By Noelia Fraguela
Marketing4ecommerce Content Manager
LThe story of Daniel Ek , the co-founder and CEO of Spotify , is quite peculiar: a self-taught child prodigy from the suburbs of Stockholm, Sweden, who got bored easily and who loved computers and music equally. He began his business career at 14, by 16 he was earning more than his father, by 23 he became a millionaire, he started university and dropped out because he was bored, at 25 he created Spotify, revolutionizing the music market forever, and today he runs a company valued at more than 30 billion dollars.
In this article we are going to break down a little more each of these parts of the biography of the creator of Spotify, who managed to capture enough attention from Netflix to create a series based on his life, "The Playlist."
Self-taught and born entrepreneur
Daniel Ek was born on February 21, 1983 in the historic azerbaijan number data suburb of Ragsved in Stockholm, Sweden. Raised in a family where music and computing were common currency, the creator of Spotify ended up assimilating them as his two great passions.
Daniel was intelligent and self-taught . He showed an interest in technology from a very young age and by the age of 14 he was already creating and hosting websites for clients. At 16 he applied to work at Google, but the company rejected him because he didn't have a degree. However, that didn't stop him and within two years he ended up founding his own design company with 25 employees - some of whom were classmates.
In an interview in 2013, the Spotify creator said that his business started as a favor to some friends and that, almost without realizing it, he was soon charging up to $5,000 to local companies. Daniel ended up formally establishing a company in response to the Swedish tax authorities' inquiries. Even his parents were unaware of their son's venture, but they began to suspect the quantity (and quality) of video games he was buying. By the age of 18, Ek was already earning more than his mechanic father .