This Single Skill Made Him A Billionaire In Under 1 Year | Ankur Jain

When you think about building a company, you've gotta have the right product to solve a real problem. You have to have the core business economics and all of that stuff. But what people don't talk about is it doesn't matter how good your idea is or how perfect the timing is. If you are not relentless at taking no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no over and over again and still being willing to come to the plate, it doesn't matter.

Ankur Jain is an entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Built Rewards, a company that allows people to get credit card points for paying rent. He went from growing up in an immigrant household to achieving Forbes billionaire status in 2024 at the age of 34 years old.

People think being an entrepreneur means starting a company. It doesn't. Being an entrepreneur just means solving a problem. And because entrepreneurs generally don't have access to resources, it just requires you to get really creative. And so if I was to summarize, you have relentlessness, Second, probably equally, or second most important thing is how—

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Being annoyingly relentless. Uh, I mean, the irony is like when you think about building a company, you've gotta have the right product to solve a real problem. Obviously you have to have the core business economics and all of that stuff. But what people don't talk about is it doesn't matter how good your idea is or how perfect the timing is if you are not relentless at taking No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Over and over again, and still being willing to come to the plate. It doesn't matter. That is the single most important trait that I have found in building any company because for whatever reason, the world likes to reject change. There is just such an inherent resistance to anything different, and so you have to literally will. Your idea into existence. It's, it's, uh, it's exhausting, but also fulfilling.

What was the biggest barrier you had to overcome? The one that gave you the most resistance?

Literally every single— I was up at midnight last night because our big launch of ours from this morning, at midnight, people got cold feet at our partners and wanted to cancel the whole launch. 6 months of working on this. And there's just such a fear of taking risk or change. I mean, every day, honestly, you are battling with just 100 nos. And the key has been like with a singular focus. I mean, like when we started, Built went from 0 to $1.5 billion in less than a year from launch, but it took us 4 years to just get enough people to say yes to make it work. I mean, we thought, Simple idea, right? God, if you could just pay your rent and be able to one day buy a home because you paid your rent, like that should be the most non-controversial thing out there, right? You pay your rent, you get something back, you save it up and you put it towards a home. I thought that I was having the first 6 months, the hardest time in the world pitching this to real estate owners who kept telling me what a dumb idea it was and no, no, no. And finally, when I thought I had it good, You know who called me and said it's not allowed? My lawyer. Goes 6 months later, goes, oh, by the way, we're not actually sure that the regulations allow you to use points towards a down payment. I go, sorry, what? First of all, you didn't think to tell me this 6 months ago, and now you're telling me that you're not sure if the regulations allow me to use points towards a down payment? What are you talking about? And like, it's those moments. It doesn't matter how good the idea is, doesn't matter what business you're going after. We sat there and said, we have 2 choices. We can stop, we can pivot, right? I guess that's probably, let's call that one choice, stop or pivot. Or we can decide to go relentlessly fight the fight and change the regulations. And like, if you really believe in it, that's the only way forward. And so we did, and we spent 18 months going down to Washington, DC, meeting with every agency, every regulator. We had 3 White House cabinet members at one point helping us. Get through this. And we did it. And like, we got the regulations approved to be able to use points to help you buy a home. Um, but that was just like one of a thousand of those battles.

Um, how do you decide though, if it's, if enough resistance means you need to pivot the idea versus you need to still keep bulldozing through? Like, I'm sure you've had those moments.

I think the answer is you do both, right? And so, you know, if you take a step back, I think one of the mistakes that schools teach and like business leaders and all these like inspirational kind of like people talk about is they always talk about setting goals, right? I'm sure you've heard this 100 times. The problem with setting goals is you're setting yourself up for failure because nothing ever goes as planned. And you set a goal, a pivot is failure, right? If you set the purpose, right? What is the problem you're trying to solve? There are 100 different ways at getting to the same end goal. And so that's been the key for us. The North Star has been really simple, which is our generation is spending more money on cost of living than any prior one. How do you take your biggest expense and help people get ahead? And like, there's 100 different ways to accomplish that. But as long as we kept that purpose at the core, we knew that we would figure it out, right?

Yeah.

And, and the business has pivoted and evolved in 100 different iterations of small things. But the essence has stayed the same.

Why did you care so much about that as your North Star? I mean, before Build, you were at Tinder, right?

So I ended up, yeah. So life is a funny way of, of working, right? Like I, I started off like, I'm a good nerdy Indian boy. Like I learned programming like good when I was 10, 11 years old and started my first company, you know, building stuff. Like that's the stuff I love, building stuff, right? And, But I'll tell you, like, what really inspired this work comes down to just my, my growing up. I mean, I, I grew up with immigrant parents, so my parents moved to the US when they were in their 20s, right? My mom moved here for college, uh, Indian family, grew up in Israel traveling around for like, her father was in the peacekeeping force, so she was always moving. My dad grew up in a poor village in India. And like, I, I can't even imagine what it's like to grow up where you're studying on a dirt floor thinking that one day you can come to this country, the United States, where there's a land of opportunity. And it's incredible. Like I watched growing up where they were still figuring out their career, they still didn't have much, and watching them go from nothing to just relentlessly working hard to build something for us as a family. And then as I graduated college, watching our friends and our generation, like, it's crazy how hard it is to get ahead. I mean, like, our friends do everything right. All the people that listen to your stuff, like, they're doing it right. They went to school like they were supposed to. They took out the student loans like you're supposed to. You got the job, and then you look at your balance at the end of every month in your bank account and you're like, how the hell am I ever supposed to get ahead? Right? And that to me, is like the most devastating thing that could possibly happen in this country is you lose that sense of if you work hard and you persevere that you can succeed.

Mm-hmm.

And so, you know, the inspiration behind Built was can we just fix that a little bit? Can we help you hack it a little bit? Can we help you get a little more value so you can still do the things you want to do? You can still get ahead, you know, you could still build your credit, you could still buy a home. Well, there's nothing worse than being told when you're working so hard and you're just trying to live like, Oh, you're not being responsible. You're wasting too much money on avocado toast. Like, it's like, come on, you know? And so if we could create a business model where you're rewarded for doing the things you already do, like that can be needle moving for our generation, is our hope.

Do you think that these people that you're talking about who are working so hard, but at the end of the month, the bank account does not seem to reflect it, do you feel like your view of success is that anyone can work hard enough to find success or What is that equation for you of how to get success?

