despite his young age, he says his life changed when he was 5 years old, when his maternal grandparents gave him a guitar (he still plays it) such gift help giving birth to one of his great passions and unleashed something that would lead Daniel to success: music. His father, a computer engineer, gave him his first computer a year later, Ek will discover many things from it.
Daniel founded his first company in 1997 at the age of 14, when he joined a group of people to attend counseling orders via the Internet, as well as a web hosting company pages outside his room. Two years later, he came across Google and tried to go to work in the company by sending his CV, but he was not accepted because he did not have a degree.
The Google incident would brand him forever to such an extent that influenced his recruitment policy, moving away from the idea of Google to hire only graduates from prestigious universities, Daniel opted for the diversity of cultures, gender, ethnicity, thinking, income and education. In fact, following the rejection of Google, he tried to create a search engine to compete, but could not make it.
Ek created Advertigo, an advertising, web ads, postcards and mobile design application, which was acquired by TradeDoubler, a company owned by Martin Lorentzon, who years later would become his partner in the Spotify creation.
In addition to his companies, he was acting CEO of uTorrent, one of the most popular services in the BitTorrent world. Ek was also part of Tradera, a company acquired by eBay. Daniel was also CTO of Jajja Communications and CTO of Stardoll.
Daniel Ek has 33 years old and is recognized as one of the young CEO’s that are changing the world through innovative companies, an example for new generations and for multiple leaders despite his short age.
The Spotify service keeps on growing, it has over 75 million active users in over 55 countries. Swedish entrepreneur Daniel Ek has an estimated fortune of over $ 400 million, making him one of the 35 global leaders under 35 years old in the world.