This article was taken from the April 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
We've surveyed 200 experts to identify Europe's top digital influencers. From superangels to startup heroes, the list represents the definitive survey of the people shaping the world around us.
01: Daniel Ek Spotify
Daniel Ek is the CEO of Spotify. Read our full in-depth interview with Ek in the May issue of Wired, on sale on newsstands and tablets now.
02: The Samwer Brothers
Entrepreneurs, Rocket Internet, Munich
Munich-based brothers Marc, Oliver and Alexander Samwer are polarising figures, but no european has a better record at scaling startups. Since selling Jamster in 2004, their Rocket Internet incubator has continued to pump out high-growth clones of business ranging from Zappos to Airbnb.
03: Edward Snowden
Whistleblower, Moscow
When Edward Snowden relocated to Russia, he made himself eligible for this list. No one in digital had a bigger effect last year -- evidenced by President Obama's announcement of reforms at the National Security Agency. News that GCHQ monitored German government telecoms proved awkward for David Cameron.
04: Robin and Saul Klein
Entrepreneur-investors, Index Ventures, London
Robin Klein has been an investor in the London tech scene for over a decade. One of the first investors in LOVEFiLM (sold to amazon for £200m, in 2011), he has backed Moo.com, Zoopla, Mind Candy Songkick and Tweetdeck.
CEO, Supercell, Helsinki
When his games company Supercell started earning £1.5m a day, Ilkka Paananen began calling himself the "world's least powerful CEO". Last october he sold 51 percent of the company he founded in 2010 to Japanese telco SoftBank, valuing his firm at £1.8 billion.
Read our full interview with Ilkka Paananen
06: Pope Francis
Bishop of Rome, Vatican
Not just the most popular Pope in history, he's also an astute social-media star. Last summer, he offered "indulgences" to his Twitter followers and made the first Papal selfie. His Twitter account, @Pontifex, has more than 3.6 million followers. The Pope tweets in nine languages in all, including Arabic.
07: Yuri Milner
Founder Mail.ru/Investor, California/Moscow
The Russian entrepreneur founded one of Russia's biggest internet companies, DST (now Mail.ru Group), and was an early investor in Facebook, Zynga, Twitter and SPotify. Recently Milner has been funding healthcare startups and has invested in mobile phone maker Xiaomi.
08: Martin Varsavsky
Entrepreneur/Investor, Madrid/Menorca
Varsavsky's family fled Argentina to New York to escape the junta. Three degrees and seven companies laters, he's one of Europe's most respected entrepreneurs. He founded two of Spain's biggest telcos and his latest venture, FON, is attempting to become the world's largest Wi-Fi network.
09: Yossi Vardi
Investor, Entrepreneur, Tel Aviv
In a world of twentysomething CEOs, 71-year-old Vardi is unique.
Within a year of founding one of Israel's first software companies he was, aged 27, made director general of the Ministry of Development. He continues to to invest while hosting conferences around the world, including DLD, WPP's Stream and Kinnernet.
10: Nicola Mendelsohn
Vice-President Europe, Middle East and Africa, Facebook, London
A former advertising executive, Mendelsohn is driving Facebook's mobile growth and revenue: the network generates £1.14 per user in the region (but £2.64 in the US). She is a co-chair of the UK Creative Industries Council and a Women's Prize For Fiction board member.
11: Jonathan Ive
Senior Vice-President of Design, Apple, California/UK
The designer took on Apple's software last year and delivered what CEO Tim Cook called "the biggest change" to the mobile platform since iPhone launched, with the sleek iOS 7. The iPhone 5c was a return to the playful colour that helped Apple back from the brink in the 90s.
12: Brent Hoberman
Entrepreneur/Investor, London
After running dotcom-era Lastminute.com for eight years, Hoberman has not let up -- co founding global entrepreneur network Founders Forum in 2005, venture capitalist PROfoundrs Capital in 2009 and discount retailer Made.com in 2010. He's a well-connected fixture of London's tech scene.