Well, look, dude, success is a loaded word, whatever. Let's talk about how to make money, right?

Okay.

So like, at the end of the day, the challenge is, yes, you have to figure out how to make more income. There's no question. But part of the problem is, again, you, it's to look at that in isolation without looking at the costs. I mean, like, you're very successful. My fiancée's, Working up being so, but still, like, I look at it and like at the end of the month when you factor in rent and Uber rides and like you go out to the occasional dinner with friends and before you know it, it's out, it's gone. And so there is some trade-off, just how you think about that. But there is an element of being smart with like life hacking, right? Because there's, yes, you want to keep making more money, but half of that is just being really smart about the stuff like you advise everybody. Right. And if you can get that life hack, you can get double the value out of every dollar. That's as good as making double the income, right?

Yeah. As you were growing up and you saw your parents go from having very little as immigrants to becoming very successful in their businesses, what were you learning from them? What were kind of the biggest takeaways you got?

One is relentlessness. I mean, it's tough. Like there was a point in our, like when we, when we were kids, like, My dad started, he left Microsoft. He had, that was his first kind of real job where he started to have some kind of progress, right? And then one day he decided he was going to leave and put it all on the line to start his own company. And I remember being at home and the fight with my parents at home. I mean, like, you know, they spent years finally getting a good job to have income and savings, and he was going to leave. and put all of their savings into a startup that he had never done before. Like, it was crazy. And, and, you know, to their credit, my mom and dad teamed up. They worked together every day. There was no difference of like clocking in at 9 to 5. I mean, this was full commitment. Like, at one point, you know, they had to sell one of the cars and my dad would like, you know, drop me off, then go to work and then drop my mom off. And that's how it took. And you know what? That willingness to do whatever it took to win, which sounds so cliché, but truly, I don't think people fully appreciate. just how much you have to live what you preach, right? And what you believe in. Like he grew, I mean, you talk about built going from zero to billion and a half, like his company InfoSpace went from zero to $40 billion in 3 years, right?

Jesus.

And like you talk about, look, he went through the ups and downs like many of these companies back then, but like that took the most relentless perseverance in addition to having the right business and timing and all that stuff.

Did your lifestyle change very drastically?

It should have, but like having really cheap Indian parents doesn't help. And I'll tell you, like, you know, there was a, a, a kind of philosophy in our household growing up, even before he had made money, no expense was too great for education. I mean, this is really cliché, you know, this is like good Indian household, you know, it's like no expense.

It'll be required listening in school.

Like, No expense was too big for education, but anything else I wanted was like, I mean, candidly prepared me for the fights that I have every day today at my company. Like, you have to get creative and it had to, it was that way growing up. Like, you know, I tell this story, which it's so embarrassing, but like, again, skinny, nerdy Indian kid, 11 years old, learning programming, have a website, decided one day in 7th grade, gotta be so cool to make the basketball team. Delusional, self-delusional. My height, my— I just— it's— it was a long stretch anyways, but I figured I'm at a private school, maybe small class, maybe I can shove my way through. So I started watching some of the tryouts and whatever, and I realized like the key to making the team, if I could show that I could dunk a ball, they have to put me on the team. Now keep in mind, that was like double my height. So it was— Practically not feasible, but I was determined to get there. And I saw this TV ad back then for these things called Jumpsoles, which were essentially these plyometric shoes you'd put on your shoe and you would do your plyometric workouts to increase your vertical leap. So I saw this online and I ran home and I was like, or on the TV ad, and I ran home and I asked my parents to buy it. It was $100, right?

They refused.

And my parents, it was a tough thing. If, if you tried to pull the, well, I'll buy it myself with allowance money, the response was great. And you can pay for your school too. I mean, like, there was no getting around this with money. So I had to like, it's like, how in the world am I gonna get these, these vertical jump shoes to figure out how to get the ball and dunk it? Because otherwise I'll never make the basketball team and I'll never be cool in 7th grade. It was a whole stressful moment. And so I literally went home and I had this brilliant idea. I said, I have an idea. I had heard about companies advertising on websites. So I literally went to the JumpSoul's website. I found the customer service number. Mind you, I had probably not hit puberty yet. So like we're talking squeaky voice. And I called the customer service number. I'm like thinking about myself as an adult now on the receiving end of this. But I called and I go, hey, my name's Ankur Jain. I'd like to speak to the CEO, please. And I just like, and like first time they hung up on me and I called right back and like said, I'm the CEO of this website. And I'd like to talk to your CEO. And eventually, somehow I got put on the phone. This guy who runs, I don't even know what it was, some fitness company that makes these plyometric shoes. And I still to this day don't know if it was out of pity or if he actually thought my business pitch was a good idea, but I offered him 3 months of free advertising on my website if he would send me a pair of shoes. And so Next week I had a box come to the house and I proudly took it to my parents and tried it on. Moral of the story is you can solve any problem with creativity and enough persistence. Also, if you're 5'4, you're not making the basketball team.

So you didn't make it?

I didn't make the varsity basketball team. Oh, that's okay. But I, but I did get, uh, I did get my website my first advertiser.

My mom wouldn't let me join cheerleading. Cheerleading was like the way I thought I was gonna be going to be very cool too. And she was like, no, cheerleaders don't study hard. You have to study.

There you go. Meanwhile, like, my fiancée Erica, the other Erica, was like Miss Texas, Teen Texas cheerleader. She was like the cool kid. So now I'm just like keeping up every day, you know?

That's so funny. So even when you were 11, 10 years old, you were already thinking very entrepreneurially and Yeah.

