īy the time Ek was doing the groundwork for Spotify, the last thing on his mind was money. “If your motivation for doing a startup is financial reward, you’re better off going to Google, a hedge fund, choosing a career with stable income potential,” he told First Round Review. In his view, such a venture only succeeds if it starts with a problem worth solving.

In fact, when a company launches it has a 0.00006 per cent chance of becoming one, according to David Friedberg, who built a US weather insurance business into one. The number of unicorns in the world has doubled to over 500 in just three years, but it’s still an exclusive club. His story is an astonishing one, yet his personality and attitude match those of other mercurial leaders of very young businesses that are well on the way to the magic 10-figure valuation. Spotify was unreasonable right from the start, and its meteoric rise to become one of the world’s highest-profile unicorns – privately owned startups valued at over US$1 billion – was down to Ek’s unique ability to disrupt, challenge convention and see opportunities that no-one else could. If the pirates had failed, what hope was there for anyone sticking to the lawful route? Napster and Kazaa had both had a go, with varying degrees of legality, and little in the way of success. Most recently, he’s declared his interest in buying his favourite football club, Arsenal, the value of which is slated at £1.8 billion ($2.5bn), and although owner Stan Kroenke doesn’t want to sell, who knows what will happen if there is enough money on the table.Īlways one to go his own way, it certainly seemed ridiculous to imagine there was money to be made in peer-to-peer music streaming in 2002. It’s an apt sentiment for the 38-year-old Swedish Spotify Co-Founder and CEO as he’s built an extraordinary career by never accepting the status quo, and insisting others bend to his whim – however ridiculous it seemed – at every turn. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Daniel Ek’s favourite quote is from George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world.

Daniel ek