Book Daniel Ek

Daniel Ek is a Swedish entrepreneur and technologist who founded a global music streaming service and serves as its executive chairman. He was making websites and open-source tools by age fourteen. After high school he worked at a search optimization firm, held a senior role at the Nordic auction company Tradera, and served as CTO of the online community Stardoll. He founded the online advertising company Advertigo, sold it to TradeDoubler in 2006, and briefly led μTorrent before its sale to BitTorrent. Rather than step away, he set out to build a better answer to music piracy, an idea that first took shape for him after Napster shut down, and in 2006 he and Martin Lorentzon incorporated the company in Stockholm. His core idea was simple: create a legal service more convenient than piracy that also pays the music industry. Ek also founded Brilliant Minds. His honors include the KTH Great Prize (2012), International Swede of the Year (2014) and a place on the Time 100 list in 2022. He speaks compellingly on product vision, technology, creativity and building a global platform from a small Swedish startup.