13: Matt Brittin
Vice President for Northern and Central Europe, Google, London
Last May, Brittin faced a very public grilling by the Commons public accounts committee about the search giant's widely criticised corporation-tax arrangements. Now he must restore Google's reputation while overseeing its new London HQ, due open in 2017.
CSO, Iliad, Paris
One of the heroes of the Paris tech community, billionaire Niel has championed a digital economy that has created net giants such as Vente-privee and Criteo. In March 2013 he announced the creation of 42, a Paris-based tuition-fee academy for coders and entrepreneurs.
Read our full interview with Xavier Niel
15: Niklas Zennström
Cofounder, Skype/Atomico, London
In 2013, Zennström was awarded medals by the Swedish Crown and Academy of Engineering -- remarkable for a man once mired in Kazaa-related lawsuits. After launching Skype in 2003 he twice sold the company, for a total of $6bn. In October 2013, he made a four-fold return on Supercell in just six months.
16: Arkady Volozh
Founder, Yandex, Moscow
Computer scientist and serial entrepreneur Volozh founded Yandex, Russia's biggest search engine, in 1997. The platform has 60 percent of the Russian search market -- Google has about 26.
Together with its other services -- such as online wallet -- it's Russia's largest tech company by revenue.
CEO, King, London
Backed by €34m in venture funding from Apex and Index Ventures, King and its casual, "bite-sized" strategy has dominated social gaming on Facebook since it exiled itself from Yahoo! New games are built in no more than three months by three people. There are rumours of an IPO in 2014.
Read our full interview with Riccardo Zacconi
18: Neelie Kroes
EU's Digital Agenda Commissioner, Brussels
In 2013 the Netherlands' EU commissioner set out plans for the Telecoms Single Market, which attempted to guarantee net access, launched a Startup Leaders Club with Daniel Ek, Lars Hinrichs, Joanna Shields and Niklas Zennstrom, and created a €100m taxpayer-backed fund to invest in startups in the EU.
19: Oliver Schusser
Senior Director, iTunes International, London
If Schusser doesn't like your mobile app, it's not going on the Apple App Store. At a time when companies such as Snapchat and Supercell -- which are, at their core, app developers -- are earning huge valuations, Schusser has the power to make or break high-value businesses.
20: Richard Branson
Founder, Virgin Group, London
Virgin Galactic is behind schedule but, after three supersonic test flights, Branson is confident it will carry passengers in 2014. He invests in tech firms including Square, Pinterest, Hailo and Codeacademy, and last year he launched B Team, which promotes sound corporate practices.
21: Paddy Cosgrave
Conference Organiser, Dublin
Four years ago, Dubliner Paddy Cosgrave, then 26, persuaded 150 of the world's top startup CEOs and investors to meet in the Irish capital. F.ounders now runs alongside the vast Dublin Web Summit, which is open to the public, and Cosgrave has branched out to New York and London.
22: Mark Read
Strategy Director, WPP/CEO, WPP Digital, London
Martin Sorrell's chief strategist isn't just continuing WPP's transition to digital, he's also expanding the business: WPP Ventures, spun out of its acquisition of AKQA, has invested in blogging platform Muzy. He is also the brains behind WPP's acclaimed (un)conference, Stream.
23: Christophe Maire
Angel Investor, Berlin
Maire is one of Berlin's superangels and a leading mobile entrepreneur. He co-founded gate5, a pioneer in mapping, which he sold to Nokia, and Plazes.com, a check-in service that predated Foursquare. He was an early investor in Instagram rival EyeEm and has made investments in 3D-video messaging platform Zoobe.
24: Jimmy Wales
Founder, The Wikimedia Foundation, London
The Wikipedia founder is dedicated to maintaining an open web and has given 680 million people (and counting) free mobile access to his encyclopedia through Wikipedia Zero. Wales also chairs a new mobile network, The People's Operator, that donates funds to charities.
Cofounder, DLD Conference, Munich
A former journalist, Steffi Czerny launched the DLD conference in 2005 and continues to bring together a diverse mix of speakers and guests, rolling out the concept to events such as DLD Women and DLD Moscow. One day she hopes Jeff Bezos will attend DLD.
