Maverick Unicorn

Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek is a textbook example of the startup gurus propelling their companies to billion-dollar valuations.

- Paul Merrill

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

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.

And it certainly did seem ridiculous to imagine there was money to be made in peer-to-peer music streaming in 2002. Napster and Kazaa had both had a go, with varying degrees of legality, and little in the way of success. If the pirates had failed, what hope was there for anyone sticking to the lawful route?

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. He was never about being reasonable.

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.

The number of unicorns in the world has doubled to over 500 in just three years, but it’s still an exclusive club. 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.