She bought a Wi-Fi company with a search fund and turned it into the infrastructure behind a hundred thousand hotel check-ins a day.
"It always works out in the end. And so if it's not working out, it's not the end."
- Hannah GreenbergLong before most guests notice the Wi-Fi signal bar filling up on their phone screen, Eleven Software has already authenticated them, pulled their loyalty profile, and routed their data through a cloud stack running across 140 countries. Hannah Greenberg runs that stack.
She did not stumble into this role. She built a search fund - Ven Capital Partners - with the deliberate thesis of acquiring a SaaS business in the hotel vertical. In April 2022, she closed on Eleven Software and became its CEO. Eighteen months later, she acquired Eleven's largest European rival, UK-based Airangel, and merged the two into the world's leading cloud Wi-Fi authentication company for hospitality.
"By combining the strengths of both teams, we are forging an unbeatable force in the market."- Hannah Greenberg, on the Airangel acquisition
Eleven Software's platform - called ElevenOS - sits quietly in the background of check-ins at Hilton, Marriott, Accor, Wyndham, Minor Hotels, and Kempinski. It processes 575 million authentications every month. Guests rarely think about it. That is the point. The best infrastructure is invisible.
Greenberg has been running a business since she was ten years old. That first venture was a neighborhood gift-wrapping service - small stakes, early lessons. She studied at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, one of the most demanding hospitality programs in the world, and emerged with the vocabulary of operators and developers.
Her first job took her to PwC's hotel real estate consulting practice from 2011 to 2013, working on large-scale hospitality and strategy engagements. Then Seaview Investors, a Southern California development firm, where she spent the better part of a decade as Vice President of Development. Her portfolio: approximately $1 billion in hotel and multifamily construction across California.
She knew what a hotel needed before she ever learned what a SaaS multiple meant.
In 2019, Greenberg enrolled at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business for her MBA. The two years there shifted her frame. She discovered the search fund model - a structure where an entrepreneur raises money to acquire and run a single company - and recognized it as the ideal vehicle for her combination of operator instincts and investment thinking.
"What's the worst thing that could happen?" - her mental filter for risk assessment. She asked it when she left a successful private equity career to pursue the MBA and search fund. The answer was never as bad as the question implied.
Hannah Greenberg's approach to career riskShe graduated in 2021 and launched Ven Capital Partners. The thesis was specific: find a SaaS business in the hotel vertical with real customers, proven technology, and room to grow under the right operator. She found Eleven Software, which had been quietly serving the hospitality industry since 2002 - before Wi-Fi became the first question at every hotel front desk.
In June 2023, fourteen months after taking the CEO chair, Greenberg closed the acquisition of Airangel - Eleven's most significant European competitor. The combined entity suddenly operated in 145+ countries with customers across every major global hotel brand. Dean Wilkinson, Airangel's former CEO, said the deal positioned the unified company for "greater achievements" and genuine industry transformation.
It was not a bet on hockey-stick growth metrics. It was a bet on infrastructure dominance. When a hotel brand in Singapore, a resort in Morocco, and an apartment complex in Chicago all need to manage guest Wi-Fi from a single dashboard - Eleven's answer is ElevenOS.
Greenberg is as intentional about how she runs her own day as she is about the technology stack. She goes to bed at 8:30 PM. She wakes at 4 AM. She works out most mornings at 5 AM before the calendar fills up. She keeps an identical pre-packed suitcase to cut decision fatigue on frequent travel. She blocks family priorities on her calendar before anything else gets scheduled.
Her own words make the philosophy precise: "It is unfair to blame my job for my poor performance at home." The insight cuts both ways - she applies the same ownership mentality to her personal life that she does to her company's operations.
When asked to name three words that describe her at her best, she offers: authentic, optimistic, curious. The optimism she treats as an obligation. "I need to be optimistic so that my team is optimistic so that our company is optimistic." At a company serving 10 billion logins a year, attitude has leverage.
She is an adjunct faculty member at UC Berkeley Haas. She holds Friday office hours open to MBA students pursuing search funds and CEO paths - giving away what took her years to learn. She is a board member of the YPO Orange County chapter, co-chair of the Vendor Subcommittee for HTNG's Global Technology 100 (T100), and a mentor through the AHLA Foundation.
Both she and Eleven's President Alex Lopez hold Haas MBAs - a rare dual-Berkeley leadership pair inside a company that predates the smartphone. The contrast is part of what makes Eleven unusual: decades of hospitality-industry trust, combined with a leadership team built for what comes next.
Eleven Software's ElevenOS now integrates with property management systems, CRM and loyalty platforms, and IoT device networks. Revenue generation through tiered Wi-Fi access is part of the product roadmap. The platform's 99.99% uptime claim is not a marketing figure - it is a contractual commitment to hotel operators whose guests will tweet about slow Wi-Fi before they tweet about anything else.
Greenberg's aspiration is direct: make Eleven the definitive global platform for hotel and multifamily Wi-Fi management - simplifying connectivity at scale while turning guest Wi-Fi into a revenue and loyalty driver. The infrastructure play is already in place. The product layer is being built on top of it.
She was running a business at ten. She has not stopped.
"It always works out in the end. And so if it's not working out, it's not the end."
- Hannah Greenberg / Hospitality Podcast, 2024"I need to be optimistic so that my team is optimistic so that our company is optimistic."
- Hannah Greenberg / Leadership philosophy"By combining the strengths of both teams, we are forging an unbeatable force in the market."
- Hannah Greenberg / Airangel acquisition announcement, 2023"It is unfair to blame my job for my poor performance at home."
- Hannah Greenberg / Work-life integration philosophyFounded Ven Capital Partners and acquired Eleven Software in April 2022 through a self-directed search fund - a rare, methodical path to the CEO chair.
Led the acquisition of Eleven's largest European competitor, expanding to 145+ countries and cementing global market leadership in hospitality Wi-Fi.
Oversaw approximately $1 billion in hotel and multifamily development as VP of Development at Seaview Investors over eight years.
Teaches at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business - the same program that gave her the tools to build her search fund.
Co-chairs the Vendor Subcommittee for HTNG's Global Technology 100, shaping hospitality technology standards at the industry level.
Board member of Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) Orange County Chapter - a global network of chief executives.
She ran her first business at age 10 - a neighborhood gift-wrapping service. The customer service instinct started early.
Her bedtime is 8:30 PM. She wakes at 4 AM and is usually working out by 5 AM. The discipline that runs a global tech company starts before sunrise.
Both she and Eleven's President Alex Lopez have Haas MBAs. Two Berkeley graduates running a company that's been in hotels since the dial-up era.
She keeps an identical pre-packed suitcase ready to go. Interchangeable outfits, pre-filled toiletries. Travel friction is a solved problem.
When her preferred investor passed on her search fund, she sent quarterly updates anyway - and the investor later said turning her down was a mistake. She kept the relationship alive and let results do the convincing.