Read our full interview with Steffi Czerny
26: Jeremy Farrar
Director, Wellcome Trust, London
The Oxford professor became director of the Wellcome Trust last year and warned of the global threat of antibiotics resistance.
Farrar, who's penned over 450 papers and chairs a consortium working to share data, wants tech innovators to help fight infectious disease witht he trust's £750 million pa kitty.
27: Markus "Notch" Persson
Game Developer, Minecraft*, Stockholm*
A game developer for five years at King, Persson became a gaming sensation after creating Minecraft in 2011. In two years the game has sold over 30 million copies and developed a cult following. A tweet to his 1.5 million followers can be all the marketing a new game needs.
28: Bruno Giussani
European Director of TED; curator of TEDGlobal, Lausanne
Got a great idea for a TED talk? Giussani is the man to pitch. A former journalist, the 50-year-old Swiss scours the world for compelling ideas, working with speakers to hone their thoughts into 18-minute talks, and building one of the largest conference brands in the world.
29: Hermann Hauser
Director, Amadeus Capital Partners, Cambridge
Thirty years after cofounding Acorn, Hauserm 65, drives innovation: his stakes include ARM, plastic electronics company Plastic Logic and eye-tracking firm Tobii. He now focuses his time and investment on ubiquitous computing and machine learning.
30: Mike Lynch
Founder, Autonomy, Cambridge
Legal battles about his sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for £8bn mean that Lynch's influence has waned, but he remains one of Britain's wealthiest tech investors. In 2013 he raised a £1bn fund -- backing cyber-security firm Darktrace and augmented reality app
Neurence.
31: Jacques-Antoine Granjon
Investor, Paris
Granjon founded flash-sales site Vente-privee in 2001. Since then he has built a billion-dollar business, inspiring countless imitators, especially in the US. His reported $600m net worth also makes him one of France's top business angels -- in 2013 hd backed 3D modeller Sketchfab and financial dashboard Sush.io
32: Eben Upton
CEO, Raspberry Pi Foundation, Cambridge
Upton wanted to give today's children what the BBC Micro gave him in the 80s: a cheap way into programming. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has sold 2.3 million of its £16 microcomputers -- all made in Britain. A hit with hobbyists and children, the Pi is an educational tool in the developing world.
33: Tim Berners-Lee
Head of the World Wide Web Consortium, Boston
In the 25 years since Berners-Lee created the web at Cern in Switzerland he has stayed involved in its management with the World Wide Web Consortium. Last October the Open Data Institute, which he cofounded in late 2012, launched 13 global hubs to support several open-data projects.
34: Reshma Sohoni
Partner, Seedcamp, London
Sohoni has invested in tens of startups as partner while also advising Credo Ventures, a VC fund focusing on east European startups, London property service Home on Demand and social-media aggregator Soup. Sohoni, formerly of Vodafone, is supporting east London talent at Hackney's Startup Kitchen.
35: Loic Le Meur
Conference Organiser, San Francisco
Le Meur has sold four companies -- the most recent acquired by Twitter aggregator HootSuite after several incarnations -- but its annual Parisian tech event, LeWeb, that made him a key presence in European tech. This year's was the tenth and there is now a second LeWeb in London.
36: Sherry Coutu
Entrepreneur/Investor, Cambridge
Awarded a CBE in 2013, the Canadian angel investor has continued to advise firms, evangelise about European tech and maintain close links on boards, in schools across universities, Silicon Valley Comes to the UK, which she has run for the past decade, connects entrepreneurs and investors.
37: Dan Cobley
Managing Director, Google UK, London
Cobley is a marketer with a physics degree who had senior roles at Pepsi, Ask Jeeves and Capital One Europe before moving to Google in 2006. As MD of the web giant's largest market outside in the US, he is crucial to its expansion plans. Just don't ask him about its policies on taxes and copyright.