But you know what it was? It wasn't even like, and this is where I think people think being an entrepreneur means starting a company. It doesn't. Being an entrepreneur just means solving a problem. And because entrepreneurs generally don't have access to resources, it just requires you to get really creative. And so if I was to summarize, you have relentlessness, but the second, probably equally or second most important thing Is how quickly can you identify the win-wins, right? Can you figure out a way to create a, a true win-win? Everyone is so focused in deal-making on what do I get and how do I like negotiate? And the truth is like, if you took 99% of deals and you asked them, what are the 3 things that matter most to you? The 3 things that matter most to me and had that honest conversation. People never had this. They think they need to like shield their cards and play it coy. The reality is if you just ask, what are the 3 things that are most important to you? And I lay out the things most important to you. Realistically, there's usually 2 of the 3 are non-controversial and one of them is where you're at odds and the rest is almost irrelevant. And if you can just focus on that one thing and figure out how to make that work, the rest is a win-win, right? They're getting all the things they want. You're getting all the things you want. And people forget that and they play it so coy, but— Look, even at the most simple level, this company probably just wanted to sell more fitness equipment. And if they got free advertising for the cost of nothing, who cared? It was the cheapest cost of advertising they probably had. For me, it was life-changing, right? It was a win-win. And so I think that same premise extrapolated out. I mean, like, Built has been the most complex version of that chessboard where you have to get win-win-win-win-win, because there's so— Real estate owners and airlines and banks and pro— like, it's a lot of stakeholders, but at the end of the day, it's the same essence, right? Is can you find a way to make something genuinely a win-win for what you want? Mm-hmm. And what they want, right? And then can you be relentless enough to convince them that it actually is worth doing what's good for them?

If someone comes to you with 10 different ideas for their startup and says, what do you think is going to be most successful? How are you analyzing those, those 10 ideas?

Number one is the idea doesn't really matter if the person's the right person. That's number one.

What if they're the wrong person? Are you gonna tell them all 10 ideas are bad?

Honestly, then they're, they're not— everyone should be an entrepreneur. That's the truth. I shouldn't be a dancer. I'm not good at it. Some people shouldn't be an entrepreneur. Like there's just that, that is the reality.

Yeah.

Right. I think for those who are willing and, and ready to really be entrepreneurs, The question is, it's actually not that hard. The best ideas are the most obvious ideas. The best ideas are the simplest ideas, and the best ideas are ones that people actually need. Like, if you ask 10 people, like, here's the idea, would you use it? It sounds so silly, but that's probably your best barometer, um, for is it the right problem you're solving? And the, and I think one of the challenges as a founder is everybody wants to just say, oh yeah, that sounds good. Like, Love your idea. Everyone loves to be supportive.

Then you ask them to take their wallet out.

Bingo. And that's exactly it.

Yeah.

The minute you say, great, will you be my first customer? Well, it's not really for me, but I could imagine why other people would want it. Like, that's your first risk red flag.

So that's what I want you to do with their 10 ideas. Go collect money for all 10 and see where you get the most money.

And honestly, sometimes I wonder when you hear these ideas, like, do you actually believe that's a problem? Or are you just doing it because you heard some VCs investing in it?

Mm-hmm.

Right? And like, there's nothing more toxic than like traditional venture capitalists. Like you go to Silicon Valley, these guys haven't run companies. They're just, they're middlemen and money. And the problem is they're chasing the latest hype cycle. And the reason that's dangerous, it's like, whatever, they can do what they wanna do. But for the entrepreneur, people start thinking that in order to raise money, I have to say I'm a, AI company or this company or whatever, instead of asking yourself, what problem am I solving?

Mm-hmm.

And like, it doesn't matter if you're trying to build a billion-dollar company or you're just trying to run a small business, right? Question is, what problem are you solving for me? And it sounds so obvious, and I cannot tell you how many times people pitch me ideas and I go, well, what's the problem? Like, you know.

What about the, the point that you were saying about it's not necessarily the idea, it's the person? How can you know whether someone is the right type of person to bring a solution to a problem and be successful in that?

It's funny, I was just having this conversation last night at dinner with a, another entrepreneur who's just a really smart, smart guy building something. And we were just breaking down like what we see as like almost 2 different archetypes, right? And you have these deep domain technology experts who are really good at what they do, And they just are going to be the best at building that. You'll see a lot of that in artificial intelligence, a lot of that in these other spaces. And those folks are like, they're just technologists who are going to build, and you want to bet on those guys, right? And then you'll see this archetype, call it the Bezos or Elon archetype, where I actually don't think Elon is a true deep technologist, but he's one of the best pattern matchers, right? And I think that is a, the ability to walk into a meeting, synthesize information, figure out possibilities and the win-wins is a really powerful skillset. What they both have in common is they're delusionally confident that there's always a way. And so the first like flag you should ask yourself if you're an entrepreneur or not is when you hear an idea, is your first instinct the 10 reasons why it won't work?

Mm-hmm.

Or is it the 10 ways you could possibly see how to make it work?

Right.

And I think that is probably the best gut detector of whether or not you're ready to start a company.

Which one, which type are you?

Of the two, I'm definitely probably more of a pattern matching type.

Yeah.

Than a deep technologist type. Although I love geeking out on the deep technology.

You were saying the other night you spent like 2 hours with ChatGPT.

I know, it's so embarrassing. I, I have been trying to learn complex new technologies for a while now, like how exactly chips on a computer convert electrical signals into zeros and ones and how it knows what to do with it. And it sounds so boring, but it was fascinating to me. And I've been trying to ask all these smart people who like say all these smart things and I smile and nod as if I understand what they're saying. And I went home one day and I don't know why I was bored on a Sunday and I just like asked ChatGPT, the new AI platform. I was like, can you explain to me how you're, how you understand zeros and ones? And all of a sudden it started explaining this to me in like English that I could understand. I spent 2 hours studying and learning how chips were started from the early days through what the kind of complex specialized chips we have today, and then how that converts into similar DNA computing. It was the coolest, coolest experience ever. And I think honestly, taking that back just for a second, I do think there's an element of intellectual curiosity. that drives this archetype that's really important for entrepreneurs, which is to be pattern matching. You have to just be genuinely curious because that gives you enough exposure to then figure out how to match patterns, right? And I think, you know, one of my favorite quotes my dad always says is, you know, great ideas and the best innovations are not thinking outside the box. Thinking outside the box means you've already decided this is the limitations, this is the way of doing it. Now you're trying to get extra creative, and it's almost a little arrogant to say you're thinking outside the box because you think you're so much more creative than every other expert who's ever been in that box. The best innovation is thinking about the same problem from a different box, right? Hey, this worked in this field. What if I applied it here? Someone's talking about sending text messages on an iPhone. Could I use that?

Yeah.

to send crop pricing back and forth to people who don't have access to computers, right? Like, that's where the real innovation happens. For us, it was, hey, you earn rewards on here rather than solving the home ownership problem with, you know, all these government entities and nonprofits and all of that. Could we just take the same concept that works in travel and apply it to housing, right?

