Pay Rent, Get Rich? Indian-American Built a $3.1B Startup From That Idea | Ankur Jain, Bilt — Silicon Valley Girl Podcast

Marina Mogilko: How can Built help me stop flying economy? The amount of money you spend on rent every single month is astonishing. With Built, anybody can sign up, set up their home to pay their rent and start earning rewards. You can convert those into whatever your favorite airline or hotel programs are. We work with British Airways and United Airlines and Alaska Airlines and Emirates and Hyatt and Hilton. I mean, people using their built points to cover their down payments. Why do you think no one has done it before? Ankur, thank you so much for doing this. Thanks for coming by. Yeah, you're doing something super cool. Okay, tell me, how can Built help me stop flying economy? Can you explain the whole concept?

Ankur Jain: I mean, look, the amount of money you spend on rent every single month and historically you've gotten no rewards back is astonishing. Um, and so 5 years ago, we set out to say, can paying your rent for the first time now earn you airline miles, hotel points? Can it build your credit history? And can it help you get closer to home ownership? And so, honestly, like flying business class is now as easy as just paying your rent.

Marina Mogilko: Okay, tell me. So, does it apply to everyone? Because I'm renting from a person, right? Would it work there or is it just work corporate?

Ankur Jain: No. So you can now with built, anybody can sign up, set up their home to pay their rent and start earning rewards. At one in four apartment buildings in the US, we now actually run all payments for these properties so that all residents automatically are using Built to pay their rent and earn rewards. But even if you don't live at one of the properties that uses Built exclusively, you can sign up, register your home, and start earning.

Marina Mogilko: Does my owner, the owner of the house, does he have to do anything?

Ankur Jain: Okay. So, we have... when we are the payments, that's exactly right. So, when we're for the one in four apartments that use built today, it's all seamless. Like, you move in, you see your charges, you can pay with your check, debit card, credit card, bank account, all automatically, and you earn rewards.

Marina Mogilko: Can you tell me? So, my rent is 7,800 a month. Yeah. How much can I earn?

Ankur Jain: I mean, it depends how you pay, but if you know, assume 1x points per dollar, that's 7,800. It's expensive rent, by the way.

Marina Mogilko: I know. 7,800 points. 7,800 points, you know, a month that you can now use and you can convert those into whatever your favorite airline or hotel programs are all the all the major ones. I mean, we work with British Airways and United Airlines and Alaska Airlines and Emirates and Hyatt and Hilton and Marto transfer. All one-to-one transfer. Or you can use your points, you know, to pay your next month's rent. Or you can use your points towards a down payment when you're ready to buy a home, which is something we worked with the regulators on years ago to get done. Um, or even like, by the way, just every day you can take out your phone, call a Lyft ride, and right inside the Lyft app, you can pay with your points and get a free ride around the neighborhood. And that's through the app.

Marina Mogilko: So if I'm renting from someone, I would look into built app, and it will show me all the local...

Ankur Jain: Yeah. You get your neighborhood benefits and it's you get it through the app, but we also it also happens seamlessly like if you walk around, I mean any major city in the US like you probably seen it in San Francisco like you know we have pharmacy partnerships with 8,000 locations including all of Walgreens right, maybe it's your local gym so if you go to your local Soul Cycle you get complimentary rental shoes and water in addition to extra points. Uh you go to your local berries you get a complimentary smoothie.

Marina Mogilko: How do points convert to dollars if it's 8,000 points? How many dollars if it's like Chase or how does it work?

Ankur Jain: Like it depends on the merchant or any other airline like same with their United Airlines points or whatever. Some tickets it's worth more, some tickets it's worth less, right? So it all really depends on what the merchant is accepting them at at that point. But if you look at these rankings like the average value that we are kind of estimated at across the board is about 2.2 cents a point. That's a lot of opportunity there. And that's how you do it, right? It's really that simple.

Marina Mogilko: Why do you think no one has done it before?

