Sven Hans Martin Lorentzon (pronounced [ˈmǎʈːɪn ˈlôːrɛnˌsɔn]; born 1 April 1969) is a Swedish entrepreneur and co-founder of Tradedoubler and Spotify.
Since April 2019, he has been an expert on Sweden's immigrants' integration issues for the Moderate Party commission New Swedish Model.
Lorentzon was born on 1 April 1969 in the south of Sweden in the village of Åsenhöga, in the Gnosjö region of Småland province.
As a student at the Särlaskolan primary school in Borås, Lorentzon told classmates that he wanted to sell one matchbox to every Chinese person and become a billionaire.
Ek and Lorentzon quickly became friends, finding that they had common experiences of depression because of unexpected wealth and a lack of purpose.
Spotify was started as a music streaming service earning its profits from online advertising, a business that they both knew very well.
[23] In 2014, Lorentzon was named International Swede of the Year,[24] and in 2015, he was awarded the Affärsbragden (The Business Achievement) from the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.
[26][27] Lorentzon and his fellow Spotify cofounder Ek have advocated for lowering taxes in Sweden, which are some of the highest in the world, and for less restrictive permitting policies.
[28] They asserted that high taxes on stock options in Sweden make it difficult to incentivize programmers to work at startups while competing with larger companies on salary.