Entrepreneur Analysis: Daniel Ek, Founder of the Music Giant Spotify

This report provides an in-depth entrepreneurial analysis of Daniel Ek, the co-founder of Spotify. It begins with an executive summary and table of contents, followed by an introduction that highlights Ek's significance in the music industry. The discussion section delves into Ek's background, early business ventures, work and business strategies, and entrepreneurial orientation. It examines his work ethics, including his approach to hiring, trust-building, and challenging the status quo. The analysis section evaluates Ek's strategies, including the introduction of new concepts like podcasts. The report concludes with a summary of Ek's contributions and ethical considerations. The paper highlights Ek's transition from early ventures to the creation of Spotify, emphasizing his innovative approach to music streaming and his commitment to ethical business practices. It also covers his management style, including the use of a freemium model and his efforts to expand Spotify's reach and integrate it into various platforms.

Running head: ENTREPRENEUR ANALYSIS
ENTREPRENEUR ANALYSIS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note
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Executive Summary
This paper is an entrepreneur analysis. Here the person on whom the analysis is going to be
conducted is Daniel Ek, the cofounder of the popular company Spotify. This paper intends to
talk about the early life and education of Daniel Ek, his education, his strategies and method
on how he build up the company, his struggles, his way of working. It talks about how he is
and what made him the successful person he is now.
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
Background of Ek..................................................................................................................3
Early business ventures..........................................................................................................3
Work and Business Strategies of Ek......................................................................................4
Entrepreneurial orientation of Daniel Ek...............................................................................6
Work ethics of Daniel Ek.......................................................................................................7
Analysis..................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10
Appendix..................................................................................................................................13
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Introduction
Entrepreneur are the one of the most successful people present in the economy. The
secret to their success is mainly through self-evaluation. This report is an entrepreneur
analysis. This report will evaluate the analysis of the successful Sweden entrepreneur Daniel
Ek, the CEO and the cofounder of the popular music streaming service Spotify. Spotify has
about 207 million active subscribers and about 96 million paying subscribers in 79 countries.
Daniel Ek owns about 9% of its shares and 37% voting control. Daniel Ek founded this
company with his partner Martin Lorentzon in the year 2006 in Sweden. The company, later
launched in the year 2008. Forbes listed Spotify amongst their top 100 Digital Companies in
the year 2018. Daniel Ek has featured in the US Business magazine, Forbes in categories like
Billionaire 2019 and Global Game Changers 2016. Currently Daniel Ek has a net worth of
$2.3 billion. (Forbes, 2019).
Discussion
Daniel Ek is the most powerful and influential person in the music industry today. His
company is currently the most popular audio streaming company largest streaming
subscription service.
Background of Ek
Daniel Ek was born in the year 1983 on February 21 in the district Ragsved in
Stockholm, Sweden. Ek graduated from high school in the year 2002 from IT-Gymnasiet in
Sundbyberg. He went to study engineering at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Later
he dropped out of college to focus on his career in IT. (Forbes, 2019).
Early business ventures
Daniel Ek started working at a very early age. He began his career by making
business websites at an early age of 13. Clients were impressed and he got orders to make
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more websites that made his earnings shot up to $50,000 a month, which he was earning as a
teenager (Forbes, 2019). He charged a meager amount in the beginning but later hiked his
charges to earn more. Ek bribed his friends on joining him to work on the business and he
hired almost 25 to 3o people at a very small age. Ek had already become a millionaire at the
age of 23. Ek founded an advertising company named Advertigo that later was acquired by
TradeDoubler. Ek has also served a company called Tradera, which was a Nordic auction
firm. Daniel Ek has also been a part of the company Evertigo. Ek has served the company
uTorrent as a CEO.
Currently he is the owner of the successful and popular music streaming service
Spotify that has a business turnover of about $4.9 billion with a growth rate of about 46% in
the year 2018. (cnbc)
Work and Business Strategies of Ek
Daniel Ek follows a strict routine when it come s to working. He is ruthless when it
comes to his schedule. In an interview to a business website Ek said that he does not take any
social calls. He rather give time to his organization, as he is very busy. He feels that he can
only concentrate on one thing at a time and thus prefers not juggling his life. He plans to
spend time in achieving his goals that he is keeping in mind (Montag, 2019). He has also said
that people should schedule their creativity in order to ensure the workflow. He feels that this
strategy helps in staying motivated.
