697: Ankur Jain | How to Solve Real World Problems

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Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome back to the show, man. It has been a crazy, crazy week out here in Vegas, but I am stoked to say the least. to be sitting down on another interview for the podcast and a really great interview that I've been looking forward to for a really long time. So today I am interviewing Ankur Jain. He is the co-founder and CEO of Kairos, a portfolio of fintech and healthcare brands transforming the way people rent, pay off student loans, and access healthcare. At Kairos, Jain has launched companies including Rhino, which is the country's largest security deposit insurance business, helping to put the $45 billion trapped in security deposits back into renters' pockets. Sarah, the fastest-growing healthcare company in Europe, bringing healthcare out of hospitals and senior homes and into the comfort of people's own homes at an affordable cost. And then their latest venture, Built Rewards, which is a program developed with Mastercard to give renters a way to earn points, build their credit score, and create a path to actual homeownership just by paying their rent. Formerly, he was the VP of Product over at Tinder. Not sure if you heard of it. It happens to be the world's largest social network for meeting people. And he joined that company after it acquired his previous company, Human, where he served as the founder and CEO. So listen, all of that stuff that I just read off, you would think that I was talking about somebody who's been in business for decades at this point and is in their late 50s, about to close their career, getting into authorship. But no, Ankur is 31 years old and has done all of this stuff up to this point in his life. So you can imagine why I'm excited to talk to him here on the show. Ankur, thank you so much for taking the time, bro.

Hey, thanks for having me, man.

Yes, sir. Well, I want to, I want to jump right in, man, build some context for those listening, uh, who maybe just passed out due to the extensive bio, uh, that, that I just read off. And, uh, let's build some context, take it back to the early days for me. Talk to me what, uh, about what it was being like, or what it was like being, being Ankur at age 9, 10 years old. You know, rewind the clock and take me back to that time.

Yeah, you guys, See, I am getting old now. Thinking that far back is starting to be— so I grew up in Seattle, grew up with immigrant parents, came over here. I mean, you know, you and I just started talking about changes in California and Nevada and all these places. Like, I think one of the things that I grew up around was just watching my parents actually try to create the American dream, right?

Mm-hmm.

And it's something that my dad grew up in a dirt poor village in India. managed to come to the US after college. You hear these stories about people coming here with $100 in their pockets. He actually had $100 and that was it in his name. It was actually moving to California back before it became, unfortunately, some of the political environment that it is today, but it was a place for opportunity. I grew up watching my parents together, take the risk to start companies together and create a home here in the US, of which we got to grow up in and watch them build some of the largest technology companies of the dot-com and kind of Web 2.0 era. That type of visibility, when you see someone from hearing the stories, if someone can come from a village in India and build a $40 billion company here in the United States, then really anything's possible. That was a huge, huge driver and motivation for everything I've done in my short time.

Yeah, it has to be. It has to be growing up in a household like that. Do you remember, like, you're 31, so you're born in 1990-ish. So when you were growing up in that time period, do you remember like the come-up period of that? You know, I've talked to your dad a few times, being involved with some of the conferences and stuff that he would— that he's been speaking at and, you know, fairly familiar with his story. But for those of you who are listening who don't know, Ankur's dad, Naveen, is a multibillionaire, built a lot of different, you know, huge tech companies. He has some sort of a contract with the government or something to be able to land on the moon or some— he's just a crazy innovator, thinker, disruptor. And I'm wondering what it was like watching that come up kind of happen in front of your eyes of like, hey, we don't really have much except for like, you know, my dad gets a salary or whatever. But, you know, there's a bit—

Honestly, right, it's the same, it's the same crazy fight that we all go through and the hustle, right? I mean, when we— when he left his somewhat steady job to start the first company, it was him and my mom and my brother and sister. My brother wasn't born yet. My sister and I And it became a family, a family hustle from, you know, when I was 6 years old.

Right.