Yeah.

And I think that's, again, it's often the best ideas are the simplest ideas.

Are you the kind of entrepreneur where if you have an idea, you're going to hide it from others?

No.

Or are you the one to like share it right away and get feedback?

1,000% share ideas and get feedback and iterate. So like, it's embarrassing. I don't know where my cell phone went. I was just looking for it. But like, it's embarrassing how many people I text in a day. But even more embarrassing is that 90% of it is going, hey, what do you think of this? And I'm shocked people still respond to me, but like, That's the only way you quickly gut check, like, what's going on? I mean, like, you people think that like ideas are the secret sauce. I mean, hopefully if the one takeaway from this conversation so far is like ideas are kind of a dime a dozen, most of them are bad, some of them are good. None of that matters.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

And so if you've got the right feedback loop, you can iterate fast enough to then get it right, and then you out-execute with relentlessness. And you just figure out how to, you know, all the other business metrics like distribution and all of that that matter.

No, I almost think it's comical when I've had a few people come to me wanting to share their ideas. They want me to sign an NDA first, and I'm like, I'm absolutely not signing that. If that is your focus, totally, I think you're focused on the wrong thing.

100%. I mean, at that point, if you're worried that someone who's already got a busy day job is gonna beat you because they didn't sign an NDA, you're in trouble.

Right.

And I think, look, we're talking at a very high level. There are a lot of tactical things on starting a company and how to build a business, whether it's a small business or a large business that are really important. Like you have to think about how you create a, you know, network effect. How do you create a defensible moat? Like it's not just having a good product.

Mm-hmm.

And Silicon Valley has this like vision of build a great product and they will come. It's just not how it works. Like the hardest thing in the world. So tech, by the way, is a mature market now. You know what I mean? Like we grew up thinking tech was different and new, and it was true. Like there was a time I'll never forget, I had, I had the chance to have dinner with the CEO of Alibaba 10 years ago, back when they were just starting. And I was asking him how they beat eBay so badly in China. I mean, eBay had such a head start, right? And there was 2 things he said that stood out to me. One is he said, number one, eBay spends so much time worrying about their competitors, they don't focus on the customer. He goes, I do not wanna hear, I don't want competitive research. I don't wanna hear what eBay does. If they do anything that matters to me, my customer will tell me eBay's doing this, why aren't you?

Mm-hmm.

And that stuck with me. Like, I do not want my team at Built sending me a bunch of comp reports to other products because it's just a bunch of noise. Like if the customers care about something, they'll tell us, right? You just don't listen.

Yeah.

That was one that really stuck out. But 2, which was a symbol of a different era, was he said eBay sure had 90% market share of all the internet users in whatever year that was, right? When they first started. But every year that total market was growing by 20% and I was owning 90% of all the new users.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And you can do that in a massive technological platform shift era Which comes around not very often, right? But for right now, at least, tech is largely a mature market. We have our, we have our version of the GEs and IBMs. They're just called Google and Microsoft, right? And so I think we have to treat it differently. And in a market where it's mature, you have incumbents, things like distribution and customer acquisition matter as much as your idea.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's oddly not something you hear talked about in the first 2 to 3 minutes of any good pitch is, what is your distribution? You know?

The customer thing is so interesting though, 'cause I remember obviously Jeff Bezos for Amazon was always saying, customer first, customer first.

Totally.

And I remember my mom became a customer of Amazon. She loved books in 1996.

Incredible.

And her thing to me was like—

I should just invest in anything your mom tells me.

I know. She told my dad she'll never talk to me again. She'll never stop talking about that. But, and she was saying, you know, this Amazon, they're amazing because if a book comes and I don't like it, I can return it, no problem.

Right.

That stuck with me. It's like—

Huge.

That was his one thing that he was going for to make the customer happy. And look at where they are now.

100% right. And look, there's obviously, it's, as you and I both know, like there's 100 other things that play into it, but if you don't have that, none of the other stuff matters. Right. And I think, That customer obsession is something people talk about. And I get it's really easy to let that go because you justify things as short-term changes. You go, well, let's just do this because it'll drive the monthly or quarterly results to show to our investor, and then we'll go back to that. Or, hey, it'll just get us a good press hit if we just do this, and then we'll go back to it. And every time you do that, Yeah. That little paper cuts, next thing you know, you're not a true customer-focused company. Um, and it's hard. And this is why it's so important as an entrepreneur, as much as you can, to try to avoid taking venture capital money and other stakeholder involvement too early, because you start to focus on pleasing those stakeholders instead of focusing on the customer.

I wanna rewind then. So that first company that sold to Tinder, did you make money on that?

Very little. It was one of these things where we got— again, I just credit this to luck. We didn't make any really at the time, but we got it. It was an equity acquisition, and we didn't know what Tinder was going to be at the time either. But you know what? Life has a funny way of working itself out. And not only did I get an incredible experience, but You know, we grew Tinder into the time when I left, it was that we sold it for $3 billion. And so that ended up becoming, uh, an interesting, exciting opportunity, but it wasn't, it wasn't a given.

Oh, interesting. So that was how you made your quote unquote first million was from the sale, not, uh, not of your company, but once Tinder.

Well, it was in equity version, but it wasn't cash until. Yeah.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

And so then you left right away and that's when you start— started Built?

So no, at that point we said, okay, this time around I really wanna know what is the problem I'm solving. Let's be a little bit more thoughtful about this. And so we, we, I mean, this, this problem was so close to home. I mean, so many of my friends at that, we were 27, 28, we were living in San Francisco at the time and like, it was crazy. Like my ex, at the time was like still saddled with student loans. I mean, she was like a successful, like in her business and whatever. And like, it was so frustrating to see the number of our friends that were dealing with this. And I just had my first thing and I was lucky to have obviously some backing. And still you look at this and it's crazy. Like, it's no wonder everyone is like trying so hard to find any way, any inch you can get to get ahead because you're getting squeezed.

Yeah.