In an interview, Daniel Ek has listed tips that he follows religiously and thinks that this
helps in building a successful company.
 He believes in hiring the most talented people rather than looking at the qualification.
According to him, talented people are always beneficial. They have a huge role in
building a successful business.
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 Trust is the key to success in this field. He says that if his knowledge is limited he
should trust on his employees in doing the job that they can do best.
 Ek feels that broadening the horizon is necessary. One must never stop reading,
acquire more knowledge, and keep on learning from experiences and their
surroundings. He also says that if one gets too comfortable in their atmosphere there
are high chances of other companies to outrun easily.
 He also says that one must start locally and later think globally. It takes time to build a
company and little steps are to be taken to reach to their goals.
 Ek says that it is necessary to challenge the status-quo. People should question about
the company and come up with probable solutions. Problem solving and critical
thinking is the key.
 He believes in having some fun and get a break though he does very little of it but
finds it necessary (Nordic.businessinsider.com, 2019).
Daniel Ek defines his management strategies as excruciating. He says that jobs in his
company are static but he also believes that though the designation remains the same for his
employees but the work keeps on changing. Ek says that he is honest and transparent with his
employees. As he states that jobs in his company our static, he feels that the jobs in his
company are missions. He says that one might serve his mission for two years or more and
when the purpose is solved, they might have to leave the job.
Ek has several business strategies that will helped him build this company. He works
to achieve his ultimate goal. The Chief HR Officer of Spotify Katarina Berg has given the
statement that they hire about 100 people in a month as the business is growing rapidly. Ek is
trying to making changes to make the streaming service work smoother and better. They have
introduced a freemium model, which proves the success of the company (Vonderau, 2019).
Daniel Ek wants to integrate Spotify almost everywhere as he has started making deals with
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car manufacturers like Samsung to install Spotify. Daniel Ek wants to provide the best tools
that will attract artists to collaborate with his company (Swanson, 2013). Ek directly makes
deals with artists and gives a platform to the artists to promote and create their very own fan
base (Nordic.businessinsider.com, 2019). Ek has already introduced his users to podcasts and
now he is planning to extend it by providing new content and jingles that can attract listeners
(Schub, Ivarsson & Sydow, 2017).
Entrepreneurial orientation of Daniel Ek
Daniel Ek is one of the most powerful people in the music industry today. Daniel Ek
has created the company with all his hard work. There are certain entrepreneurial theories
that help in building a successful business like the Schumpeter’s Theory of Innovation, which
states that an entrepreneur breaks the flow of the economy because of introduction of
innovations. He also states that innovations are the reasons for the development in the
economy. He says that an entrepreneur who introduces innovations is not an ordinary man
with management skills. Ek possesses this quality mentioned in the theory. He is a man with
extra ordinary managerial skills as he has brought new innovative ideas like the podcasts that
has helped him expand the business.
Work ethics of Daniel Ek
Daniel Ek has moral grounds when it comes to work ethics. Previously companies
like Napster were engaged in piracy in terms of music. When Napster got into a legal battle
due to piracy that is when Ek thought of creating an ethical music streaming service. Here, Ek
offers licensed songs to music fans and authorized online content. According to him, the goal
of his company is to help artists live of their own art (Marshall, 2015). He found it wrong
and illegal when other streaming services were ripping off the songs and providing free
downloads. EK wanted everyone in this music industry to be a part of the change he wanted
to provide in the music industry to develop overall.
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Ek is a man of ethics and it is has been proven by his business venture and ideas, but also by
steps taken by him. On May 10, Daniel Ek removed artist R. Kelly due to accusations on him
of sexual abuse and domestic abuse and XXXTentacian as he was accused of domestic
violence. Ek mentioned that he would remove anyone who would violate content policies
(Wang and Wang, 2019). This shows that he does not endorse or encourage any kind of
misbehavior and disassociate with anyone propagating that.
