Worktream co-founder and CEO Desmond Lim.
Courtesy of Desmond Lim
Desmond Lim is no stranger to hard work.
When he was seven years old, he fell in love with basketball, but when his family couldn’t afford his own ball, he came up with the money himself.
“Money is always tight,” Lin told CNBC did it. “My parents were both young workers. My father was a driver. My mom was a cleaner.”
“I chose a free sport so I could play whatever day I wanted,” Lin said. “I saved 60 days without lunch and had enough money to buy the ball. Then, I grabbed it I played with that orange rubber ball for five years every day until I was bald.”
This attitude serves him in life. Today, the 39-year-old boy is co-founder and CEO WorkflowHR, payroll and recruitment platforms provide hourly labor. To date, the company has raised about $120 million.
A humble beginning
Lin was born and raised in Singapore and was the first person in his family to attend college. Lin said that from selling eggs at local markets to driving trucks, most of his extended family, including his parents, are still hourly workers.
“(My parents) are only in the fourth grade,” he said. “My father got up at 5 a.m. every morning, he goes home for seven, he works six and a half days a week. He eats lunch almost non-stop.”
Workstream co-founder and CEO Desmond Lim with his parents.
Courtesy of Desmond Lim
Lin saw the perseverance and work ethics his parents possessed and applied these traits to his own life. In high schoOL, not only is he a top student, but he also leads the school’s basketball team as captain, winning national competitions.
He said: “When we won the high school championship, I was the captain who carried our school flag and ran around the school because the school cheered for our victory…I think that moment changed my life. ” “Sports tell me that you need time, patience and a bunch of people to build something great.”
In high school, Lin was also selected to play basketball for the Singapore National Youth Team. It was soon known that he had pork ribs to enter top universities, but his family had no means to support his education.
Desmond Lim is with his basketball team in Singapore.
Courtesy of Desmond Lim
Lin said: “My mom told me: ‘I can’t pay for your college. You shouldn’t go to college. You should go to work.’ “It made me figure out how to go to college by myself. ‘”
Ultimately, Lin’s entrepreneurial journey was born out of demand. He said he started his business since he was a child so that he could afford the tuition.
In addition to focusing on study and basketball, Lin also started his own tutoring business in high school. He said that in two years, the business brought in about $100,000 in revenue, enough to cover his college education.
That tutoring company was just the first of several businesses that Lin started.
Similarly, while studying at Singapore Management University, Lin turned his attention to a new goal – he wanted to move to the United States to earn his master’s degree. To save money, he started and started another business – Thai Food Dining room – Still working hard to complete the degree.
After graduating from college in 2010, Lim worked in investment banking for several years before moving to the United States to earn his master’s degree from Harvard University in July 2013.
“I’m very hungry”
While at Harvard, Lin made a framework for building his own tech startup.
He said: “When I was at Harvard, I felt like I was drinking at a firefighter.
In his first year at Harvard, Lim Cold emailed about 50 startups in the San Francisco Bay Area, hoping to gain some entrepreneurial experience. That winter vacation, he flew to California, where he slept on his friend’s couch and worked for free at an educational technology startup.
Desmond Lim was with his Harvard classmate.
Provided by Demond Lim
“I worked for WeChat again for the second summer… before they turned me into a full-time position. So, I was very eager to learn all about startups and company building,” Lin said.
In 2016, Lin sat in a friend’s class at Stanford Business School, titled “Start the garage. ”
“This is a company that comes out of companies like Doordash and Sofi,” he said. “Our job is to go out and talk to business owners, so we talked to hundreds of business owners around Palo Alto and we heard about the pain points. ”
One of the businesses they talk to is Coupa Cafe, a family-owned café chain with stores around Stanford and Palo Alto. It was during this conversation that Lin discovered the idea of Workstream.
He found that the company didn’t have the right tools to properly manage its hourly workforce. Lin said they are using seven different tools, including Google Drive, just writing things manually with pen and paper.
“I (think) that’s so much work. We can definitely do better for them,” he said. “So, I think that was the moment, plus my experience in running my own restaurant, plus the My parents were both young people.”
Desmond Lim is with his co-founders Lei Xu and Max Wang.
Courtesy of Desmond Lim
After completing a graduate program at Harvard University, Lin moved to the Bay Area in 2016 and co-founded Workstream with Lei Xu and Max Wang in September 2017.
Three months later, on January 4, 2018, Workstream had its first paid customer – Coupa Cafe paid Lim and his co-founder $100.
Build a workflow
The early stages of the workflow involved a lot of door knocks.
“It’s funny…(I’m) selling the door to the door with some help from Max and Ray. So we’re just three immigrants on Palo Alto Street, trying to knock on the door and talk to people. It’s a There is something interesting (and) we learned a lot,” Lin said.
Desmond Lim and Workstream’s first investor Eric Yuan.
Courtesy of Desmond Lim
The company’s first investment was a $25,000 check written by Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom.
“I first contacted Eric about 9 to 10 years ago when I went to the valley…I thought it was a cold email() I said ‘Hey, I can be at lunch Meet you as a companion to the founder of immigration? ‘” Lin said. Yuan said yes, they started a pleasant hour conversation at lunch.
From there, the two lived for about a decade, and when Lin reached out to get funding for his company, the Zoom founder quickly became the first supporter of Workstream.
Lin said: “He didn’t even ask me what I was going to build. I said I was going to build a platform for the hourly space and he was like, ‘Okay, I believe you.’ “Since then, (the Yuan) is actually in every single one It doubled in the round. Over the past seven years, he has invested more than seven figures in the company. ”
Desmond Lim joins Workstream team members in 2024.
Courtesy of Desmond Lim
Today, Workstream is an all-in-one HR and payroll software built for hourly companies.
“Our company’s purpose is: ‘No desktop is worth better.’ We believe that the hourly economy is insufficient.
“There are a lot of tools for payroll, but it’s all built for people who work in technology, in offices (or people who work on desktop first,” Lin said. “So what we’re building is a mobile-first, AI Driven software that helps (hours companies) payrolls in the same location, HR, to help them save money and time.”
Workstream’s customers include brands such as Burger King and Dunkin’Donuts. The company’s supporters include Golden House, the founders’ foundation of Peter Thiel and Ken Howery, Jay-Z and Doordash Tony Xu.
What is more important than hard work?
Lin has a strong work ethic very early on. He was inspired to watch his parents and family busy with hours of worker making a living, but he said it might be more important.
“Really try to explore and figure out what you really want to do. Sometimes, I feel that making the right choice is more important than trying to work very hard,” he said.
“I think one thing I did when I was a kid was that I talked to a lot of people,” Lin said. “I was really curious, I would write to professors at the school, I would write to the founders. I just looked up to me.” The people had an information chat for 20 minutes, and it took 10 minutes in total.”
“I just really want to learn from people and I think it really helps me shape my mindset and what I think today,” he said.
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