Everywhere, like your rent, your Uber, every— there's a new fee on my like ridesharing app every day. Right? And so finding a way, the thesis was all this other fluff in Silicon Valley, the like whatever buzzword at the time, right? At the end of the day, people still spend their money on housing, healthcare, transportation, groceries, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like, and that was Bezos's whole insight back in the days. Like, people are gonna read books. They read it 1,000 years ago. People will read books 1,000 years from now. It may be digital, it may be implanted in your brain, who knows? But the same behaviors exist. And so we said the next big thing we want to solve is taking these markets where people spend most of their money that are clearly broken and just fixing it to work in the interest of the consumer, right? There's no other consumer product space. Like if you're building a consumer product, Where else do you charge more every year, but your product gets worse the more you charge? Like, that's crazy. People would revolt. But yet when it comes to these costs of living, you just like, people assume they have no choice. You pay more in rent and you get less. You pay more for groceries, you get less. You pay more for healthcare, you get less. Like, it's crazy. Flying.

I cannot believe—

Travel, transportation. Travel right now. It's insane. And I honestly, I don't even know who's the people affording this anymore because It's gotten so crazy and like, thank God for the points and miles world. Like, you know, but it is, uh, it's amazing to me how much these industries sit there. And even when people try to fix it, they focus on optimizing it for the industry incumbents, not the consumer.

How do you think about risk? Obviously when you started this build, you had enough of a fi— of a financial cushion from your previous successes that you were okay taking the risk and maybe not making a lot of money for a long time. How should others be thinking about risk if they have an idea that they love, but they are still working a 9 to 5 making minimum wage?

First question, how much do you believe in yourself? Number one, cuz then you ask yourself, what's riskier? Putting your life, your income, your, what, your significant other's income, your kids, your family in the hands of some guy you barely know who's your boss or yourself, right? And like, You know what, for some people the answer may be you feel safer having your future in the hands of somebody else, and that's totally fine. But if you say to yourself that I would rather trust myself, then it's not really a question, then it's just a matter of what you're doing, right?

Yeah.

And do you go out there and build a small business? Do you, do you build a technology company? Do you go create your own like online e-commerce store? I mean, there's 100 ways to do it. Um, do you create your own podcast, right?

Um, I've made $0 so far from the podcast.

Oh, you should fix that.

Let it be known.

But like, these are important questions to answer. Um, but I don't know, like people talk about risk all the time. Like, I think entrepreneurs are the most risk-averse people. Like, I spend all my day thinking about how to minimize risk. Like, you know, you're just doing it in a way that others perceive as, like, other people think that what I do is risky. I think that what they do staying in their jobs at companies that I don't think are that interesting or doing that well is more risky, you know?

Or for bosses you don't like, bosses you don't believe in.

Right.

I agree with that. I think you should always look at the people who are above you and see if you really wanna be them in 10 years, or if you wanna be their boss in 10 years.

Or if you'd fire them.

What do you think is the quickest way right now for people to make money?

You asked me how to get rich quick?

Yeah. Tell me.

It's called, it's called a scam.

What's something as an entrepreneur that you in your past Believed you were absolutely correct about that? Now, looking back, you were wrong.

The best product wins. Um, it's just not the case. Like, you have to have a great product, but the best product doesn't mean you win, right? One, because like I said, it doesn't matter how good the idea of the product is. The amount of resistance to new things requires creativity and relentlessness to push it out. I mean, I literally, I sometimes think like you are truly like willing ideas into the world, right? Like art entrepreneurs are kind of like artists in a weird way. Like not, and we're not as cool and we can't do things like that, but like everything in this room was created by somebody, right? Who literally imagined it and willed it into existence, which is a cool, cool thing to think about, right? But to actually make that happen, You have to be relentless with it.

Do you think people who don't want to become entrepreneurs can build uber wealth or no?

Like I said, ownership, equity. There's a lot of ways to get equity without starting your own company, right? I think it's a really important thing. And, you know, I was watching, uh, you watched the Hasan Minhaj Kevin O'Leary interview the other day?

No.

So it was an interesting 30 minutes. It was one of the most fierce debates I've actually watched in a really intellectual way from both sides. It was quite fascinating. But like, I think the one takeaway is like, look, different types of equity. You can bet on a startup, high risk. You should really think twice before doing it. Even just putting your money in markets, really valuable, right? I mean, that's an equity base. You're betting on a country, right? The economy. ownership in a home is equity. There are a lot of people— think about it, like, I mean, it was very different in our grandparents' generation, but like, they were in the United States, they could buy a house for like $30,000. It was psycho, you know? Uh, but those people have— some of the people have like made millions of dollars from just owning that equity in that home, right?

Yeah.

And you can own equity in a company you work at, right? You can own equity in ideas that you then sell to people. I mean, there's so many ways But I think people tend to focus on just income. And I would say there's no question that income is the first priority because you have to pay for life, obviously. But if you wanna create wealth, you gotta ask yourself, how am I building ownership? Um, and whatever it is.

One of the things that I think is most incredible about you is you are the most brilliant networker I've ever met. And I remember being in college and law school and you ask these people 10 years ahead of you, like, what is your best advice for me and they were like, Erica, go learn how to network. And it's like, what, what is networking? How do I learn how to do it? So what's your advice for networking? How did you become such a good networker?

So I have always hated the idea of networking. So like, I'll answer this in a very weird way and then I'll come back, I promise. So there was, uh, you ever have like people that show up in your life who you kind of feel like are these like pivotal moments that change, you know, like these, Weird, random conversations. You meet someone, you talk, and it's like this. So there was 2 of those moments for me that I can point to. One, when I was 17, after I graduated high school, I had this incredible opportunity to go work for the former US Joint Chiefs of Staff who ran the US military. He had moved to Hong Kong and he was now working, leading a lot of US-China relations, but also private equity and foreign policy. I mean, it was just This is one of the most impressive leaders I've ever come across. And I had the opportunity to basically go be his chief of staff for a few months. And so I flew to Hong Kong, I'm 17, and I can't tell you the experience that I had. I'll never forget, there was a period of 24 hours where they woke me up at 4:00 AM. We walked out, we had to get on a plane. We flew that morning to Seoul. In South Korea, we met with the chairman of LG, met with the prime minister, flew to Beijing, had lunch, uh, or like a late lunch, and then that night got back super late and the admiral had a meeting with the governor of Hong Kong. I mean, it was one of these like days that you're like, how is this possible to do in one day? And it was late night and we were walking through IFC Mall, which is like this big downtown Hong Kong, and we were going down the escalator and I remember looking at the admiral and I was like, It is so amazing to me how you know everybody. You have so many friends everywhere. It's incredible. You know everyone. I can't believe it. Here I am, an excited 17-year-old, like, oh my God, one day I want to be able to do that. And he looks at me and he goes in a deep voice, deep military, he goes, Ankur, are you prepared for a very lonely life? What? That is so not what I was talking. He goes, he goes, Ankur, the truth is when you get to this stage and this level of things, you really only have 3 or 4 close friends that you can count on that are there that you can trust. And, and that's just the reality. And I hope you're prepared for that. And I was sat there a little bit in shock. And I remember saying, probably naively, you know, but I said, well, you know what, Admiral, like, you may be right. But I think I'd rather get here with my friends than here all by myself. Um, and from that moment on, like everything that I tried to do and build, like you spend every waking minute as an entrepreneur working on the thing you care about. And yet people pick people to work with based on their resume, not who they wanna be their lifelong friends.