Ankur Jain: I mean trying to drive this is an it's an interesting first of all problem to drive any new adoption in legacy industries right. I mean these business these industries are not known for change right. Um as you know most people that still own a checkbook it's because their properties require you to pay by check right so getting traditional industries using is always tough. You have a challenge of a network problem to make this valuable for everybody. You have to have the property managers, you have to have rewards and you have to have merchants. Yeah. Right. Problem is if you talk to the rewards partners, they go, "How many properties do you have?" You talk to the property managers, they go, "What are your rewards?" You go to the merchant, they say, "Well, show me the buildings near you," and you have this exactly this cold start chicken and egg problem. And so we spent two years literally pitching and pitching and pitching. Like I was going to like literally New York landlords pitching like, "Hey, we have this idea for a rewards program that will take payments and turn it into rewards for on-time payments with your customers." When everybody looked at me, they're like, "Great idea. Come back when everybody else is doing it." And then honestly, like in any startup, you got to have the right idea, but you got to get lucky. And there was this weird moment in time. It was obviously a scary time, right? But COVID happened in March 2020 and the world broke and all of a sudden I started getting these calls back from property managers saying are you still working on that rewards program? Like we're trying to figure out how to drive leasing and get people back into our apartment buildings, and suddenly airlines were calling back saying, "Hey, we're not sure if people are going to fly again, but if they do, it's probably young people, not our typical business travel and businesses. If you're a local business, everyone's locked up at home. The only way to drive sales was to reach people in their home." And so like in this weird moment in time, we had this like spark where the first couple people in each stakeholder group started coming together and then the flywheel just started moving.

Marina Mogilko: When Ankur started built in 2018, no one could really predict how it would reshape the rental market. Now his company is valued at $3.1 billion. How crazy is that? But you had those two years when you just heard no and no and no.

Ankur Jain: We just kept trying and trying and trying and trying. We just kept coming up with like, I mean I'll tell you like when we first tried to get this off the ground we said okay well airlines aren't playing ball maybe there's a different way to create rewards, and so we said when you pay your rent on time what if we could reward you by building your credit and by helping you get closer to home ownership right like that seems like an obvious solution. How does that work?

Marina Mogilko: Well you pay your rent. I mean you came, what year did you move here, 2015? So I don't know if you remember this, like you probably had to go build your credit history.

Ankur Jain: No one would give us the apartment. Isn't that crazy?

Marina Mogilko: Yeah. They're like, "Oh, you need credit history to get access to credit, but you can only build your credit history by getting credit."

Ankur Jain: Yeah. And so there were only a few apartment buildings that would give us an apartment, right? It's just mindboggling. And so we said, "Well, if you're paying your rent on time every month, why doesn't that build your credit history?" Like, it doesn't make sense. But you have to connect with those credit agencies, right?

Marina Mogilko: Exactly. And they had to accept it. And then to use it for a mortgage, the mortgage lenders and the Fannies and the Freddies have to say that that's an eligible source of data to qualify you. So we thought this was like what a great idea, paying your rent and by the way you can earn credits you can use to cover a down payment. We then find out that the regulations didn't just specifically allow this. Of course, which is like also mindboggling. So, we spent—I thought, well, if I figure this out, this is going to be the key that gets properties to sign up. So, we spent 18 months in Washington DC talking to the housing department, the Fanny Maes, the Freddy Macs, the lenders, the credit agencies, saying, "Guys, paying your rent is the biggest expense for this generation. Why is it not helping them move forward?" And it wasn't until October of 2019, but we got the approvals and for the first time, you know, you could now build your credit by paying your rent on time, use rewards towards a future down payment and use the mortgage lender could use your rental history to help you qualify.

Ankur Jain: Only if you pay through built though.

Marina Mogilko: Oh, we offered this as a service. I mean, we, it wasn't a Built specific thing. It was a regulatory update, right?

Ankur Jain: Oh, so now everyone who pays rent... well no companies can now provide this service, and so we went out and used that opportunity to start bringing that as part of our benefit. Um and it's funny because you know when I first took it back everyone goes oh that's so wonderful but do I get airline miles? I'm like I spent 18 months on this. But no, fast forward to today. You know, we're now the largest reporter of on-time rent payments to the credit bureaus with millions of people building their credit history by paying their rent every month. We have people buying homes that they now qualify for because of their rental history with built. I mean, people using their built points to cover their down payment.

Marina Mogilko: Okay. I need to understand your entrepreneurial mindset because if somebody gives me the problem you just described, I'll be like, I won't be able to solve it. Like, it's been around for tens of years. And yeah, okay. So, my goal by the end of this interview is to convince you to move to New York. So, I lived in Silicon Valley for a long time. And honestly, like growing up, the Silicon Valley dream was one of the most exciting. It's like everybody you go there and work on big hard problems to try to create real impact and create amazing businesses around it. Somewhere along the lines and I feel like we lost that. Why? Like why do people do things, and I remember it was 2017 I had sold my first startup to IAC and as part of that acquisition I had I stayed on to help run uh one of the products they own called Tinder I was their product head there for two years and it was an amazing experience but like at the end of it, you know first of all there's only so much fulfillment you can get optimizing using swipe rights and swipe left, right? And I was thinking about what I wanted to do next. And I was in San Francisco and it's 2017. This is the era of like bird scooters raising all this money and this and that. And I there's a juice press company that had raised like hundreds of millions of dollars. And I was sitting with this venture capitalist who was pitching me on some idea. He's like, Ankur, you got to come look at this business. It's going to change the world. It's a perfect next opportunity for you. It's like, okay, tell me more. Like, we're thinking about putting $100 million in it. And it's unbelievable. They figured out how to create non-replicable goods like Prada bags on the blockchain.