And it was— we had— he put up all his life savings into starting the company. We gave up one of the cars. So like he would— he or my mom would drive us to school and then they'd go to work together and we'd go to the office after school because no one could take us home for a little bit. And, you know, it was— it was—

This episode of the show is brought to you by Whatnot. So I was scrolling on Whatnot because I really— I just wanted to see what it was about. And I started experiencing what I can only describe as like a social media shopping channel, but it's live shopping. You gotta go try it out, okay? Because it's not just for the buyers, it's also for the sellers. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform, whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury fashion, even cookies. Sellers are building real thriving businesses. Anybody can sell, whether your business is big, small, or yet to exist. People selling on Whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. 10 times more. That's because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with actual buyers. Across Whatnot, the number sellers making over $1 million a year has doubled. Consistency pays off. It's not just a side hustle. It's a real path to building something that lasts. Whatnot buyers spend more than an hour a day in the app, which is crazy. They're not just browsing and searching for content. They're engaged, they're buying, and they're coming back. You go live, show off products in real time, and then turn what you love into real income. I went on there the other day, just shopping around, looking for some stuff, tuned into a livestream, ended up with a couple of shirts, and I love them. Um, and you get this sort of live demonstration and you get to ask questions about the product and how does it feel and what's the fit and all those types of things that you can get answered live so you can make sure that you're making a better decision even as a buyer. So search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store, download it, and you can start selling right away. Okay, here's something my younger self would've benefited from because let's be honest, most of us just picked a bank at 16 and then never looked back. Sound familiar? Well, that's where Chime comes in because Chime is changing the way that people bank. They're not like traditional stuffy old banks who charge fees and gatekeep perks and rewards and all that stuff. Chime offers the most rewarding fee-free banking, all with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, no minimum balance fees. Plus you get 5% cash back on Chime card in a category of choice like gas or groceries, all while building credit through regular everyday spending with absolutely no credit check. You can also grow your money faster with their savings rate that's 9 times the national average. Let me say that again, 9 times the national average for their savings accounts. And if you're ever in a pinch, SpotMe lets you overdraft up to $200 fee-free. So join the millions who are already banking fee-free with America's number one choice for banking. Head to chime.com/travis. That's chime.com/travis. Sign up now because it only takes a few minutes. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and Chime card provided by Chime's bank partners. Qualifying direct deposits required. Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com/disclosures for details.

The grind, but to see that relentless persistence, I mean, that's the key to building startups, building companies. It's having that vision, but it's the relentless persistence. And that's frankly like that idea of just never saying, never accepting no for an answer was what led me to actually create my first company when I was 11. I was like a good little nerdy Indian boy. And then I think what inspired a lot of the other work that we've done even to date around housing and healthcare and just making things more affordable for people.

Was it something that your parents encouraged you or pushed you to do to jump into entrepreneurship, or was that something that you just kind of had inside of you?

No. So, so this is something that's funny. I've been talking about this a little bit recently with some of my friends who are starting to become parents, which is a weird, crazy experience hitting this new stage of life now.

That's like why I asked the question, because I have a 2-year-old and I have a 9-month-old. So like anytime I talk to like well-rounded people, I'm like, what did your parents do to like not screw this up? Because it's difficult.

To be determined on screwing up or not for us. But it was, I got to tell you, from a young age, one of the things that we always had as a mantra in our family was, it was never about a budget or an allowance. My parents actually were pretty strict about ever giving us access to cash, period. So it wasn't like if I wanted to buy a new pair of shoes, I could just work in the yard, make an allowance, and go buy it. The answer was just no. unless I figured out a creative way to get it. So, it was almost like a bartering system. And I remember when I was about 10 or 11 years old going into 7th grade, I really, really, really wanted to make the basketball team. I was a big Supersonics fan growing up in Seattle. I was a short skinny Indian kid and I stood zero chance of even making that team. But I had seen an ad recently for these workout jumpsuits, which were like essentially plyometrics. They'd help you jump higher. And I thought to myself, I could just figure out how to dunk the ball. They've got to let me on the team, right? Unfortunately, these things were $150, and obviously I didn't have $150 lying around.

Are you talking about those soles that you Velcro to the front of your shoe?

Yes, exactly.

Same thing, bro. Yeah, I just bought the same thing.

You probably had more success than I did. You probably actually dunked the ball. But I really wanted these things so badly, and I was convinced that that was the path to making the team. So after hemming and hawing, I started seeing that this was the early days of product placement on the internet, and I started seeing all these people on message boards and, remember, AngelFire websites and GeoCities? Wait, this is how old we're getting now. People could I saw people posting about free products they were getting. So I decided to learn coding, taught myself coding, built a website, which ended up becoming my first company. We built the first web-to-mobile messaging system. So I was trying to solve a problem we had. I'll get back to that in a second, but ended up building a website and calling up the company that makes those jump soles and just call the customer service line. Until I got to the CEO. I said, hey, with my pre-puberty squeaky voice, can I speak to the CEO, please? These guys probably had no idea what was going on, but eventually somebody put me through. I said, hey, we're launching a new website targeted at young adults and teenagers. I think it's a big market for you guys. How would you like to do a trade? I'll put up an ad for your workout equipment and you send me a pair of Jumpsoles. They did.