Mm-hmm.

Which is the weirdest thing. This is, people, you spend more time people you're building something with than your significant other. And so since then, everything I've done from the first thing I started in college through to the first company after college, through to my time at Tinder, and still to this day at Built, the first question I ask when I meet people is, are you the kind of person that I want to be friends with, that I can spend time with, that is intellectually curious the same way I am, that wants to share experiences the same way I do? Because that's what life's about, right?

Yeah.

Everything's about— you have a bunch of memories and experiences and then you die. So can you share those with people you enjoy? And honestly, that has been my approach. There are lots of incredible people that are very successful that probably aren't people that I'd care to meet. But there does tend to— I think this was kind of the inadvertent thing. I found that there was a lot of just smart, People who tend to hustle and achieve are also the kind of people I enjoy spending time with. And so I think a lot of the network I built was a little accidental in just finding people that I wanted to be surrounded by, to do cool things with and build great things with. And I've been lucky that throughout that journey, sometimes I've been able to help bring them along. And times when I was struggling, they helped bring me along. And, you know, like, we're still young. I'm just turned 33. Like, I'm still nowhere close to the Admiral and where he was, and we'll see if I can keep making it there with everybody. But I think that has, um, been a core principle in how I ended up inadvertently, um, building a lot of these relationships.

Let's get even more granular though. Yeah. There's a 20-year-old out there listening about to graduate from college. Yeah. And they're told, go network, go network. Like, how, Practically, do you do it? I get that we have to surround ourselves with people.

I mean, you don't, you, you, I'm telling you, like you network by finding people with shared passion and shared interests. Truly. Now, if you care, there's obviously value in the relationship. The question is how you do it and what you're, the types of people you're being surrounded by. So number one is like, how do you meet someone? And 2 is how do you have a relationship? I guess I started backwards, which is, it doesn't matter who you meet. If you can't see them as someone that you would be friends with, it's not even worth trying to network with them cuz you'll never build an authentic relationship. It just doesn't work. Right. And people see through it and they don't care and you don't care. And it's, you might have their phone book, but you can get anyone's email today. You can email anybody. That's not the hard part.

Right. Yeah.

So the question is, that's the relationship question. Getting in a room with someone, that is a tactical skillset. Right. And I think that's probably where you're going with this. Yes. Which is how do you get in the room? And I think one of the most undervalued, especially when you're young, you're, we were talking about it at dinner the other night. First of all, when you're a student, that is your best platform. To this day, one of the biggest legs up I had is I started meeting amazing inspirational people as a student, cuz just things I was interested in, I would just email them to get together and learn. And like, it's amazing. And so one thing that you'd say is when you're a student, you have a platform. If you're really savvy about it as a student, you should create a platform within that. Right? You created this really clever idea of an award that you gave on behalf of the students. Who doesn't want an award on behalf of students, right? It's an amazing way to meet people. For me, we created the first incubator at universities and said, we have the smartest young people, help us build these companies. And we found people who cared about entrepreneurs, but we were able to meet some of these incredible leaders. And like, that was one of the best platforms I ever had.

Right.

And people underestimate the value of a platform and the value of being a student.

Yeah.

And so by the time you graduate, you're just another person looking for a job, right? So number one is, let's say before you even graduate, leverage that. If you've already graduated, you're not, it's not a lost cause. You know, think about again, what is the platform you have? And if you can find a platform and create an experience for people, like that is the one thing we all crave. Again, we are living for experiences. Right? That is what we do. Everything we work towards is for some sort of an experience, right? And so if you can help create experiences where people that have shared interests and shared value are equally as attracted to that kind of moment, some people do that through events, right? Some people do that through dinners. Some people do that through trips. Some people do it through like book clubs, whatever it might be. I know it sounds corny, but like there's a lot of value into bringing, using a platform like that to attract the people, to get them in the door. And then if it's an authentic relationship where you share experiences, you're gonna, you're gonna be able to call that person 5 years from now and they'll still pick up the phone.

Yeah.

Right? Um, if it's a type of relationship where you have to force CRM check-ins, the email reminders in order to stay relevant, like it just, it doesn't work.

And just to give people context, we, Ankur and I had dinner a few nights ago and I was telling him when I was a student at Georgetown Law, there was this Georgetown Law alum named Chris Sacca, who you may know from Shark Tank. He was this billionaire investor and I really wanted to talk to him. So I thought, how could I access someone like that? And I founded the Georgetown Law Entrepreneurship Club and made up the Georgetown Law Entrepreneur of the Year Award. And so then it's like, okay, how do I let him know that he's won my Georgetown Law Entrepreneur of the Year Award. So I tried every different combination of chrissaka@gmail.com, like chris.saka@gmail.com, everything I could possibly do, and everything bounced except for one email. And then a few days later, he, his assistant messaged me and said, oh, Chris is honored to accept this award. And so I got on a call with him and it was life-changing because that was, he was the first person who told me, hey, just because you went to law school, Doesn't mean you can't be an entrepreneur. Use the legal degree to get your foot into the door. People are going to assume things about you, assume you're smart, you're qualified, but use that to get your foot in the door and do whatever you want with it. So it was life-changing.

It's incredible. And that is a perfect story of how to leverage the platform you have as a student. And again, it's a combination of like, that's the best example because you're both a student and you created a platform that aligned with what your interests were, which was about entrepreneurialism, right? And you found a way to attract people like Chris Sacca who share the interests you do and build that relationship, right? And I think that's just, there's so many ways to do that for people. And I just think people wait and they assume you have to like, you know, I don't know, go to conferences and shake hands and give business cards and like, it just doesn't work that way.

