Lorimer Jenkins Built His Own Route Into Silicon Valley

Lorimer Jenkins did not arrive in tech through the usual door.

He grew up in Baldock, Hertfordshire, and trained in performing arts at Emil Dale Academy. At seventeen, his life looked headed toward a stage, not a startup. Then the COVID lockdowns hit, and the world shrank to a screen. He started teaching himself to code with no formal technical education and no network that could make introductions for him.

“I did not have a degree to lean on,” Jenkins says. “I had time, curiosity, and a decision to stop waiting for permission.”

The way he tells it, learning to code was not a pivot driven by trends. It was a response to a practical problem. He wanted access to an industry where opportunity concentrates fast, and he knew nobody was going to hand him a map.

“I realized talent is not the rare part,” he says. “The rare part is being able to get in the room.”

He started doing work that built credibility in public. He took unpaid internships in venture capital and used the kind of persistence that looks embarrassing to people who already have connections. He describes it as “cold” building a network one conversation at a time.

“You can be proud or you can be effective,” he says. “I chose effective.”

That early grind pushed him toward Web3 infrastructure, where open-source work and early contributions can still outrun pedigree. He built his way deeper into the ecosystem and did not wait until he felt ready.

He co-founded LiquidOps, described as the first DeFi lending protocol built on Arweave’s AO network, and raised $325,000 in pre-seed funding from US investors before the age of nineteen.

“Raising money that young does not happen because you are loud,” he says. “It happens because you show proof that you can execute.”

He also founded Othent, a Web3 authentication protocol adopted across the Arweave ecosystem. He describes that kind of work as building the plumbing, not the poster.

“Most of what matters in tech is invisible,” he says. “It is the infrastructure that makes everything else possible.”

By his early twenties, he had something that looked like momentum from the outside. The inside story still felt like constraint. The more he learned, the clearer the structural problem became.

A deep pool of founders and operators in the UK and Europe have the ability to build venture-scale companies. Many still struggle to access the network and capital concentration that sits in Silicon Valley. Jenkins had lived that problem personally. He decided to build a business around solving it.

Pierbridge is that business. Jenkins founded and scaled it as a firm with two arms. One is commission-based and focuses on talent and deal scouting that connects ambitious entrepreneurs and operators from the UK and Europe into the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem. The other is equity-based and focuses on acquiring, rebuilding, and selling companies.

He calls it a dual mandate, but the philosophy underneath it is consistent. He wants to make access repeatable.

“Access should not be a lottery ticket,” he says. “It should be a system.”

The way he describes Pierbridge is not as a networking service. He says it is infrastructure for people who do not have the usual lineage.

“Warm introductions are a currency,” he says. “If you grew up outside the system, you start with none of it.”

His own path explains why he speaks about this with intensity. Venture and tech often run on institutional pedigree and inherited credibility. Jenkins had neither. He built his credibility through output, persistence, and visible work.

He also had to handle complexity that most founders do not face so early. He describes managing regulatory, legal, tax, and structural challenges across the UK and US as a constant pressure, especially as a sole founder in his early twenties.

“You learn quickly that building the company is only part of the job,” he says. “The structure around it can slow you down or protect you.”

Jenkins does not present himself as a motivational figure. He prefers the posture of an operator who has earned his place. He calls his story one of radical self-determination. Geography, background, and credentials did not disappear as obstacles. He just refused to accept them as the final answer.

“The mold is real,” he says. “The mistake is believing you have to fit it.”

His advice to young entrepreneurs is practical and demanding. He believes access is solvable, but it requires more effort than talent alone. He tells founders to build in public, document their work obsessively, and treat every contribution as evidence of credibility.

“People think credibility is a vibe,” he says. “It is a trail of receipts.”

Looking ahead, Jenkins intends to relocate Pierbridge’s operational base to San Francisco while maintaining his current Delaware entity structure. His long-term goal is for Pierbridge to become an institution, the definitive bridge between European entrepreneurial talent and US venture capital, not just a small firm with a good story.

“I am not building for attention,” he says. “I am building for permanence.”

For now, his focus stays on the same problem he started with during lockdown, before the money, before the titles, before anyone knew his name. How do you make a path when you were not given one.

“I want the next founder to spend less time knocking on closed doors,” Jenkins says. “Not because it is easier, but because they deserve a fair shot.”