Underdog Founders - Lynn, CEO @ Pivt
We're bringing entrepreneurship back to its roots - less Patagonia vests, more bold founders that don't give up until they win.
Welcome to our first Underdog Founder story on Substack.
I interview founders winning against all odds.
Then I write down their journey so we can learn from it.
“Cute name and all - but what the hell is an Underdog Founder?”
Gosh, I’m so glad you asked.
You need to tick 4 boxes to meet our criteria:
1-No big prior exit.
2-New to the market you are trying to disrupt.
3-You got rejected by a bunch of clients and VCs.
4-You didn’t give up and found product-market fit.
But enough about me - let’s talk about Lynn.
How hard can it be to build a business helping people relocate to a new city?
Lynn built Pivt because she had a life-changing opportunity after moving to London, and wanted to help others find their own and land on their feet.
She grew up playing a ton of sports and dove into college soccer in Pennsylvania.
It shaped her foundations on teamwork, adversity and hard work.
3 weeks before graduation, Lynn lands a job at Bloomberg in London.
Moving to London was exciting, but as a 21-yo who knew no one there, Lynn struggled to open a bank account, meet people, the whole shebang.
She was struck by two questions:
“How does everyone do this?”
“If it’s hard for me, how do non-English natives get by?”
As she shared her experience, she saw most expats faced the same problem, and got her first glimpse of a potential market.
Pivt’s 1st follower was a close one - Lynn reached out to her brother and invited him to be her co-founder.
Being 5h apart between NY and London didn’t hold them back.
Building Pivt on top of a full time job quickly taught Lynn “there are more hard days than easy days”.
Driven by passion, she worked nights and weekends.
Their first targets were international students and Pivt launched as a consumer app.
They got traction while bootstrapped, and one day, HSBC reached out and asked point-blank:
“Can you build this for our employees?”
Turns out that despite the high price tag, corporate relocations fail all the time. 1 out of 3 times the employee and their family ends up moving back or quitting their job.
Pivt was used by students, backpackers and expats - this was a chance to focus on a clear segment.
Things were promising, until they weren’t:
“My brother got an offer he couldn’t say no to - and I found myself running Pivt as a solo founder before our product was ready to ship.”
“We worked with HSBC’s relocation management company for 18 months, were ready to sign, and then their newly arrived Head of Digital scrapped the project.”
The future looked bleak.
But the need was validated - there was a 100% chance that other companies felt the same pain.
As covid hit, employee wellbeing became top priority and people started relocating more since they didn't need to be in the office.
Headwinds turned to tailwinds.
Today, Pivt is trusted by employees from firms like Amazon, helping global companies move its workforce around the world. They expect +2 million in revenue in 2023.
Because Lynn is solving a problem she knows well, and didn’t give up after losing her co-founder or her biggest client.
Lynn is now helping cities looking to incentivize people to move there and grow the local economy.
If you know companies or cities that could use help, tag leaders below.
Pivt is also hiring and closing a funding round.
Great companies are built through intrinsic motivation, not money grabs.
Underdog Founders - Lynn Greenberg from Pivt Enterprise.
Ride on