38: Lukasz Gadowski
Entrepreneur/Investor, Berlin
Lukasz Gadowski's incubator Team Europe has founded some of Berlin's best-known startups, including advertising platform SponsorPlay, e-commerce firm Mister Spex and food service Lieferheld. THe incubator's current standout success is Delivery Hero, an online food-delivery platform.
39: Martin Lorentzon
Cofounder, Spotify Stockholm
As the other half of Spotify, Lorentzon keeps a lower profile than cofounder Daniel Ek. The company's chairman is a trained economist and focuses on strategy and operations. Lorentzon engineered a £170m round of financing last November, which valued Spotify at £2.5bn.
40: Marc Simoncini
Investor, Jaina Capital, Paris
In 2013 Simoncini exited one of France's most successful businesses, the online dating service Meetic. Through his company, Jaina Capital, he is now one of France's biggest investors, with key stakes in Made.com, mobile payments platform Zooz, and home-security firm MyFox.
41: Mikael Hed
CEO, Rovio, Helsinki
Angry Birds continues to spread its wings: a Mario Kart version came out in December; its soft drinks now outsell Coca-Cola in RUssia and Finland; and a movie is due soon. Peter Vesterbacka is the conference-friendly face of the company but it's Mikael Hed, Rovio's CEO, who is steering the company to world domination.
42: One Direction
Twitter Stars, London
Three of Twitter's five most popular tweets of 2013 cam from pop stars One Direction. One was a photo of Harry Styles sleeping, retweeted 339,388 times at the time of writing. Beliebers and Little Monster used to be the gold standard of devoted online followings. The 18m-strong Directioners now rule.
43: Philipp Moehring
Angellist, London
After being a key part of the startup accelerator Seecamp, Moehring has observed many of Europe's most exciting businesses firsthand. In January he announced he'll be using that expertise to run the European arm of the influential AngelList, the Californian startup that's part social network, part fund-raising platform.
44: Risto Siilasmaa
Chairman and interim CEO, Nokia, Helsinki
The Finnish company, which sold its phone business to Microsoft, now has another opportunity to reinvent itself. With a maps division that has the lion's share of the car industry as clients, thousands of patents, a vast division selling services to telcos, Siilasmaa sees a world with billions of connected devices and sensors.
45: Errol Damelin
Founder, Wonga, London
Last year was one of transition for Damelin and his pay-day lender Wonga -- after five years as chief exec he became part-time chairman. Rumours of an IPO persist and more acquisitions are expected after Wonga made its biggest buy ever last October.
46: Natalie Massenet
Founder, Net-A-Porter, London
In 2013 Massenet became chairman of the British Fashion Council, where her aim is to encourage tech-based businesses. She has overseen her first London Fashion Week, expanded Net-a-Porter into China and has moved into content via digital mag, The Edit, and shoppable print title, Porter.
47: Shakil Khan
Entrepreneur/Mentor/Investor, London
Shakil Khan combines his roaming role as head of special projects at Spotify with his angel investments. His role as an adviser to Nick d'Aloisio, and as investor in Summly, paid off when it was bought by Yahoo! He also invested in YPlan and DueDil, as well as launching Bitcoin news-site CoinDesk.
48: Cem Sertoglu
Partner, Earlybird Venture Capital, Istanbul
As a partner at influential Earlybird Venture Capital and via his own Young Turk Ventures, Sertoglu has invested in some of Turkey's most successful startups, including GittiGidiyor (acquired by eBay in 2011) and meal delivery service Yeme Sepeti. His portfolio includes idemama.com and Vivense.
49: Noam Bardin/Uri Levine
Founders, Waze, Tel Aviv
It's been a big year for the men driving Waze. Last June, the crowdsourced traffic-dodging maps app sold to Google for $1bn in one of Israel's biggest tech exits. Levine is now an investor in startups, including public transport app Moovit, hotel-reservations site Roomer and the crowdsourced money-saving app
FeeX.
50: John and Patrick Collison
Cofounders, Stripe, San Francisco/Limerick
The Limerick-born brothers sold their first startup for £3m in 2008, and their second is changing how we pay for services online.