Nice.

I still did not make the team, but I did form my first company accidentally. And that's kind of— that was the kind of culture we grew up in, right? It was, yeah, find creative ways that are win-win all the time to, to get it, get the things done that you want, right?

The art of the deal. Yeah, it's, uh, it really is just so important and something that most people never have any exposure to. And I don't want to make this interview about your parents, but I felt like it would be remiss if I didn't at least have a little bit of context into that conversation, because one of the biggest things that I always respected and admired about, about what your dad did is that he was always encouraging people. And I'm sure you got this a bunch, which is obvious with the different companies that now you have been able to start, that it's not—

it's not—

entrepreneurship's not just about making money. It's about solving massive problems to the world. And if you take your focus off of making money and put your focus on solving massive problems, then big money is going to come to you. Big money is going to find you. If the problem that you tackle is big enough, right?

It's the age-old lesson, right? It's been written about for thousands of years, but love, money, and happiness are the 3 things that if you chase directly, you never find. And if you work on the things that you love and the things you care about, I mean, look, it's not an altruistic-only approach. I mean, the biggest problems are the biggest business opportunities, right? I mean, I don't know. I always say to people, like, people in Silicon Valley love to pitch some random voice-controlled electronic device or VR drone or crypto, whatever. And the fact is, those could be $100 billion markets or they could be $50 million markets. We don't know, right? But when you think about something like the housing crisis facing people across the United States and frankly around the world, when you think about the healthcare crisis facing people, I mean, those are trillions of dollars spent a year. on those categories. And so if you can innovate in those areas and actually solve the problem for customers in a way that actually helps them, right, that's how you create a trillion-dollar company, right?

How did you initially come up with some of these ideas or identify these problems? Like, were you, were you somebody that went out searching for a problem to solve, or were you somebody that ran into a problem and thought, I need to build a solution for this?

Yeah, it's the latter. And I think that's part of what makes it— entrepreneurship is a really hard process, right? I mean, whether it was my dad's first company I was growing up and us having to sometimes, like I said, walk from school to the office because they were busy, or whether it's like today when we actually have access to some resources and it's still being up every single night till midnight or 1:00 AM trying to get the deal done. It's always really hard. And the only way that you'll ever make it through all those ups and downs is if the problem you're working on is something you care so much about because it's something you can truly relate to. And I'll never forget, one of my mentors said to me, probably 10 years ago, they said, before you start a company at the stage when you think you have a vision or an idea, he goes, ask yourself, now that you've seen the world in this vision with your product in existence, can you live in a world without it? And if the answer is yes, stop wasting your time. And if the answer is no, then nothing should stop you from going out and building it. I think that's the problem is too many people start a company for starting a company's sake, or it's cool and sexy to be an entrepreneur, but it's, it's really hard.

Yeah.

It is the ups, the downs, and the risk that you take to start a company to put everything on the line. I mean, there are much easier ways to make money, right? Business, right?

So true, man. So true. I was just having a conversation with my wife a few days ago. So my, you know, my software startup, this is the first time I've been, um, in this space. And, uh, man, I've just been beating my head against the wall, you know, being like, man, why didn't I just keep doing what I was doing before? I'm like, I can make more money, you know, doing that with like less headaches. But Like, to your point, you know, I kept experiencing this problem over and over again. A bunch of people were asking me about the same problem. And so I was like, somebody's got to build this and may as well be me because I feel like I'm pretty unique.

