Cristian David Álvarez Martínez
Founder & CEO of Sleem
Cris DAM — Technologist and musician — builds by understanding first.
Born in Medellín, November 18, 1998. I come with one trait that defines everything: I cannot do something without understanding how it works. At seven, what drew me was deciphering, not consuming. YouTube, forums, documentation. HTML, WordPress. My family moved city to city — best school ever for adaptation.
Music hit at 10 and never left. Produced, mixed, launched with Shennay — crossed a million streams organically. Also lived the dark side: no registrations, no correct collections, contracts that buried me. Expensive lesson. Same systemic failures that hurt me as an artist became, years later, the seed of Sleem.
Co-founded Qué Código at 17 with Edinson. Started in a living room, ended building bank-grade infrastructure. Learned how to make third-party businesses work. Learned how companies really move. But I wanted to build mine.
Loro Musical was next — COO role, and there I saw systemic distribution failures from inside: chaotic reporting, royalties that never came, zero transparency. Exactly what had hurt me before, now from the operator side. Designed the core of what became Sleem.
Registered Sleem August 2023. Objective unchanged: artists stop being productized and build real businesses. Transparency. Technology. Human team. Those three pillars. I operate between Spain and Medellín. Still make music as Cris DAM — music is how people process.
