The COVID-19 crisis has required founders to make tough decisions, fast. Lots haven’t been able to pull it off, with their businesses still struggling or even heading into bankruptcy. Others have combined resiliency with flexibility, their companies emerging stronger than ever.

Hospitable.com’s Pierre-Camille Hamana is clearly in the latter group.

But not because it’s been easy. As the leader of a company providing a SaaS for short-term property rentals, 2020’s global lockdowns were a vital threat.

“We feared everything would crash. We lost 50% of our revenue in 3 months, and negotiated with everyone to avoid any cash flow problems. But we also discovered that our business is very resilient — it was 3 months down, 3 or 4 months getting back up, and we were back on track.”

That recovery was hard-earned, however.

“Our B2B customers disappeared. Property management companies went bankrupt, they lost all their property owners since the assets were empty. But the property owners still owned the properties and wanted to maximize their revenues. We realized we had to become a B2C SaaS.”

With their new target customers being individuals already holding rental property investments, Pierre-Camille immediately saw that community capital could become powerful fuel for the company’s flywheel.