Ankur Jain: Oh, like authentication. I think it's some stupid NFT like saying whatever. Like my point was what happened to solving big problems in the world? And I walked I remember I walked out of this hotel and it was like literally out of a like a TV show. I walked out on Market Street and in the middle of Market Street there was a naked homeless person humping one of these bird scooters right after they had raised $200 million. And I'm thinking to myself, you have one of the worst housing crisis, one of the worst healthcare crisis in the world. You have a mental health issue in your own backyard and you're pitching change the world digital Prada NFTs. Yeah.

Marina Mogilko: But I think the mindset is the government has to solve it, not the Silicon Valley has never been about the government solving problems. Silicon Valley has always been we will solve problems.

Ankur Jain: Um and more recently it's been like can we work with the government but don't forget Silicon Valley for decades has been the one pioneering the solutions and innovation to the problems not waiting for government. I mean I think that's what made Silicon Valley so special. Um, and so look, I, you know, that was that was kind of the final straw that put the camel's back. It was like there's just too much echo chamber around these buzzwords where people stopped asking what is the problem you're solving and they started focusing on what's the hot new buzzword that venture capitalists will fund because if I want to raise money for my startup like it was chatbot then it was NFT and then it was crypto and then it was VR and metaverse and now it's like everything is an AI everything, and so like you know I think we just lost that original spirit of like it's not what it's why.

Marina Mogilko: Um but like how do you what is your mindset like yeah I'm the one to change this I'm the one to talk to the government to change the regulations where does this come from? Is that how you were brought up?

Ankur Jain: I mean I think that is more of like you just have to figure, you start with a simple why and you figure it out as you go. And I think all of us that—and you're an entrepreneur, you've been through this like you sometimes just you're so committed to wanting to fix it that you don't even realize how absurd some of the things you you're trying to do are until after the fact when somebody else points it out. Um which is probably a good thing that we're so delusional.

Marina Mogilko: How many times did you want to give up?

Ankur Jain: I don't think about giving up. It's like that's not, I mean you wake up every day it's the most fun. Yeah. It's like confronting people in the industry like who are telling you that it's impossible. That's literally what everybody's—everybody hates—everybody loves to say no and I just like my mindset and I'm sure you have the same, right? It's like no just means ask again differently sometimes, right? You just got like they're like not getting you're not, I'm not doing a good job of explaining the opportunity if that or you know how can I make this a win-win for them and for me and that's part of it. You have to keep keep iterating and keep iterating until it never wanted to give up. You were just like laser focused on the big vision and purpose of what you want to do. Like I don't believe in setting goals that are like have to hit X number of users or X you know million of revenue by this date as like your primary north star because it's a really like it's not a very exciting fulfilling.

Marina Mogilko: Well, how do you set goals then? What is the problem you're solving? Like I see a user problem I want to solve and we just obsess over that.

Ankur Jain: So you never gave yourself like a timeline like okay if if I can't fix it in two years and probably that's it. This is the problem in the valley when you raise venture capital. I'm I'm so such a believer like you can bring in venture capital at a time when your business is already figured out and now you just it's just cheap growth capital. But until then, you really only want to either try to finance it with people you know that you trust or more importantly commercial partners because commercial partners are aligned in solving the problem because they care more about you solving their business issue than the return on the investment and then eventually the investment hopefully becomes even more right, that that gives you as a founder also the freedom to invest in getting it right, cuz the minute you raise venture money, these venture capitalists have a completely misaligned goal than you do. Their goals are how do I drive as fast of growth as possible in as short a period of time as possible to raise another round at a markup so that I can go tell my LPs that my investment is now worth on paper more.

Marina Mogilko: Yeah. Right. And as a founder that's not always the best thing like it took us four years to launch build right, we didn't launch, we started in 2018 we didn't launch in market till 2022. Have you raised money during that time?