This episode of the show is brought to you by Whatnot. So I was scrolling on Whatnot because I really, I just wanted to see what it was about. And I started experiencing what I can only describe as like a social media shopping channel, but it's live shopping. You got to go try it out, okay? Because it's not just For the buyers, it's also for the sellers. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury fashion, even cookies, sellers are building real thriving businesses. Anybody can sell, whether your business is big, small, or yet to exist. People selling on Whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. 10 times more. That's because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with actual buyers across Whatnot. The number of sellers. Sellers making over $1 million a year has doubled. Consistency pays off. It's not just a side hustle, it's a real path to building something that lasts. Whatnot buyers spend more than an hour a day in the app, which is crazy. They're not just browsing and searching for content, they're engaged, they're buying, and they're coming back. You go live, show off products in real time, and then turn what you love into real income. I went on there the other day just shopping around, looking for some stuff, tuned into a livestream, ended up with a couple of shirts. And I love them. And you get this sort of live demonstration and you get to ask questions about the product and how does it feel and what's the fit and all those types of things that you can get answered live so you can make sure that you're making a better decision even as a buyer. So search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store, download it, and you can start selling right away. Okay, here's something my younger self would have benefited from because let's be honest, most of us just picked a bank at 16 and then never looked back. Sound familiar? Well, that's where Chime comes in, because Chime is changing the way that people bank. They're not like traditional stuffy old banks who charge fees and gatekeep perks and rewards and all that stuff. Chime offers the most rewarding fee-free banking, all with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, no minimum balance fees. Plus, you get 5% cash back on Chime card in a category of choice like gas or groceries, all while building credit through regular everyday spending with absolutely no credit check. You can also grow your money faster with their savings rate that's 9 times the national average. Let me say that again, 9 times the national average for their savings accounts. And if you're ever in a pinch, SpotMe lets you overdraft up to $200 fee-free. So join the millions who are already banking fee-free with America's number one choice for banking. Head to chime.com/travis. That's chime.com/travis. Sign up now because it only takes a few minutes. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and Chime Card provided by Chime's bank partners. Qualifying direct deposits required. Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com/disclosures for details.

Position to do it. So you end up jumping in, but at the beginning you don't realize, you know what I mean, how difficult it's going to be. You always hear it, of course, you know what I mean? I've been interviewing people for 700 episodes on my show, so I know that other people tell me that it's difficult, you know. But then once you jump into it and then you're realize how difficult it is, but it's too late to turn around, then it's like, oh man, I'm all in. You know what I mean? 100%. Move forward and figure this thing out.

And look, this is, this is the problem, right? Is that nobody wants to talk about the hardships. The startup world is unfortunately overglorified with everybody's a winner, everyone's a success story. I'll never forget when I was running my first kind of major venture-backed company after college, it was a company called Human. Pretty fitting to the show, actually, but we were trying to rebuild your relationship management tool, a better, like a different and real version of LinkedIn. Hypothesis was your real relationships are your contacts, right? And it shouldn't be some giant alphabetical list of a bunch of random strangers. I should be able to open up my phone and say, who's that guy that I met through Lauren the other day? Or who do I know that lives in New York? Or do I have any contacts at Mm-hmm. Right? And it would automatically pull all of that information from your emails, calendar, phone book, social, and make it a really seamless, uh, search experience. I remember just being so rattled. Like, we launched, we were number 10 in the App Store. We were like, I thought, doing so well. And then I would read TechCrunch and these other blogs, Business Insider, and every startup was like, Million users, 5 million users, 3 million users today. And I'm looking at it, we had barely, barely cracked 200K. And I thought I was— I mean, as a founder, you're like, what am I doing wrong? Right? And it wasn't until I got to Tinder where I became the head of product there and I could see we were the number one paid app in the App Store. There's nobody that was getting more downloads than us in the App Store. And Tinder's numbers We're barely hitting a million, you know, kind of users like that on a daily basis. So when you see all of a sudden, it made me realize that all these founders out there were just totally BSing their numbers. And that's the— and that's a really toxic cycle because in the startup world, you're constantly benchmarking yourself to whatever limited information you have and you can start chasing the wrong goals.

Yeah, you chase all the vanity metrics and the things that don't matter. You're chasing the PR and the news coverage and you're chasing the The metrics that don't move the needle for your business at all instead of worrying about you, what you're working on and how to make it—

Problem solving.

Yeah.

And the customer and the problem you're solving, right? And there was another great kind of moment in my career. You talk about these people that you spend time with at different moments in your career that have, you know, they maybe say something casually in passing and it sticks with you. And I remember that probably, I don't know, 7 years ago or so, Right before Alibaba became a big thing, they were still pre-IPO trying to break into the US market. They invited a group of entrepreneurs to a dinner with David Wei and Jack Ma, and I got lucky enough to be invited to this group. They were telling the story of how Alibaba beat eBay in China, because eBay came into that market before they existed. They owned a huge part of the market share. And Alibaba launched Taobao and just crushed—I mean, just absolutely crushed eBay. And this is before even the government intervention was getting crazy on that type of foreign entry into the market, right? And what he said is he goes, "All these other companies, including eBay, were so worried about what the competitors were doing, right? They lost sight of what actually mattered." He goes, "We don't even pay attention to what eBay did." If eBay did anything worthwhile, our customers would ask us for it and say eBay does it. But until my customer tells me, I don't care.

