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

How can Vilt help me stop flying economy?

The amount of money you spend on rent every single month is astonishing. With Vilt, 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 Vilt 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 Build help me stop flying economy? Can you explain the whole concept?

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 homeownership? And so honestly, like flying business class is now as easy as just paying your rent.

Okay, tell me, so does it apply to everyone? Because I'm renting from a, a person, right? Yes. Would it work there or it's just for corporate?

No. So you can now with Belt, Anybody can sign up, set up their home to pay their rent, and start earning rewards. At 1 in 4 apartment buildings in the US, we now actually run all payments for these properties so that all residents automatically are using Bilt to pay their rent and earn rewards. Uh, but even if you don't live at one of the properties that uses Bilt exclusively, you can sign up, register your home, and start earning.

Does my owner, the owner of the house, has Does he have to consent? Okay.

So we have, so when we are the payments, that's exactly right. So when we're, uh, for the 1 in 4 apartments that use BILT today, it's all seamless. Like you move in, you see your charges, you can pay with your check, debit card, credit card, bank ACH, all automatically. And you earn rewards.

Can you tell me, so my rent is $7,800 a month. Yep. How much can I earn?

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.

I know.

7,800 points.

Yeah.

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. You work with 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 Marriott.

Just 1-to-1 transfer.

All 1-to-1 transfer.

Just 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. So if I'm renting from someone, I would log into Build app and it will show me all the local—

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, uh, you've 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 SoulCycle, you get complimentary rental shoes and water in addition to extra points. Yeah. You go to your local Barry's, you get a complimentary smoothie.

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?

Like, it depends. I guess like it's like Chase or Amex. It depends on the merchant or any other airline, like same with your United Airlines points or whatever. Some tickets it's worth more, some tickets 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.

Why do you think no one has done it before?

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 biz— these industries are not known for change.

Yeah. Right?

Um, as you know, most people that still own a checkbook, it's because their properties require you to pay by check still.

Yeah, I know.

Right? So, getting traditional industries to do something new 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 you got? You talk to the property manager, they go, what are your rewards? You go to the merchant, they say, well, show me the buildings near you.

Yeah.

And you have this, exactly this cold start chicken and egg problem. And so we spent 2 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, is doing it. And then honestly, like in any startup, you gotta have the right idea, but you gotta get lucky. And there was this weird moment in time. It was obviously a scary time, right? Like, 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 were 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, we're— 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—

When Ankur started Built in 2018, no one could really predict how it would reshape the rental market. Now his company's valued at $3.1 billion. How crazy is that? And if you're watching and you're like, I want to start my own business, I want to work on my crazy idea, I can highly recommend an ultimate entrepreneurship guide From HubSpot that can help you with that. They're going to walk you through finding the right business idea, evaluating it, coming up with a business plan. They have all kinds of templates that you're going to need, professional email templates, calculators to see how much money you need at the beginning, how much will you need further on. If you don't have a co-founder, they have solopreneur tips. They have some project management templates. So everything you need to start working on your idea right now. Now it's your turn to stop dreaming and start building. Your entrepreneurial journey starts today and it's completely free. Download the Ultimate Entrepreneurship Kit using the link down below, and let's get back to our conversation with Ankur.

But you had those 2 years when you just heard no and no and no.

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 homeownership? Right? Like, that seems like an obvious—

How does that work?

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.

Oh yeah. No one would give us a rental.

Isn't it crazy?

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.

Yeah. And so there were only a few apartment buildings that was, you that would give us an apartment.

Right. It's just mind-boggling. 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?

Exactly. And they have 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 that you can use to cover a down payment. We then find out that the regulations didn't just specifically allow this.

Of course. Yeah.

Which is like also mind-boggling. So we spent, and 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 Fannie Mays, the Freddie 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.

Only if you pay through Build though.

Oh, we offered this as a service. I mean, we, it wasn't a built-specific thing. It was a regulatory update, right?

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 benefits.

As part of the perks.

So, 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? And I'm like, I spent 18 months on this. But now 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.

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 Brianne to move to New York. So I, 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.

Yeah.

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 one of the products they owned called Tinder. I was their product head there for 2 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 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.

Yes. Juice Therapy. Yeah.

And I'm sitting with this venture capitalist who was pitching me on some idea. He's like, He's like, Ankur, you gotta come look at this business. It's gonna 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.

Oh, like authentication?

Like, I think of—

No, it's some stupid NFT like thing, 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 crises, one of the worst healthcare crises in the world. You have a mental health issue in your own backyard. And you're pitching change-the-world digital Prada NFTs.

Yeah, 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. 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, that was kind of the final straw that broke 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 wanna raise money for my startup, like it was chatbot, then it was NFT, and then it was crypto. I remember all that.

Yeah.

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.

Um, but like, how do you, what, 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?

I mean, I think that is more of like, you just have to figure some, you start with a simple why and you figure it out as you go. And I think. All of us that are, 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.

How many times did you wanna give up?

I don't think about giving up.

It's like, that's not, when you wake up every day, it's the most fun Yeah, but like, it's like confronting people in the industry, like, who are telling you that it's impossible.

