Chris Barton is the founder and creator of Shazam, a groundbreaking music recognition app that revolutionised the way people discover and interact with music. In 2000, Barton conceived the idea for Shazam, at a time when digital music was still in its infancy, three years before iTunes and eight years before the App Store. Shazam initially launched as a phone number service that users dialled to identify songs, but the company struggled in its early years, narrowly avoiding bankruptcy for six years.
The turning point came in 2008 with the launch of the App Store, which allowed Shazam to reach its full potential and become one of the most successful apps in the world. In 2018, Shazam was acquired by Apple for a reported $400 million, making it Apple’s 6th largest acquisition of all time. Shazam has been downloaded over 2 billion times and is used each month by over 300 million people, making it one of the world’s most popular apps.
Holding 12 patents, including one found within the Google search algorithm. Barton has also played a key role in tech history as a founding member of Google’s Android Partnerships team where he created Android’s mobile operator partnership framework. He also spent four years at Dropbox where he led carrier partnerships and was one of the company’s first 100 employees. In addition to his work with Shazam, Barton also invests in a wide range of start-ups, including artificial intelligence for heart health and inflammatory disease therapeutics.
Today, Barton spends much of his time building his third startup company, Guard, an artificial intelligence system that detects drowning in swimming pools. Prior to his technology career, Barton was a strategy consultant and earned two master’s degrees from UC Berkeley and Cambridge University.