Stripe, backed by Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, processes millions of payments a day in the US and UK. Recent funding valued it at $1.7bn.
51: Jay Bregman
Founder & CEO, Hailo, London
Black-cab app Hailo had a big 2013: after raising $30m from investors including Union Square Ventures, the company launched in New York to take on the well-established Uber. The app already has 13,000 London cabbies -- about half -- signed up. Next stop: the rest of the world, with Hailo Anywhere.
52: Sonali De Rycker
VC, London
A Harvard Business School alumna and former banker, Sonali De Rycker is one of Accel's leading London partners. In a sign of Europe's increasing global importance, the firm, which has stakes in Hailo Supercell, Mind Candy, Spotify and Wonga, raised over half of its new £290m European fund from US investors.
53: Rachel Whetstone
Communications Director, Google, Mountain View/London
Whetstone has run Google's comms since 2005, after serving as political secretary to former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard. The 46-year-old remains close to senior Tories and is married to Steve Hilton, the former director of strategy for David Cameron.
54: James Dyson
Founder, Dyson, Wiltshire
Billionaire Dyson continues to power innovation, whether through his own lab -- he will be reinventing the vacuum cleaner yet again in 2014 with filter-free Cinetic -- or through his foundation, which last year awarded £30,000 to the exoskeleton project Titan Arm.
55: Carlos Espinal
Partner, Seedcamp, London
As one of the senior figure at startup accelerator Seedcamp, Espinal is a key part of a team that attracts the smartest and most ambitious founder sin Europe. A prolific investor, he has made more than 100 early stage investments in companies such as TransferWise, EDITD and Teddy the Guardian.
56: Peter Read
Angel Investor, London
An investor in and advisor to some of Berlin's leading tech -- such as Instagram rival EyeEm, MoviePilot and Gidsy -- Read has become a key name in the capital's tech scene. He counts Skype and LOVEFiLM among his exits, and is also a backer of MyHeritage, YPlan, Songkick and Citymapper.
57: Eileen Burbidge/Stefan Glaenzer/Robert Dighero
Partners, Passion Capital and White Bear Yard, London
Their influence comes not only through investment firm Passion Capital, which has investments including GoCardless, EyeEm and research platform Mendeley, but also through their incubator White Bear Yard in Clerkenwell.
58: Alexander Ljung/Eric Wahlforss
Founders, Soundcloud, Berlin
SoundCloud reached new heights in 2013. Users now upload 12 hours of content a minute, and 250 million use the platform each month. It launched a service for artists in March, catering for its original market. This platform may give the city its next major exit
59: Didac Lee
CEO, Inspirit; Board Member FC Barcelona, Barcelona
As a board member in charge of new tech, Lee wants to make FCB successful on social media -- the club has the world's biggest fanbase on Facebook (over 49 million) and Twitter. Lee, 40, also heads Inspirit, a portfolio of seven tech forms that employs 400 people in seven countries.
60: Nicolas Brusson, Frederic Mazzella and Francis Nappez
Founders, Blablacar, Paris
Founded in 2007, the fast growing car-sharing service launched in Germany in 2013 -- its tenth territory -- and now has five million members. It has become a pan-european company with more than a million monthly users.
61: Dimitry Grishin
Cofounder, Mail.ru, Moscow
Grishin made his name as cofounder and CEO of the Mail.ru Group, the word's seventh largest internet business. The company operates Russia's most popular email service, social networks and two IM services. He also runs personal-robotics investment fund, Grishin Robotics.
62: Klaus Hommels
VC, Zurich
Zurich-based venture capitalist Klaus Hommels has an enviable track record. He sits on the board of Spotify and has invested in Facebook, Airbnb and Skype. in the past year he has participated in funding rounds for payments firm Taulia (£12m) and NumberFour (£24m), a platform for creating apps for small businesses.
63: Jonnie Goodwin
Investor, Lepe Partners, London
Goodwin joined Brent Hoberman to form investment firm PROfounders Capital in 2009 and is his partner in Founders Forum.
