Short YouTube interview snippet where an interviewer asks Daniel Ek about his age when he started various companies. Daniel Ek corrects some ages (Stardoll at 21), interviewer references uTorrent (22) and Spotify (23) and asks whether youth was an advantage in starting those companies.
Questions this video answers
21
22
23
So you were 14 when you started your first company. Then Stardoll, you were.
Stardoll was 21. 21. 21.
You took over as the CEO of uTorrent when you were 22. 22. And then Spotify, you were 23. 23 when you started. It was youth an advantage in starting those companies?
Yeah, definitely. Like, I think, you know, if you ask entrepreneurs, would you have done it if you knew how hard it would be? Most would have said no. But because you're young and in my case, you're quite naive, you kind of go into situations like, hey, this can't be too hard. When I started Spotify, I didn't actually know that I needed licenses from record labels. I was like, well, this is easy. You stream it. Exactly. So I got introduced to some people and said, no, no, no, you kind of need some lice as well. That can't be too hard. Surely they must be up for it. It took me about two and a half years later to kind of get started, but I think that's what kept me going because I saw the solution. I didn't see the problems in the way. I think many people, as they get older and they get wiser, and the great benefit you guys have here is you're not kind of destroyed by this fact that you think what I call pattern recognition, you don't really have that. So instead you see, oh, well, this is not how I want it to work. You actually go out and you seek a solution where a lot of people, if they have a lot of experience, will say, well, this is not going to work because of X, Y, Z. Well, it turns out that most things does work and what I think is the most inspiring thing ever. And I say this. People come up to me and they ask me about ideas for companies, and I said, in all honesty, I have no idea, in fact, what's going to work or not. In fact, I think this was like 04 or something. Someone approached me with this company called Skyper and they said, we want to do this thing where people can sit in front of their computers and make phone calls. And I'm like, I'm never going to work. That turned out to be a pretty big thing, too. So the thing is, I'm not a visionary person in terms of that I know what will work and not. What I do know, however, is that if you keep executing, the right person will figure out a way to sell umbrellas in Sahara, because they'll figure out that it's for sun protection or they'll figure out a way where it can generate electricity or something like that. But it's really all about execution. And ideas is 5%, execution is 95%.
