Alexander Ljung has been a cornerstone of SoundCloud’s success since he launched the company in 2008 with co-founder and CTO Eric Wahlfross. In this capacity, Alex is responsible for SoundCloud’s vision, overall strategy, and leadership. Currently, he oversees a team of more than 180 people worldwide.
SoundCloud is the world’s leading audio platform that allows people to discover new, original music and audio, creators to build audiences, and everyone to share what they hear, whether online or on mobile. Creators on SoundCloud now post more than 10 hours of music and audio every minute, and the platform reaches over 200 million people, equal to 8 percent of the Internet population, every month.
Alex’s personal interests lie in the positive change and wider societal impact technology and design can have. In his spare time, he enjoys listening, traveling, geeking out on academic theories, diving shipwrecks, and trying not to break his foot in South American coastal cities. He’s also a proud member of The Cloud Appreciation Society.
Prior to co-founding SoundCloud, Alex began his career working in sound design for feature films. He was born in the U.K., grew up in Sweden, and splits his time between SoundCloud’s headquarters in Berlin and the U.S. office in San Francisco.
The Creativity Code: Boon or Bane of Digital Society
Collaboration has never been easier. More people than ever can express their creativity and share the result, be it a product, information, or art. Will a new tech-tool-powered Renaissance drive innovation and benefit us all, or is digital collaboration a real threat to true inspiration that just drags us all closer to the mean? Where does co-creation work best? And from what should we protect it? Jordan Brandt of Autodesk, Yale's David Gelernter, Reid Genauer of Magisto, SoundCloud's Alex Ljung, John Maeda of the Rhode Island School of Design, and moderator Doreen Lorenzo of Quirky discuss. Watch video and read the complete transcript here.
Companies Confront the Madness of Crowds
Technology evolves quickly and employees and customers migrate to the new, even while companies stay attached to “legacy” systems. As the digitized crowd gets more capabilities, how do companies react to communities both inside and outside their walls? The speakers on this Techonomy 2012 session are SoundCloud's Alex Ljung, Rob Tarkoff of Lithium Technologies, and Cisco's Padmasree Warrior. Hugo Sarrazin of McKinsey & Company moderates.
Conferences
Techonomy 13
A new society is coming into being. People around the world are building it using the rapidly-evolving tools of technology.
Conferences
Techonomy 12
Techonomy focuses on how the exponential pace of technology progress makes possible a new world. A wave of accelerating change driven by technology’s advance is washing over our lives, bringing great potential for business and social progress.