Yeah.

And you see that a lot in especially the venture world where your startup idea keeps getting benchmarked to other startups, right? But the reality is the, the average customer, you know, anywhere in the country is still 3 steps behind even the, the latest startup that's out there. Right. And so by the time you're done benchmarking, imagine if Facebook had launched their product today, like 10 years ago, you would open up the Facebook app and have no clue. You have 15 notification buttons, a marketplace, dating app, and newsfeed, people's pictures and profiles. Like, it would be benchmarked to the wrong comp, right?

Yeah.

And it just starts off like every great disruption is just an incremental evolution done 100 times.

Right. Yeah. I read something somewhere recently where it said something about your competition. It was talking about benchmarking yourself against other people that are in a similar space and said something like, if you're worried about copying your competitor's product or something like that, then you've already lost. And it was a total rewiring of my mind to stop thinking about like, what did they figure out that works and start figuring out about what am I going to figure out that will work? Because like, that's the core of our product. We are not them. They are not us. We have to innovate and come up with our own thing that we do extremely well and stop worrying about what everybody else is doing.

Yeah. And candidly, look, if somebody else had already figured it out, there probably isn't a need for your product.

Yeah. Yeah. Again, again, so true. So true. So listen, man, I, I would love to hear, since we're talking about this, I would love to hear A story, maybe something, a time when you were working on a startup or something that just didn't go according to plan. You know, we're talking a lot about messy startups right now, and it's top of mind for me because I'm going through Ben Horowitz's book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, right now.

And by the way, where they were open about stuff, I like that.

What's that?

That was one of the few books that came out where they were really raw about—

So true. Yeah, well, yeah, I was reading through, reading through that opening story, and I was getting anxiety myself. Just by reading it. Um, and it's a great book. If you haven't read it, definitely go read it. But, uh, what was some— what's something that you've done in a startup that, uh, in, in any sort of entrepreneurial context that just didn't go according to plan?

Well, the short answer to that question is everything you do doesn't go to plan. It's about how relentlessly persistent you are to eventually get somewhere. But, you know, recently I just told the story. So we launched a product called Built Rewards, right? It's the first loyalty program and credit card that lets you earn points on rent. I mean, the idea was really, really simple. I thought rent is the single largest expense for the vast majority of Americans. Why is it that you can earn points on an airline ticket, you can earn points when you buy a drink at the bar, but if I pay my rent on time every single month, I get nothing for it? I get no points. It doesn't even help my credit score. And then you get no closer to homeownership. So we had this, what I thought was a simple concept 3, 3.5 years ago saying, what if people could just earn points on rent? We spent about a year building out all the products and partnerships and everything around how you were going to earn points. And then the idea was that you could one day redeem those points for homeownership, put them towards a down payment, Now renting becomes a path to homeownership. It wasn't until a year in when we had put all this money and time into it where I finally sat down to start setting up our partnerships with the mortgage companies now that we had the point system and the rental system in place. And our lawyers called us and said, what are you doing? You can't do that. I go, what do you mean you can't do it? They go, it's illegal. You can't redeem points towards a down payment. It's literally not an allowable source of fund. I'm like, You've known what we're working on for almost a year, and this is the first time you're telling me we're not allowed to use points towards the— I mean, the entire business was basically dead overnight.

Yeah.

And now we had 2 options there, right? So this does turn out to be a happy story in the end. But what happened a year in, I said, so what is it going to take to make this thing legal? And what we found was that In 2008, what is that, 13 years ago now? It's crazy. When the world crashed because of the housing crisis, the government changed the regulations to say, instead of these are the things that you are not allowed to use for a down payment, instead you can only use personal savings, gifts from a nonprofit or something that helps, like a down payment assistance, or a gift from your parents. Why gift from your parents was a thing that was allowed. So like, you know, rich kids get a benefit and no one else. Like, that makes no sense to me. But those are like the eligible sources of money for buying a home. Outside of that, shit out of luck.

Yeah.