He runs Lepe Partners, a media-focused merchant bank. The group makes wide-ranging investments and acts as a dealmaker across print radio and television.
64: David Cleevely
Investor; cofounder, Centre for Science and Policy, Cambridge
Cleevely was awarded a CBE in 2013 for his services to innovation and technology. Among them, founding telecoms companies Analysys and Abcam, chairing Cambridge Wireless and cofounding and chairing investment group Cambridge Angels.
65: Jens Begemann
CEO, Wooga, Berlin
Begemann cofounded social games developer Wooga in January 2009.
It now has more than 50 million active users playing titles such as
Bubble Island and Diamond Dash; in 2013, its latest hit Jelly Splash reached one million users in five days. Next up: cracking Asia, with Jelly Splash on Korean social network KakaoTalk.
66: Liam Casey
Founder and CEO, PCH International, Cork
When companies such as Apple and Beats by Dre design a new product, they meet Casey, 47, to work out how they make it. With 5,000 direct employees and a vast supply chain network in Shenzehn, Casey has been dubbed "Mr China" -- impressive for someone who doesn't speak the language.
67: Fabrice Grinda
Angel Investor, New York/Dominican Republic/Bucharest/Paris
Since stepping down as CEO of OLX in 2012, 39-year-old Grinda invests full-time, often from the Dominican Republic. His portfolio includes BrightRoll, PeoplePerHour and invino, and he'll be a happy man if Chinese giant Alibaba Group -- in which he is an investor -- floats in 2014.
68: Dan and Sam Houser
Founders, Rockstar Games, New York
Console gaming is back, thanks to the PS4 and Xbox One -- but also to one last generation title. Grand Theft Auto V earned £600 million within three days of release, becoming the fastest selling entertainment product in history. The Houser brothers (here because of their London roots) steer the franchise.
69: Sebastian Siemiatkowski
CEO and cofounder, Klarna, Stockholm
In December, Klarna bought rival Sofort for £90m, boosting its share of Europe's e-commerce market to ten percent. Siemiatkowski thinks the company could become the main payment provider in Europe and even rival PayPal, Mastercard and Visa.
70: Oskar Hartmann
Founder, Kupivip, Moscow
Previously a consultant at Boston Consulting Group in Russia, German-born Hartmann founded Russian e-commerce company KupiVIP, a shopping club with almost ten million users that offers discounted name brands. He cofounded Fast Lane Venture and seeks an IPO sometime this week.
71: Adam Fisher
VC, Tel Aviv
Fisher is a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he focuses on European and Israeli investments. He has a stake in many of Israel's fastest-growing startups, including Wix, BillGuard and MyHeritage. His exits include Soluto and intucell, acquired by Cisco for £290m after two years.
72: Sina Afra
Cofounder, Markafoni; Investor, Istanbul
Serial entrepreneur and investor Afra has steered Markafoni to become Turkey's market leader in private shopping and flash sales.
The site now has versions in Australia, Poland, Greece and Ukraine and was, in 2011, majority acquired by the Naspers Group, which reportedly valued the platform at £120m.
73: Eric Carreel
Cofounder and Chairman, Withings, Paris
Withings' wearable sensors -- such as its Blood Pressure Monitor -- have made Carreel's Paris-based startup a name in digital health. An engineer by trade, Carreel, 54, also founded 3D-printing platform Sculpteo and VoIP firm Invoxia, and he advises the French government on the digital economy.
74: Kristian Segerstrale
Investor, California
When social games company Playfish was bought by Electronic Arts in 2009, Segerstrale swapped South Kensington for San Francisco. He left EA last March and now invests through his firm Initial Capital -- which he led a smart seed round in Helsinki games developer Supercell, bought by SoftBank at a $3bn valuation.
75: Markus Beckedahl
Founder, Netzpolitik.org, Berlin
Beckedahl has been a leading voice on politics and technology since 2002 -- he led the campaign against the German government;s surveillance in the wake of the Snowden revelation. The Berlin-based re:publica, which Beckedahl cofounded, is one of Europe's largest tech conferences.