Yeah. And I think something I've, that you've set up quite a bit now is just getting comfortable with the no, no, nos and being relentless and persistent. That's what I realized too, is no one's going to come and open that door wide open for you. You have to like go knock on it to get there.

I mean, knock, kick, scream, but it's like, it really is like, it's amazing to me how the problem is it's a little bit of a perverse incentive structure in, in these existing incumbent systems, right? Where People aren't rewarded, unfortunately, in those large organizations for taking risks or trying different things. Doing so just exposes them to risk.

Mm-hmm.

And so you have to just imagine when you're trying to bring, doesn't matter how good your idea is, they're taking a bet not just on you, they're putting their own job, at least in their mind, on the line. And that's why it's so hard to push things through. And even for a consumer, like, changing a habit is hard, right?

Yeah.

And that requires that consistent, relentless persistence. But again, I'll say there's persistence and relentlessness where you're just banging your head on the same wall over and over again. And there's creative relentlessness where no just means ask again differently.

Mm-hmm.

Make a slightly different change, a slightly different approach, slightly different person you're asking, right? That's the key, right? It's doing the same thing over and over again. That's get the same results.

Definition of insanity.

Yeah.

As you're building your team, obviously you want to surround yourself with people you enjoy being with, but what other things tactically are you thinking about?

So number one, I want people who understand that the quickest way to get fired is by telling me it's not possible. I cannot stand that. No people and not possible people should never Walk into my, my office.

Have you hired lawyers?

So I'll tell you, when I hear lawyer, I cringe generally because again, wrong incentives, right? And I think the best lawyers, like what you do today with your content, is tell me how to do what I need to do. Don't tell me why I can't do it.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And like, that is the most invaluable resource you can have, right? And you want a team Who's there to tell you, here's how you can achieve it. And by the way, it may not always be the right decision and it may not be worth it. And so I always say, if we want to go to Mars, tell me how we could do it, what it's going to take, how much it's going to cost, and what the risks are and trade-offs are so we can decide maybe it's worth it, maybe it's not. Probably not worth it right now. But that type of framework and discussion— Is how you create a growth culture. It is scary to me. One of the things that petrifies me is seeing how many companies that I thought were innovative, that I looked up to, that I now get to work with, have become this no culture. And it's like they got to where they are by saying, let's go innovate and push the boundaries and say yes. And I don't really, I don't have an answer yet for why that changed, but my hope is that If you can keep relentlessly instilling the culture with the same focus that we relentlessly push the external things like sales and acquisition, like you have to be that relentless internally too. Like you get a no at a customer, you're gonna hit them 10 times more on the outside, right?

Yeah.

Internally, if someone says no, you gotta squash that right away.

Yeah.

And I think people, my guess, my best guess is companies as they grow, they're so wrapped up in all the growth and the external stuff, they forget to have that same ruthlessness internally. Something I admire again about Elon, for better or for worse, people love him or hate him, but I admire that he cares so much about the internal culture is we can figure it out. Literally, if we need to get to Mars, we'll get to Mars.

What are you trying to do to protect that culture as you're growing? Because obviously with a 10-person team, it is easier to make everyone on, get everyone on board for that same culture and those ethos than with a 1,000-person team.

I'm figuring it out is a short answer, right? And like the best I can do today that I've been trying and seems to be working so far, but we'll see, is like all of your leadership team has to truly believe that culture as deeply as you do. To the point where it angers them to hear not possible as much as it does you.

Right.

And then anytime you see even the slightest example internally at the company, you need to call it out and fix it right away. 'Cause it does, it's like a virus to spread. It is so much easier to say no than it is to try.

Yeah.

Um, and you just can't, can't allow that to spread.

Are you afraid of competitors? You're not?

No, I think it's great. I think competition's great. It pushes you. Like I said, like at the end of the day, my, my answer is simple. Like, are we solving the problem for the customer? Are we being smart about how we solve for the customer? Are we building defensive moats, right? Like, that is important. Like, I'm not worried about competitors coming after me 'cause I'll outwork them every day and night, right? The question is, did we build our business in a way that is protectable because it is defensible, right? Like, do we build something unique? Are we creating network effects? Like, I hate using buzzwords, but there's some truth to every, every cliché, right?

Yeah.

And, and in a business, you'd ask yourself, okay, you got in the door. Why does it now make it harder for the next person to come in the door? Right. And I think Anyways, short answer is like right now we're just, if you, sounds cliché, but if you ruthlessly focused on solving the problem for your customer and listening, right? Because the problems change. Once you solve that problem, it's no longer a problem by definition, right? So now they have a new problem. Are you expanding into their new problem? Right? And I think that's, someone said to me once, and I love this quote, they said, companies often spend so much time worrying if they're staying true to their mission, they forget to ask if their mission is still relevant to the customer. And you see a lot, things change fast and they're changing faster in today's world. So I think that's a really critical question to keep asking yourself is the problem we solved for them a year ago, now that it's solved, what is their current problem and how can I be the solution for that too? And that, and that's how Amazon went from books to Amazon Prime TV to overnight shipping to the biggest logistics company in the country. I mean, it's incredible.

I hate to use the buzzword, but do you care about work-life balance? Do you have any?

Again, I understand this isn't— I don't believe in work-life balance is a short answer, but I don't, 'cause like the, the reason is simple. Like I can't imagine a life Where I have to spend 10 hours a day working. That sounds so miserable, right? But if you make your work your life, then I spend 10— I spend 24 hours a day living. And it's like, it really is. That's why I just don't understand. I'm not saying you have to be an entrepreneur. You don't have to do your own thing, but you should. And it's not like, go do what you love. You got to make money, right? But there's a way to make money. And do things that you find enjoyable, that you wake up wanting to do, right? That are interesting, just problems to solve, or a job that gives you the ability to travel. So like the work is just the path to traveling. Like I think in another life, like being a flight attendant or a pilot's a pretty damn cool opportunity. You get to go see the world as part of your job. I mean, that's incredible. Um, and if you can't afford to do that, which is most people, In this country, what better way to work, but really you're just living?

I was going to say the same. I would be a flight attendant if I could.

Totally.

It seems exhausting. I talk to them now all the time about how is it when you travel from Dubai to LA, do you stay on LA time or do you stay on Dubai time?

