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Todd Pedersen: An American Entrepreneurial Success Story

Todd Pedersen, founder and CEO of Vivint Inc, personifies the entrepreneurial spirit. Starting from humble beginnings, Pedersen now runs a multi-billion dollar company with more than 11,000 employees. He has lived a true American success story that can serve as an inspiration to anyone wishing to make significant achievements in the business world.

Todd Pedersen grew up in Idaho Falls, Idaho as the fourth of eleven children. By the time he was 13, he had his first job — as a city employee mowing lawns for the cemetery. An unusual job for someone still in junior high school, but a good training ground for a budding entrepreneur, as it helped him develop the kind of discipline and willingness to work hard that would serve him well later on.

More practical lessons came from his two-year mission for his church, which involved going door to door every day, talking to strangers, and getting them to listen. Here, he learned how to handle rejection and the value of persistence — lessons he would incorporate into his business.

Pedersen attended Brigham Young University. During the summer, he started selling pest control for Terminex, hiring a team of ten friends, working out of a trailer in Arizona, and applying some of the door-to-door strategies he had learned. The venture proved wildly successful. Pedersen’s goal had been to earn $15,000 for the summer, and his team ended up making $80,000.

His success did not go unnoticed by management at Terminex. They realized Todd Pedersen’s talent, and asked him to increase the size of his team. By the next year, they offered him $1 million to sell his little company altogether. Because he had seen the potential of selling directly to customers, he politely declined the offer.

While in college, Pedersen had grown restless in the academic environment, questioning his professors about how the material could help him in earning a living, or help in his development as a business-person. Practical questions that required practical experience. By the time he was 22, he had dropped out to run his own company, a path that has been taken by some of the most successful tech titans of our time, including Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg.

APX Alarm Security Solution

After a few years in business, Pedersen knew he would need to diversify into other areas. In 1999 he got together with his friend Keith Nellesen and formed APX Alarm Security Solutions, the company that would grow into Vivint. As with pest control, they used the tried and true door-to-door method to generate interest and make sales. It worked, and the company grew by leaps and bounds, reaching $50 million in revenue by 2006, just seven years later.

Todd Pedersen’s entrepreneurial talent was further exemplified when he latched on to an opportunity created by the lack of innovation in the home security industry. Other companies weren’t willing to invest in developing new technology that could handle more than just security, so APX spent the time and money needed to create their own. By 2010, APX had developed a new type of home-security panel that included home automation, which helped keep customers loyal to the company.

Vivint CEO's Vision of Home Automation

That’s when Pedersen and his team decided to rebrand the company as Vivint, a name that emphasizes the vision of intelligent living through home automation.

From 2006 to 2012, the company grew 40-fold. It expanded its services to Canada and increased the number of customers to 700,000. In September 2012, The Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, purchased Vivint for over $2 billion. Todd Pedersen continued on as Chief Executive Officer and now

runs a company that has more than 1.4 million customers. In 2017 Vivint was included in Fast Company’s list of World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies. In 2015 Todd Pedersen was featured in an episode of UndercoverBoss, the CBS reality show where a company’s CEO dons a disguise — a wig and colored contacts in his case — and goes out among employees to get to know the inner workings of the company he runs. This eye-opening experience gave Pedersen several valuable insights.

One is how important it is to get back to grass roots and understand the challenges employees face every day, such as what it takes to install solar panels on a slippery roof. Another lesson is that, though a leader must keep the big picture in mind, it’s crucial to pay attention to details. Little changes can make a big difference in helping employees be more productive, happy, and successful at work.

Finally, Pedersen notes the importance of connecting with employees, even if that just means joining them for lunch in the company cafeteria. In the early days, he knew every employee by name, something that’s no longer possible in a company with thousands of people. Still, he emphasizes that Vivint would not have thrived without a high quality of dedicated employees.

Of course, Todd Pedersen CEO of Vivint also knows how important it is to focus on the customer. If you deliver what the customer needs and wants, and do it better than the competition, then the profits will follow. He has also driven Vivint to its level of success by striving for dominance in the field. That involves always looking at what else is out there and determining how the company can do better, a key reason for Vivint’s culture of innovation.

During his career, Todd Pedersen has racked up some notable achievements and awards. He has been named Entrepreneur of the Year more than once: In 2010 by Ernst & Young, in 2012 by the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum, and in 2013 by MountainWest Capital Network. In addition, in 2015 he was inducted into the David Eccles School of Business Hall of Fame.

There’s little doubt that Todd Pedersen is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in America. He started with a small sales force of fellow students, then transformed his company into a powerhouse that today ranks among the top enterprises selling high-tech products and services. It may be a cliché that hard work and determination are the keys to success, but the story of how Todd Pedersen built Vivint demonstrates the truth of the saying.