76: Alex Hoye
Investor; cofounder, The Faction Collective and Ice, London
Hoye started out at Disney before becoming a consultant at McKinsey, cofounding Golndustry and The Faction Collective. His ICE group brings together founders for mutual support and foreign trips; angel investments include Brainient, Skimlinks and MyBuilder.
77: Mary Ekeland
VC, Elaia Partners, Paris
As a partner at Elaia, Ekeland made early stage plays in Teads, Criteo and Scoop.it. In her role as co-president of lobbying organisation France Digitale, she was one of 12 industry leaders who met French President Hollande in December 2013, to discuss how the government might further support startups.
78: Michael Acton Smith
CEO, Creative Director and Founder, Mind candy, London
Acton Smith, 39, continues to grow the Moshi Monsters empire: the children's game now reaches more than 80 million users and licensing deals range from Nintendo DS game Katsuma Unleashed to Moshi Monsters: The Movie. Next up: new Mind Candy titles in 2014.
79: Thor Fridriksson
CEO, Plain Vanilla, San Francisco/Reykjavik
Following Finland's Rovio and Supercell, Iceland is the coming man, led by Plain Vanilla, the studio behind QuizUp, which won 3.5 million users in tis first three weeks, Fridriksson founded the company in 2010; in December he raised £13.5m from Sequoia and other investors.
80: Max Hole
Chairman/CEO, Universal Music Group International, London
In January 2013, Hole took over the non-US part of the company that produces one in three of all recordings sold today. He has been involved with the careers of Bon Jovi and Amy Winehouse, Brought The Beatles and Queen to Universal and secured its partnership with The Voice.
81: Mike Bracken
Head of the Government Digital Service, London
The ex-director of the Guardian's digital development team heads a unit of coders brought together in 2011 to launch a hub for all government services, from driver's licences to tax credits. The site now gets a billion views a year. Bracken is central to the coalition's "digital first" initiative.
82: Martha Lane Fox
Entrepreneur/Legislator, London
In 2013 the cofounder of Lastminute.com became the youngest member of the House of Lords, founded the philanthropic arm of Founders Forum and stepped down as the UK's Digital Champion. Her charity, GO On UK, is tackling computer illiteracy and follows her role in setting up the GDS.
83: Martin Clarke
Editor, Mail Online, London
The likes of BuzzFeed and Vice may be getting hype to match their numbers, but one European publisher is beating them: Mail Online, which in September 2013, recorded 161m uniques. In December, BuzzFeed logged 130m. As Mail Online's publisher and editor-in-chief, Clarke now runs the world's biggest news site.
84: Gonzalo Martin-Villa
Chief Executive, Wayra Worldwide, Madrid
From his base in Madrid, Matin-Villa heads Telefonica's accelerator network Wayra and oversees 300 startups in 12 countries. With hubs in Europe and South America, it backs teams with around £25,000 in return for five to ten per cent equity. In 2013 Wayra's startups reached £31m in funding.
85: Massimo Banzi
Cofounder, Arduino, Lugano
The co-creator of Arduino remains one of the most influential people in the maker movement. At the last Maker Faire Rome, he announced Intel Galileo, an Arduino board based on Intel's architecture. In 2013, he also introduced Arduino Robot, a programmable bot on wheels.
86: Ciaran O'Leary
Partner, Earlybird Venture Capital, Berlin
Although born in Ireland, O'Leary has spent most of his professional life in Germany -- hence his fondness for Bayern Munich. At Earlybird he has also become one of Berlin's most active investors, with stakes in hot properties such as THE Football App, EyeEm and Wunderlist.
87: Par-Jorgen Parson
Partner, Northzone Capital, Stockholm
Parson is the rock start of Swedish venture capital -- and not just for the title of the book he co-wrote, Heavy Metal Management. He was named Investor Of The Year at Investor Allstars 2013, and his greatest hits include early-stage rounds in Spotify (he is also a board member), Avito and iZettle.
