Daniel Ek, At 33 He Overcame Depression, To Create Spotify, A Company Worth 4.5 Billion

Spotify is undergoing another incredible metamorphosis today. Some have said that it will become the Instagram of music. It is still an idea of founder Daniel Ek. Since 2006, he has convinced music labels and artists that the future of music would be on his streaming platform.

Spotify was created as an antidote to music piracy.

However, there was a phase in his life when Daniel fell into a very dark tunnel. While he struggled to get out, he learned a very important life lesson.

This is why I am telling his story. It teaches us all something basic, to have a peaceful life and maybe one full of successes. I’ll share this with you at the end.

Today Daniel is 38 years old. He is still very young. Spotify is crushing the numbers.

Ad sales in 2021 increased 75% to nearly $375 million. Active listeners grew by just under 20% to exceed 380 million. The subscribers are more than 170 million. The stock on the stock exchange is worth about five billion dollars. It has a market capitalization of over $50 billion.

Let’s discover the phenomenon that created this company with the great capacity for vision and innovation.

When a Super Tech Company Rejected Him, He Started Competing With Them

He had a passion for the guitar and for the football videogame, Fifa. But, it was the music that led him to success.

Daniel Ek was born in Sweden in 1983. He got his first guitar at four and his first computer at 5 years old.

He grew up in Ragsved, Stockholm and immediately starts building websites. He also occasionally teaches his peers how to use Photoshop and how to program.

He earns more by doing websites than his father, a mechanic, and his mother, a nanny.

“He hasn’t graduated, but decides to apply for a position with Google, the search engine that would later become influential. They rule him out. They reject it “.

“At that time I was quite rebellious and didn’t take no for an answer. So I decided that I would compete with him. Obviously this turned out to be much more difficult than I thought, ”he said.

So he initially moves to London. Where he would have more opportunities.

In fact, he enrolled in university but decided to abandon his studies in 2004. He began to churn out entrepreneurial projects.

First, he founded Advertigo, an advertising company. Between 2005 and 2006 he is the CTO at Stardoll, a fashion community for girls, and Tradera, one of the most popular online sales services in Sweden. In 2006, the turning point in Ek’s life arrived: Advertigo was acquired by TradeDoubler and Tradera by eBay.

At this point, he starts working on the Spotify project in Stockholm. He also acquires a mood disorder.

In 2008 Spotify is released publicly. Free accounts were only available through an invite and included paid subscriptions.

The three or four years later, saw a continuation of changes in plans and options for the techies, problems, and a hefty loss of 4.4 million euros.

Let’s look at the exact moment when Daniel decides to throw himself into this new project.