We went and said the only way that this business can survive now is we got to convince the US government and the regulatory agencies that rewards points should be added to this. And you can imagine when they were writing up these rules, Nobody thought to ask in this regulatory room, "What about rewards points?" And so began another year journey of just flying out to D.C., meeting with the housing department, meeting with the regulators, and honestly explaining to everybody how even credit card points work. I mean, it's like you can literally use points to fool off in Miami and fly around and get a hotel, but the U.S. government is telling people. They can't use that for the most important thing to create wealth and equity for a whole generation, just homeownership? Like, how?

Yeah, especially, especially when the reason for those regulations to begin with was lack of payments, which you would have to make in order to get the points because you have to prove that you've been paying rent to earn the points.

Crazy. And so we go through all this. I spent about another year walking everyone through this. And I think that we have everyone finally up to speed, right? We finally had, you know, from the Secretary of Housing through to FHA, through to Fannie Mae, we have met with everybody. They understand the opportunity now. They understand why this should be no different than personal savings, right? And we finally send in our formal request to be approved as a kind of allowed permissible source of funds. And we get rejected again. And I mean, now we're almost 2 years into the business. We continue to build out the rest of this, and we just went into fight or flight mode, and we just started making phone calls and just requesting an audience with whoever it was that rejected this application. And, and, you know, like, sometimes the stars align if you're just relentless and persistent enough, and we managed to get our hearing. And we presented the case. And about a month later, at the end of 2019, we got the first-ever regulatory approval to let people put points towards a down payment. And so now today with BILT, people can actually pay their rent on a card with no fees. They get the benefit of credit reporting on rent payments for no cost, and they can use those points to buy a home and cover the down payment. But man, it was not crazy.

This is why if entrepreneurship taught me anything, it's how much ideas are a dime a dozen. Yes. And people always freak out about telling other people their ideas. Like, I gave up on having people sign NDAs a long time ago because I was like, there's no chance in hell you're going to go through the shit that I've gone through to get to this point. And if you are, you deserve to be in competition.

That's right.

You know what I mean? Because like, it's just, it's not going to happen. I'm like, the, like, the idea itself, like, if I hear you say that idea, I'm like, oh no, duh, why didn't I come up with that? And that's what everybody always says. Oh, that's so obvious. Why didn't I come up with that? It doesn't matter if you came up with it because the barriers to get from here to there are already too much for, for 99.9% of people to overcome.

100%. Could not agree more.

How were your relationships helpful? in some of those things that you were kind of trying to tackle during that time period? Because most people are listening to this right now and they're going like, I wouldn't even know how to do that. Like, how do I even go to— who do I talk to in DC? What regulatory agency do I call? Like, how do I even find the phone numbers to call to talk to somebody to get to the decision maker? I don't even know where to start.

It's funny, the answer goes back to your first point, which is you can't be shy and scared of talking to people about your idea, right? To be fair, I did not have any contacts in the Department of Housing, much less DC. This was during the Trump administration. This was not like— I did not have a phone line or anybody I knew that I could just phone call to get in. But what happens is we just— I mean, anybody who would listen, any friend, any investor, any partner, we would just tell them what we're trying to do. This is what we're building. Here's where we're getting stuck. Do you know anybody? And I mean, we went in the most little roundabout circle that got us from one lawyer to another guy to another person who introduced somebody to Department of Energy, who then got us into the Department of Housing. It was a whole pipeline and lots of little dead ends in between, but we eventually did get to all the right people, and they did believe it. Now, I think One of the things that's just so important that a lot of people forget about when it comes to relationship building is people like to sometimes network for the sake of networking, right? But I could give you a phone book today with everybody's damn phone number and business card. It doesn't matter, right? You can message anyone on Instagram these days or send them a DM on Facebook, or if people use it anymore, you can reach anyone, right? When people meet you, is there something that you're fighting for or something that you know about or something that you want to learn that's relevant to them? Right. And so, you know, there's this question of like, is, is your net worth like your network kind of thing? And I think that's a total baloney concept. Networks are only as important as the platform and project that you're working on. And the depth of that relationship you built around it, right?

Because the value that you're bringing into the relationship, that's it.

And it's really that simple. And it's like, you know, you can get— you can know, you can know 1,000 people, right? But it's better to know 100 people who share a passion for the platform or issue that you're working on, because those people will go to bat for you. Right?

Yeah.