88: Misha Lyalin
Chairman/CEO Zeptolab, Moscow
Zeptolab is behind the popular Cut the Rope games, a YouTube channel with more than 100 million views, a TV programme and a line of toys. Layalin is also a partner at Kite Ventures, where he invests in consumer internet startups and is on the board of several gaming and e-commerce companies.
89: Sampo Karjalainen
Founder, Protogeo, Helsinki
Habbo Hotel, which launched in 2000m was one of the earliest -- and most successful -- virtual worlds created for kids.
Karjalainen, its Finnish cofounder, left Habbo to found ProtoGeo, the developer behind fitness-tracking app Moves, which Apple described as the "surprise hit" of 2013.
90: Mattias Miksche
Cofounder, Stardoll, Stockholm
Miksche's influence doesn't just come from Stardoll, his virtual world that has more than 200 million users across the world -- it's his his links to so many of its star employees: Daniel Ek is a former CTO, and senior executives at Tumblr, Wrapp, Tictail and ShapeUp Club have all passed through its doors.
91: Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe
Co-CEOs, SAP, Walldorf
Enterprise software isn't the sexiest, but Walldorf-based SAP is the third-largest pure software company in the world. McDermott and Hagemann Snabe have been making inroads into Silicon Valley, spending $12bn since 2010 on acquiring big companies and $700m on startups.
92: Samir Desai, James Meekings and Andrew Mullinger
Cofounders, Funding Circle, London
Funding Circle has lent more than £206m to small businesses since launching in 2010. Last October following a £23m funding round led by Accel Partners, the P2P lender merged with US-based Endurance Lending Network.
93:Government Communications Headquarters
Cloud Storage, Cheltenham
[REDACTED] When Snowden's allegations surfaced, it became clear that British spooks were monitoring our telecommunications. [/REDACTED] GCHQ plays a major role in making our cyber connections safe, using its expertise and experience.
94: Jean-Baptiste Rudelle
Cofounder and CEO, Criteo, Paris
Rudelle's targeted-advertising firm Criteo went public in October. The company was the first French IPO on the NASDAQ since 2011, and had a valuation of $2bn. Because he is a market leader in one of tech's most crowded sectors, his influence is now both symbolic and financial.
95: Peter Weijmarshausen
CEO and Cofounder, Shapeways, New York
Weijmarshausen's mission is to bring 3D printing to the masses.
The Dutchman recently doubled the number of 3D printers in its New York-based Shapeways factory, on the back of a $30m Series C round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz in April 2013.
96: Tom Hulme
Design Director, Ideo, London
Hulme runs OpenIDEO -- the socially focused online community for designers he founded three years ago. Besides being a Davos Young Global Leader and prolific conference speaker, he is an active angel investor, with stakes in YPlan, GoCardless and Massive Health, among others.
97: Zaryn Dentzel
Cofounder and CEO, Tuenti, Madrid
An American living in Madrid, the 30-year-old oversaw the €70m sale of Tuenti, the social network he cofounded, to Telefonica in 2010, but continues to innovate as its chief executive. The site recently launched its own mobile network which includes free calls and data for Tuenti users.
98: Lars Hinrichs
Investor and Entrepreneur, Hamburg
After founding and exiting XING, Germany's equivalent of LinkedIn, Hinrichs launched HackFwd, a Hamburg based accelerator fund. Last September he closed HackFwd with a much-admired open letter about his errors. He's now investing via Cinco Capital -- and has Angela Merkel's ear.
99: Renaud Visage
Cofounder and Chief Technical Officer, Eventbrite, Paris
Ticketing site Eventbrite passed £1.2bn in gross sales in 2013.
Visage's job is to keep the company expanding globally; recent acquisitions of Latin American rival Eventioz and UK-based Lanyrd -- paid for with another £37m investment round -- are just the start.
100: Mike Butcher
Journalist, TechCrunch, London
A write-up from Butcher -- editor-at-large of TechCrunch Europe -- can get a startup noticed. TechHub, the London startup space he cofounded, has developed into an international network --launching in Bucharest and Berlin. In 2013, TechCrunch launched its Disrupt Europe conference -- also in Berlin.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