That's literally what everybody says. 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 gotta like, they're like not getting it. 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's really working.

So, never wanted to give up? You were just like laser focused?

Giving up on what? Like the big vision and purpose of what you wanna do. Like, I don't believe in setting goals that are like, hit to hit X number of users or X, you know, million of revenue by this date as like your primary north star. 'Cause it's a really, like, it's not a very exciting, fulfilling metric.

But how do you set goals then?

What is the problem you're solving? Like, I see a user problem I wanna solve. And we just obsess over that.

So you never gave yourself like a timeline, like, okay, if, if I can't fix it in 2 years, then 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're just, it's just cheap growth capital. But until then, you really only wanna either try to finance it with people you know that you trust, or more importantly, commercial partners. 'Cause commercial partners are aligned in solving the problem 'cause it, 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. 'Cause 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?

Yeah.

Right? And as a founder, that's not always the best thing. Like, it took us 4 years to launch Build, right? We didn't launch, we started working in 2018. We didn't launch in market until 2022.

Have you raised money during that time?

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 grow up in a, you gotta, if you come from an immigrant family, like you gotta survive.

Yeah. What was special about your upbringing, you think, that made you—

Man, I'm so curious and I, I'm gonna 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.

Right?

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 when they got married and they were still living in an apartment. With another couple cuz they couldn't afford their own place.

We had the same story, right? We were sharing an apartment with someone.

But that's like the story. 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 gonna afford a honeymoon trip? You know, I can barely afford to pay rent.

Well, California is a honeymoon.

Well, yes.

It's just that.

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 and 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.

Oh, genius.

Genius. And then I can get free flights. And so he sent it to all these different companies. And this little startup in Seattle called Microsoft goes, called him up for an 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 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. And we were still like deep, deep, deep rural suburbs.

It's good that they could buy a home.

Yeah.

I mean, it was— Most people can't do it now.

That was tough. I mean, that was their first big break. And I remember like, you know, we lived a pretty normal life. And then when I was 5 or 6, my dad comes home one day and he's sitting with my mom. And 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 gonna quit the job, my job, and try to start something. And, you know, he goes, mom's like, we just spent our whole life trying to get to a stable place and you wanna quit? Like, And, you know, at the end of it she said, okay, I support you.

Do you remember that conversation?

Yeah, it was not a, it was not a pleasant conversation. I remember I was 5 or 6. It was very—

Wow.

And, um, anyways, he went off and he started a new company, which obvi— you know, then became one of the internet's biggest thing. And I just, every day after school, like, 'cause 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—

So you saw your parents working every single day?

And you just literally watched them build these businesses from the ground up. It's funny, like my dad and I have recently started doing a lot of, you know, interviews together 'cause 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 interesting. 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, when 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 Interesting.

But like, I wonder, you, you didn't have time for extracurriculars then? Your parents didn't have time to drive you around?

I mean, 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 sport, and 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, 7, 8, 9, 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 to—

How old are your kids now?

5 and 3.

Okay. So you bring them along with you ever?

Sometimes, yeah. They went, uh, to 1 Billion Followers Summit Dubai with me.

Amazing.

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 flights for them. Well.

Well, now you can use your Bilt points to fly in business class, so they'll love it.

Yeah, I, I'm using Amex points right now, but yeah, Bilt is, yeah.

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 wanna go hang out with my friends.

Yeah.

But honestly, it's such a good experience and you gotta have both, right? You gotta, I think, you know, there's a way to have both like that. That is a priceless fortune. 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. 'Cause I, I feel very guilty, 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 gonna live here soon anyways, so.

Why? Okay, let's wrap our 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. Yeah. It's, it's different.

My, my brother and sister are both Stanford and they both live now in New York. So what I'll say—

Do they have kids?

Uh, no, we don't have kids yet.

Um, I think that's the game changer.

Yeah, I totally hear you. I, I think, look, you, my belief is, is, is it's so important to be surrounded by one Different peop— types of people.

Mm-hmm.

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 'cause it gives you a much better sense of like, and New York's 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 homogenous 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 a total distortion of reality.

Yeah.

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 'em, right? And so you're like, well, that startup does this, so we do this a little differently. And their startup does this, 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 stake. And by the way, the same thing is true for Washington, DC with politics. It's a homogenous 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? Which I feel like you seem like you're into the fashion world, you seem like you're into the tech world. It's gotta be tough. Like, San Francisco's not exactly the best fashion place.

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?

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 2 is, if you, if you remember on the why, right? Like there's 100 different ways to solve the problem. And so if you're focused on the why, you're never gonna be hung up on whether the current solution is the right answer or not, 'cause it's just one of 100 different ways you can solve it.

Hmm.

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 gotta say, wait a second, like take a step back. Is the, 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.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

And it's— Committed to the idea, but willing to change the path.

Correct.

Together. I love it.

Um, anyways, thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Very impressive. And, uh, you've been to St. Petersburg many times.

I have. I have. I wanna go back.

It's hopefully you can go, go back soon.

I would love to.

That's amazing. Thank you so much, Ankur.

Thanks for coming by.

Very inspiring. Awesome.