And so I think it's one of the things that I think has been super valuable throughout my career and my life has been thinking about, at any given moment in time, what is the platform that you stand for? Another guy who you know, Peter Diamandis from the XPRIZE Foundation. Peter's arguably one of the most prolifically connected people, quote unquote, on the planet. I remember when I was 17 or 18, and I applied to Singularity University, one of his projects out there, and we sat down and He asked me, he said, what's your meme? I said, what the hell do you mean? Like a joke? What's my meme? He's like, what is the one sentence that describes why you matter to somebody else today? The thing that you're doing. I'm the guy bringing exponential technology to the world. That's what Peter would say. Or I'm the guy who's trying to make spaceflight accessible. People need a reason to Like a box to put you in, a way to think about you as a person. And that could be, you're the guy who gets me into the parties, right? Like, that's, that's why promoters have such a big network of, you know, people in New York or Miami, right? But you got to know what that thing is that you stand for before you spend any time trying to build quote unquote a network. And then the network has to come.

Yeah, really great insight there, man. I appreciate that. Look, we're coming down on the close here. I want to be respectful of your time. I want to ask you about time management because, you know, like I was, you know, half joking at the beginning after I read through your bio, but it is an impressive amount of accomplishments for being 31 years old. And there's absolutely no way in hell you'd be able to do those things if you were doing every single one of those things all the time. So talk to me a little bit about time management, delegation, you know, even just like Kairos has 3 different startups underneath that one umbrella that you clearly had a huge hand in being the chief visionary for. What's your process in thinking through, like, what's a problem worth tackling and giving my brainpower to when I have these other 2 babies over here that I'm still nurturing? And then, you know, do you have somebody you hand those off to? Are you hiring operators underneath you? Like, just kind of quick overview of what that looks like.

So Cairo specifically is structured as a holding company. We have And today, 5 companies under it. But every business has a CEO that's operating the company. I personally have stepped into the CEO role at Peltz because I do think it's the biggest opportunity in front of us today. But to the broader question and point, I think whenever someone says in their Instagram bio, founder of 15 companies, running CEO this, this, this, this, or it's like in Hollywood, the equivalent version of that is I think it's like Actor, singer, writer, producer. I was like, you know, that's— the answer is you're like, you're probably not doing any of them super well.

Yeah, right.

And, you know, another quote that I love that my dad always, you know, says to anyone who asks is, most great companies die from indigestion, not starvation. Right? There's never a shortage of opportunities. There is always a shortage of time. Right. And so being ruthlessly disciplined about focusing on the one key thing in front of you at any given moment. Like, I view my, my months and days— this is probably a stressful way to think about it, but it's how my brain works. It's like, remember that old game Alien Invaders?

Yeah.

They, you know, the little ships are coming down, like, start slow, and then they come faster and faster and faster, and you got to keep knocking them out. Like, if you try to focus on that entire game and look at every ship coming through, you are guaranteed to lose.

Hmm.

You just got to get really good at knowing which one is the most urgent fire that's the next one about to hit and being laser-focused, knocking that one out. And every 10, 20, 30 seconds, or in real life, every month or so, be able to step back, do a quick reality check, and then get back into it. Right? But when people start to take on 3, 4 projects and try to worry about everything that has to get done, there's just no way you'll get any of it done. Right? Yeah.

Love it, bro. Dude, thanks so much for coming on the show. Uh, where can people— where can people find a little bit more about you? What can we do to help you?

I'm at— on Instagram at @ankurjain. You can look up our companies and our products. I mean, if you haven't yet— if you're a renter and you haven't yet signed up for the Bills Mastercard, we have a waiting list, but I'll get, uh, I'll get Travis some early access stuff for some of the listeners and It's a chance for you to start earning points on rent. So, um, would love any feedback, or, you know, that's the current focus, and, you know, it's my, my current life dedication. So I would love as many people to benefit from it as possible.

Awesome. Well, Ankur, thanks so much for taking the time, brother. I know you've got a really busy schedule, so I'll let you get back to it. Guys, go check out all the stuff that he's putting out there into the world. So many just big, big problems that he's tackling, uh, with his company portfolio there. So go check out some of the stuff he's putting out. Go follow him on Instagram. That's @AnkurJain, A-N-K-U-R-J-A-I-N, and give him a quick follow, shout out, tell him you heard about him here on the show. Ankur, thanks for taking the time to spend with us today.

Hey, thanks so much, man.

That's it for this episode. If you want to connect with Travis and other like-minded people who also listen to the show, then you're going to want to head over to travischappell.com/group to join his free Facebook group, Podcast to Profit. Travis will see you there, and remember to leave every relationship better than you found it. We leave—