Founders Stories: Meet the couple rebuilding the future of urban living
Welcome to the first edition of Founders Stories, where we sit down with our portfolio co-founders to talk why, how and what they’re building!
Ritu Jain and Sune Theodorsen are the co-founders of LifeX — a hyggeligt co-living community for people relocating to a new city for work.
The [now] husband and wife team met working in product at Tradeshift in San Francisco, moving to Sune’s hometown Copenhagen a few years ago.
LifeX started out as a side project for the pair, who had meanwhile moved on to become head of product at Peakon and Airtame respectively, and who had both founded their own companies before.
They know first-hand how hard moving to a new city is. Instead of getting excited about a new job, colleagues and the local attractions, the reality tends to be a nightmare carousel of house hunting, paperwork and lonely evenings. They decided they wanted to build the kind of home they wish they’d found when they were looking.
Since quitting their jobs and launching their first apartment ‘City Hall’ in Copenhagen last summer, the LifeX network of apartments is steadily flourishing across the city. Their small but mighty team opened their first apartments in Berlin this summer and with demand flooding in from all over, the rest of Europe isn’t far behind.
Watch our interview here or read the transcript below as we discuss why relocation is still so tough, dig into global workforce mobility trends versus the housing squeeze and find out what it’s like literally living inside your product.
About us
Founders is a startup studio. Together with exceptional entrepreneurs we build products and companies that radically improve how people and organisations work. Our portfolio includes Pleo, Duuoo, Kontist, Son of a Tailor, Maguru, LifeX, Reach, Wonderwerk, Headlight & Donna.
But enough about us, back to the story! 😉
Q&A with Sune & Ritu
Let’s start with who are you guys and what are you doing here?
Ritu: My name is Ritu Jain. I am an American. I moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, two and a half years ago. Prior to that I had a company in the US. I had been in the product world for the last 5 -7 years, and was Head of Product at Peakon. Prior to that I was at Tradeshift.
Sune: I am Danish, and I also come from product actually — from industrial design. I started my own company right after university. I did that for six years, a lot of learnings. Then I worked with product at Tradeshift. That took me to San Francisco which is actually the reason we’re sitting here, that was my first experience relocating to a new country. Then coming back to Denmark with Ritu, getting settled, again that was kind of the reason why. I was also at Airtame before we ended up here.
If you could describe Life X in one sentence, how would you do it?
Ritu: At Life X we help people settle into any city, as easily as possible.
Tell us a bit about the product
Sune: We help people settle into a new city. We help with the whole process from all the paperwork you need to get done, to the practical work with getting your bank account, to your social security [CPR] number, all the registrations etc. and then we have amazing co-living homes. We saw from our own experience settling into a new city that network becomes your biggest challenge very quickly. Co-living homes are an ideal place to build a network very quickly and it’s all serviced and all furnished so it’s easy to move into.
Ritu: You basically just come with a suitcase and it’s home for you. With people and friends you can make from day one in a new city.
Could you talk a little bit about the pain point that you’re solving for your users?
Ritu: When you think about re-location today, it’s really difficult. It’s easy to travel all around the world — there’s so much information you can find about other cities, but moving is still cumbersome. At the same time, more and more people are actually moving to cities all over the world. The population in urban areas is up to 70% in some cities and is projected to grow another few percent in 20 years, so that’s the biggest challenge we are solving — figuring out what happens to the future of living in urban cities and as people relocate to them.
Why is this a problem that you personally want to solve? Why do you care about it?
Ritu: I moved to Copenhagen two and a half years ago when I had the opportunity to move here for my job, thinking how hard could it be? But then I realised that there is a lot of bureaucracy involved in moving, a lot of paperwork you need to do, bank accounts and taxes to sort. I didn’t feel settled for a good six months. And it took a lot of my work time to get things set up.
It is hard to meet people the first few months when you’re so busy at work and you don’t necessarily have time to go to the bars or different events to meet people. I always wished that I could come home and that there were people for me to just talk to. So that’s the biggest reason why we are solving this problem. We are building something that we ourselves wanted.
Sune: We both live at LifeX. From the beginning we wanted to build a product that we would use ourselves and the best way to validate that is to live there. It’s really fun and a great learning experience for us to live there and sort of experience it and meet a bunch of people.
What makes LifeX a special place to work?
Sune: One thing is that it’s a very tangible product, you can go to our apartments, we have a very close relationship with all our members and all our users. It’s super nice that you get that instant feedback — you feel that you’re making a difference in people’s lives. People are so happy because you’re taking away a lot of stress from their lives. You’re also bringing them new friends, right, so getting the big reward I think is really seeing our members in person.
Ritu: I would also say that it’s teamwork, I mean for us as a small team, everybody helps each other out quite a bit. Each of us wear big responsibilities and hats, but are basically not afraid to jump into other areas. It makes it super fun if you have something that’s actually a physical product and then has a software component to it, it makes it a lot more exciting to switch hats and do those things.
Could you talk a little bit about the 3 biggest forces affecting your industry right now?
Sune: One of the biggest trends affecting us now is that global mobility is increasing a lot. It’s becoming increasingly common for young people to move around the world with their job. And it’s not only C-level people, you see this in all sorts of positions.
The other thing we see is that people start to value time and experiences over buying items and physical products.
I think the whole thing about serviced living is also something that’s really happening right now. It frees up a lot of time when you have people taking care of you.
The big surge to the cities is another trend we see right now. How do we have enough space in the cities, how do we best utilise the space that we have?
Ritu: I guess the last thing is also the fact that even though there’s a huge surge in social media consumption, people are feeling lonelier. There’s a lack of human connection. People are seeking more and more of the in-person connection.
Want to meet more of our co-founders? Head on over to our Founders Family Stories section. Want to become one of our co-founders or join the team in another position? Here’s what you need to know.
You can see some more of Kelley Hudson’s beautiful photographs of LifeX daily life, apartments, events and celebrations over on her website https://studiosequoia.shootproof.com and follow her work on instagram here!
Camera work and editing by Jonas Smidt Mogensen!
LifeX
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