Ankur Jain: I mean I self-funded the first part. I was very lucky to be able to do that. But then we were you know in it, we brought in uh our first commercial partners so we brought in real estate owners and we said hey once we got that first like click we said, "Hey, why don't you invest in the company and own a part of this and we can build this together?" Yeah. And you know, that just further cemented our presence in the space. Um, but look, I think it's also like like you're an immigrant, like part of this is you got to, if you come from an immigrant family, like you got to survive.

Marina Mogilko: Yeah. What was special about your upbringing? You think that made you? I'm so curious and I'm going to have to pick your brain on your immigrant story here, but like I mean my parents came here with you know typical like American dream story. They came here with nothing. My dad grew up in a dirt poor village in India. My mom was born in India but grew up in Jerusalem while her father was in the peacekeeping force. Right? And so when they came to the US, like they didn't have any money. And so they were hustling around for jobs like working their way like day and night. They met in New Jersey, got married in California. They moved to California where they got married and they were still living in an apartment with another couple cuz they couldn't afford their own place.

Ankur Jain: We had the same story. We were sharing an apartment with someone. But that's like the and you just like you just but you're so committed to creating a better life for yourself and for your kids and you just do it. And so it's funny like they were living in this apartment and my dad was, they just got married and he was thinking about how in the world am I going to afford a honeymoon? I can barely afford to pay rent.

Marina Mogilko: Well, California is a honeymoon.

Ankur Jain: Well, yes. Like I said, give me till the end of the show, she'll be in New York. Um, but we we like so they were they were living in California. He's trying to afford a honeymoon. He came up with this hilarious idea. He goes, "If I send my job resume to 20 companies in different cities, maybe one of them will fly me out for an interview."

Marina Mogilko: Oh, genius. Genius. And then I can get free flights.

Ankur Jain: And so we sent it to all these different companies and this little startup in Seattle called Microsoft goes called him up for interview. So he goes to my mom and says, "Hey, hey, honey, like why don't we do our honeymoon in Seattle?" She's like, "Why?" And um the rest is kind of history. He ended up working at Microsoft, starting to like build. They bought their first home, you know, when I was born. We were still like deep, deep, deep in home.

Marina Mogilko: Yeah. I mean, most people can do it now. That was tough. I mean, that was their first big break. Um and I remember like, you know, we lived a pretty normal life. And then when I was five or six, my dad comes home one day and he's suing their mom. And I I remember this. They started, it was one of the few times they started fighting like this. They were like, he's like, I think I'm going to quit the job, my job, and try to start something. You know, I was like, we just spent our whole life trying to get to a stable place and you want to quit like um and you know, at the end of it, she said, "Okay, I support you."

Ankur Jain: Do you remember that conversation?

Marina Mogilko: Yeah, it was not a, it was not a pleasant conversation. I remember I was five or six. It was very. And um anyways, he went off and he started a new company which obvious you know then became one of the internet's biggest thing and I just every day after school like cuz my mom worked with my dad at the startup too, right? And so every day after school, my brother and my sister and I, we'd get dropped off from school to the office and we would just sit at the office till like pretty late night and then we'd go home and like I would, he had a video game system for us at the office. I would do my homework. We'd play games and I'd sit in meetings and you just...

Ankur Jain: So you saw your parents working every single day and you just literally watched them build these businesses from the ground up. Um, it's funny like my dad and I have recently started doing a lot of, you know, interviews together cuz it's kind of been a fun now that I've had a chance to do my, you know, build my own businesses and whatever. And it's people often ask, they're like, "Well, did you ever feel to him?" They said, "Do you ever feel guilty, you know, figuring out how to balance your work life and personal life?" And his response I always kind of stuck with me. He goes, "You know, you think about it. If you have a kid at home and you think that you're just coming home, you've been successful, you're hanging out on the couch, hanging out with them, you think you're getting quality time in. What the kid sees is, oh, we live a really comfortable life and it's because my dad sits at home and watches TV and hangs out with me all day." And you wonder why sometimes these kids of these successful parents like don't have that same drive and hustle. Well, they grew up thinking you get that lifestyle by sitting at home hanging out. And there's actually some value in them seeing the hard work and the grit it takes.

Marina Mogilko: Interesting. But like I wonder you you didn't have time for extracurriculars then your parents didn't have time to drive you around. Well, look, it was a startup so everybody was pitching in, right? And like like my mom would drive us to like these so after school if we if we did have like a sporting, this is when I was younger so it wasn't like the same you know high school sports or anything right but like we're all you know seven, eight, nine so you do summer camps and stuff but like during the school year you didn't have like an after school like you know school team so you would do like the occasional like you know seasonal tournaments and then but yeah it was it was crazy. What would be your advice to new parents on how old are your kids now? Five and three. Okay. So, you bring them along with you ever?

