Jakob Dardari talks Starting a Company, Goals and more

Jakob Dardari is a 20 year old CEO and music enthusiast. He is based out of Denmark. Back in 2020 he started his own marketing agency “Marked-It”. Since then he and his team have grown multiple social media accounts, which currently has a joint following of around 400,000+. Jakob also has a clothing line called “Culture Of Wear”.

Now let’s take a look into the questions we asked him – 

What got you into the music industry/music?

“Thank you so much for having me!

Well it’s very hard to point at a specific episode in my life that really got me into hip hop. When I was a kid, like 7-8 years old I would bump Lil Jon in the classroom speakers when the teacher went out of the room during the breaks haha. I think it naturally resonated with me, appealed to me in a way where I was moved – and being moved by something in such a young age really makes it stick to you for the rest of your life.

But I do remember one episode that particularly stands out in my memory. I was in the car with my big brother, Said, and he said something like: “have you ever heard of Nas?” And then he put on ‘Life’s A b*tch’ from the Illmatic album. That joint really caught my attention like nothing else, and from that day, must’ve been when I was 14, I fell in love with real hip hop. 

Fast forward to high school, late 2017, my passion for hip hop gradually grew more and more. I started posting hip hop content on my private Instagram account. But I was noticing that my own friends were unfollowing me. I wanted to continue to post, but I didn’t wanna post on my private account anymore. This is where it all started – I created @cultureofhop.”

What is the goal you want to accomplish with your platform?

“The goal I want to accomplish? Well, in the beginning there was no goals, no intentions, no business models and nothing like that. I did what I did with cultureofhop because I loved it with all my heart. Today I still love it, obviously, but as you grow into becoming the largest rap page in Scandinavia, and one of the biggest rap pages in the whole world, it turns into a business you can monetize and profit on. To answer the question specifically, the goal is to keep growing and stay on the top of the social media game. But alongside my pages, cultureofhop, cultureofculture and onlyhotbars, I also have my marketing agency. I want to use my pages as stepping stones to get into the real marketing field, where the real money is made. It’s a whole strategy that I’ve worked and reflected on for a long long time.”

When & why did you start “Marked-It”?

“I officially started my company Marked-It in 2020 when I realized that It would be easier for me to put all my pages, my YouTube channel, CultureOfMusic, under one single company. I was/am profiting a decent amount of money every month, which is why I felt it to be obligatory to create a company where everything falls under that. Marked-It is many things though – right now it’s centralized around my social media platforms, but I have big plans for the company in the future – I’m planning to scale it once I finish my masters in Business and Marketing.”

What are all the pages you manage and/or own?

“First of all, cultureofhop is the main page. In 2019 I decided to create a second page called cultureofculture with the help of my friends Alaa and Avinash, who made it possible for cultureofculture to be as big as it is today – without them it wouldn’t have worked. Today I have employees. A graphic team and a social media management team. These run both cultureofculture and onlyhotbars, while I run my YouTube channel (Culture Of Music) with 75k subscribers alone.”