Desmond Lim is CEO and co-founder of Workstream, a hiring automation platform for hourly workers, which helps companies to hire hourly workers faster using texting, AI and automation. Desmond is a former restaurant owner, who saw the challenge of hiring hourly workers before starting Workstream.
Previously, Desmond was a Product Manager with WeChat, a mobile app with over 1 billion monthly active users, based out of New York City. He was also an Investor with Dorm Room Fund, a venture capital fund focused on investing into student-run startups, and backed by First Round Capital, which has invested in companies like Uber, Warby Parker, HotelTonight, and more. Before that, he worked in Investment Banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.He started his first business at age 17, a tutor matching platform, which he founded to pay for college. In addition, he founded a Thai food restaurant in his freshman year in college which he ended up selling before graduation. Following this, he founded several technology startups, that have been incubated into the Harvard Innovation Lab and featured in TechCrunch, Yahoo Finance, Tech in Asia, and more.
Desmond has written for TechCrunch, Huffington Post and Entrepreneur.com, and is an active angel investor in startups including Atrium, Jetpack, and more. Desmond represented Singapore in the National Basketball Youth Team in the South East Asian Games, and was an Infantry Officer in the army.
He graduated from Harvard University with a Masters in Public Policy, conducted research at MIT Media Lab on product design, and was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Stanford Business School’s Venture Studio.