Ankur Jain: Sometimes. Yeah. They went uh to 1 billion followers summit Dubai with me, but they don't like it. They're like they hate when somebody takes pictures with me. They just start crying. This is my mommy. And they're like and all the transatlantic flies for them. Well, well, now you can use your built points to find in business class. So, they'll yeah. I I'm using AX points built. And um I think look, I was I used to complain too sometimes. I'd go with my dad to all these meetings and I'd be like, I just want to go hang out with my friends. Yeah. But honestly, it's such a good experience. And you got to have both, right? You got to I think, you know, there's a way to have both. Like that that is a priceless for your kids are so fortunate to have parents who are doing so well and get to see the world and expose them to it. I think it's amazing. I think that's okay cuz I I feel very guilt especially now. Like I left them at home, came here for 4 days, they were crying like crazy. Bring them to New York. I mean, they're going to live here soon anyways.

Marina Mogilko: So, why? Okay, let's conversation with the New York. Why do you think so? I feel like, you know, nature in California, Stanford is 15 minutes away from home, so you know, we go there all the time. It's different. My brother and sister are both Stanford and they both live now in New York. So, what I'll say, you have kids? Uh, no, we don't have kids yet.

Ankur Jain: Um, I think that's the game changer. Yeah, totally hear you. I I think look you my belief is is it's so important to be surrounded by one different types of people right and so what I love about New York is you have every day the best talent in every industry out there. You're sitting at dinner you're talking to people who are in fashion who are in media who are in real estate who are in technology who are in finance who come from like so many different backgrounds and that I think that's important because it gives you a much better sense of like and New York is its own bubble too don't get me wrong like it's still not you know it's a bubble but you get such a sense of like how different people think and different needs and I think the challenge when you're in a place like Silicon Valley is it's so homogeneous these days that you go to dinner and every day it's like well what YC company did you talk to who's your VC it's like it's total distortion of reality. And then even worse, I think when you're a founder, you lose track of who you're solving the problem for. I mean, this is how you end up with Bird scooters and juice presses for $700 because you're constantly comparing your ideas to these 20 other startups and you forget that your customer in Dallas has never used any of them, right? And so you're like, "Well, that startup does this, so we do this a little differently and their startup does this, so we do this a little differently." And meanwhile, the customer in Dallas is still just trying to figure out what the first product is because it hasn't gotten to that market yet. And so that that's so important to stay. And by the same thing is true for Washington DC with politics. It's a homogeneous town, right? You have some of that in LA with entertainment, right? And so just like how can you be in a city that brings different worlds together? Um which I feel like you seem like you're into the fashion world, you seem like you're in the tech world. Like it's got to be tough. Like San Francisco is not exactly the best fashion place.

Marina Mogilko: Yeah, I know. I know. I'm always overdressed, but like not in New York. Not in New York. Yeah, that's awesome. My last question would be, can you give advice to someone who's starting a company in a space that's highly regulated, hasn't changed in a while, like a healthcare startup, and they just they've tried so many things and they're about to give up. Like, how to keep going?

Ankur Jain: I mean, first of all, like startups are hard and painful. So, you have to just expect and accept that that's part of the journey and there's not a single successful generationally changing company that did not have to go through the most painful experience, right? And I think, you know, like Jensen from Nvidia talks about this a lot, like you have to be willing and accept that eating glass is just part of the process. So, that's number one. But two is if you if you remember on the why, right? Like there's a hundred different ways to solve the problem. And so if you're focused on the why, you're never going to be hung up on whether the current solution is the right answer or not because it's just one of a hundred different ways you can solve it. And if you have that mindset, then you're much more free to pivot and iterate and adapt. And I think people, it's hard because you sometimes get so hung up on the specific way you're looking to solve something that if it stops working, like you keep trying to bang your head against the same wall. I love that. And you just got to say, wait a second, like take a step back. Is the product really what I'm trying to build or am I really, is there a better way to solve the actual why the problem? And if you're willing to do that, stepping back and someone said to me like there's a I think it was Churchill was it that was like this great quote that he goes something along the lines of you have to be totally totally committed and yet completely willing to change. Right. And committed to the idea but willing to change the path.

Marina Mogilko: Correct. We get there. I love it. Anyways, thank you for coming by. Thank you so much. Very impressive. And uh you've been to St. Petersburg many times. I have. I have. I want to go back. It's hopefully you can go come back soon.

Ankur Jain: I would love to. That's amazing. Thank you so much for coming back. Inspiring.