Analysis
Daniel Ek is one of the most successful entrepreneurs. He is billionaire and a
technologist. He can also be referred as an innovator because of his innovative contributions
to the music world, which nobody could have thought, would work well. Ek has successfully
made a mark in the communication sector (Bloomberg.com, 2019). From the acquired details
of Daniel Ek, it can be easily said that he is a self-made man and has worked, hard since a
very young age to work on what he likes doing. Daniel Ek was always focused, did what he
liked and always wanted to create an empire of his own, which he finally did with Spotify.
From the interviews of Ek, it can be understood that Ek created Spotify as he himself had a
lot of interest in music and wanted to get into the music industry. Daniel Ek proves his talent
by creating a company where most people were unsure that it would gain any profit in the
market. Most people previously did not pay to subscribe to music streaming services, they
were getting it free but with his sheer talent and creative marketing skills, he has set up this
company to be a huge success.
Daniel Ek has come a long way with Spotify. It has been possible because of the
strategies he has implemented and his vision. Daniel Ek has adjusted well and has understood
the market well. From the details, it can be said that Ek has put in a lot of effort and has
active participation in the process of building business strategies. He has been involved in
hiring people, meeting artists, making contracts with them. This active participation has given
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him insights to make changes and introducing new things to the services. Ek came up with
the idea of introducing new concepts for the diversity in their content just other than
streaming music.
Ek as person is a man of ethics, which can be proved, with the main idea of creating
streaming of licensed music. This makes him an honest entrepreneur. It can also be said that
he is aware of the surroundings, the music industry. He does not keep a track of the industry
for the benefits of the company he also ensures the sentiment of the users and listeners are not
disrespected. He banned renowned artists because of the accusations put on them to show his
stand and to respect user’s sentiment showing he does not associate with people engaging in
acts like sexual assault and domestic abuse. However, he raised the ban on the artists as he
later realized that they were nearly accused and not convicted. This contradicts from the
personality he has as he took a step too soon and think about the consequences whereas he is
the one who thinks critically.
Here it is seen that Ek is very determined. He is constantly working in upgrading the
company. He is hardly social and most of his times he spends working to find new
acquisitions in the market. Daniel Ek has not found success right in the beginning. He had to
wait for about 2 years and then he launched his company. He did not know any artist
personally and made an effort by talking to them personally, which shows his patience and
dedication towards his job and company. He has gone through other problems as well as he
did not have investors and most of the money put into the business was their own money.
The biggest and most important priority of the company is communication. Daniel Ek
has mastered the skill as it is seen that in most of his meetings he directly talks to artists and
does all the dealings by himself rather than sending his other employees.
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Daniel Ek has many positive points that has helped him create this business.
However, Ek has not looked into deeply some factors. The business strategy is unique and
ethical but it has a great competition in the market with companies like YouTube and Netflix
who have subscribers more than Spotify thus making the profit low. The idea of hiring
employees based on their specific talent and keeping them in the company for the time they
are needed does not somehow ensure a healthy working environment. If employees leave
then the productivity of the company goes down. Ek is an effective decision maker but these
somehow have not proved to be fruitful for him and his company.
Conclusion
Daniel Ek has brought a revolutionary change in the music industry with his vision and hard
work by creating Spotify. Daniel Ek has put in a lot of effort on making the company local to
global. It is his concentration, dedication and hard work that has made him a global icon and
a billionaire at this young age. Daniel Ek has been very intelligent and talented from a very
young age. He has been always been focused and it is proven from the details. Even though
there are a few shortcomings in his decisions, his company has done very well and currently
is at the number one position as music streaming service. From this paper, it concludes that
Daniel Ek has become a Global Icon.
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Reference
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Fast Company. (2019). Exclusive: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek on Apple, Facebook, Netflix–and
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Forbes. (2019). Daniel Ek. [online] Available at:
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music [Accessed 15 Mar. 2019].
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Schub, J., Ivarsson, A., & Von Sydow, O. (2017). " Innovation is at the heart of everything
we do"-How to sustain innovation and entrepreneurship, the case of Spotify.
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