Controversial take, I don't believe in jet lag. I think it's fake.

No, it's not. I've been pretty good about it though. I'm so good with Not being that impacted by it.

Some nights I go to bed at 10 PM, some nights I go to bed at 2 AM. That's already a 4-hour time difference. Like, I, I don't know, maybe it'll change when I have kids or something, but right now I'm like, I don't believe in jet lag.

We have some health experts coming on the podcast and I think they're gonna tell you you're absolutely wrong.

They're, they're, they're not possible, people.

We're gonna switch gears a little because you are a travel expert and of course I need to ask you about your travel hacks.

We're definitely like, I was talking with Erica, my fiancée, about what we're gonna do for our wedding. And we just like, we knew it wasn't gonna be like, we wanna make, forget about a wedding. We just wanna do a traveling experience with our friends. Like we are, we love it.

I love that. So what do you think people could do instantly to be better with travel? Hack the system more.

So the amount of hours that my friends spend figuring out how to travel hack is like unbelievable cuz it's so complicated. Anytime you have 50 different blogs having to keep you up to date on different things just to figure out how to get value, like the system is broken.

Yep.

So back to like the whole thesis of how do you make it easy for people who are already overwhelmed and already working really hard and paying their life expenses to make it easy to just do the things you wanna do, like travel. We've tried to figure out how to solve it with Built.

Right.

So just taking a step back, you know this, but with Bilt, you said rent is your biggest expense. Why can't you earn points and miles just by paying your rent? You already do it every month. It's your biggest expense. That could take you around the world if you could just earn those points and miles. So that was the first thing we solved. I mean, Bilt is the first program that lets you earn points and miles just by paying it every single month.

And no extra fees on the rent, right?

No, you don't pay fees on the rent. It's, it's just a simple thing. It's how it should be.

Right?

It's not a revolutionary idea. You pay your rent every month on time, you should get points and miles. And so we've built the most valuable points and miles currency. You can use it on, you know, I think it's almost like 20 different airlines, one-to-one transfer. You can use it to book any flight through a travel portal. You can use it for hotel stays. You know, it's a simple concept. I wanna pay my rent, earn miles. That's part one. Make it really easy for people to earn enough miles to travel. Without having to think about it and havel hack and worry about which credit cards they're using for what category and how to— it's just no one has the atten— I can barely sit through a TikTok video, much less worry about that. Right? So that's number one, make it really easy. And you do with BILT, you can earn points on rent just by paying your rent on time every month. Okay. 2 is then what do I do with it? How do I get from here to Dubai? How do I get from here to London? How do I get from here to Miami? Using my points and miles, and God, it's been so hard to figure out. Am I getting a good deal? Am I not getting a good deal? Do I transfer to one program to book this airline? Do I use it through the portal using points? Pay with cash like ah. So we tried to just make it simple, right? How do you normally search if you were if you had the money to do it? You would go to site, search New York to London, and it would tell you all your options. You'd pick a flight, and you'd pick the one that's either the cheapest or the airline you like, or you know the time of the day. And it's that simple. We have now made it that simple for people to use their points they earn from paying rent to book a flight without having to do any research and get the best possible deal on the market with no hours or time spent on research.

Because it's all on the app.

Because you literally go inside your Bilt app, you pay your rent, you get your points, you say, I want to go from New York to London, and we transparently show you real-time award availability on all of the transfer partners. Plus the pay with points or points with cash. And you can literally look and we'll tell you, by the way, the best way to get to London is to transfer your points to Iberia and use Iberia to book British Airways. And we just show it to you and you just pick which flight you want to take. It tells you the lowest possible points to take that flight or what it is to pay with points as cash. And then you pick the one you want and we show you step by step exactly what to do. And the whole process takes you 30 seconds to pay your rent and 1 to 2 minutes to pick the flight. That's it.

That's insane. But isn't it so frustrating too? These airlines are devaluing the points.

You know what the beauty of this type of thing is? It's like they can do that in a world where there isn't ease of comparison.

Mm-hmm.

And free market. At the end of the day, like if they want loyalty, they need to create value back to— are you creating value for the customer? Right? It's like the same thing over and over again. And I think, sometimes they start to forget who their key stakeholder is, right? And you see that there, there are airlines doubling down on the value, not just on points and miles, on the experience, on the on-flight experience, all of it, right? It's not just points and miles. It's like, do they treat you well when you check in or do they yell at you?

Yeah.

Right? Are they gonna nitpick at you over the centimeter of your bag, right? Or are they gonna let you on, right? Because it's okay for them and okay for you. I think like, Airlines, hotels, any industry that forgets the customer is always right, it's just a slow decline.

Yeah.

So yes, there are airlines that are doing that. And by the way, if they're not doubling down in some other way to make up for that, I would probably not invest in that company stock. But the beauty is with something like BILT now, you as the consumer are empowered. You paid your rent, Earn points and miles. It's a flexible currency that can transfer around where you need it and will make it easy for you to know the best way to get the best value for yourself. That's it. Because I want everyone to have the same experiences that I want to have too.

Yeah.

And they get to have that option just by paying your rent.

That's nice. Because I remember when I first got into travel hacking, you can just spend hours learning on subreddit travel hacking about how to do it. And they're really, And you have to stay up to date too because things change. Like sometimes it's better to transfer to Air Canada to buy this Emirates flight or whatever it is. Sure. There's a lot of like roundabout ways to go about it. Oh my God. And if you don't have hours in the day to spend as your hobby to do it, then it's hard for you.

And it's, it's totally unfair because the people who are working hard and trying to, like, they don't have, most people don't have the time to do that cuz you're trying to get your job to make the money to travel in the first place.

Right?

It's like this, this crazy spiral. And so, Yeah, just making it simple. Solving that has been— this has been a passion of mine. I believe we have helped solve it. I think everyone should try it and gimme the feedback if they don't think so, um, so we can fix it even more. But I think that should address and make travel hacking for the 80, 90% of the things you want to do much easier. Now, if you're trying to figure out the like specific lie-flat seat that has this thing and that, that's a different level that I haven't solved yet. But at least I can help you earn points and miles quickly and help you get the most value out of them for experiences like travel.

Where do you see yourself and the company in 5 to 10 years?

I mean, God, if I told you every 6 months, I think I was such an idiot 6 months ago and that there's so much bigger opportunity here. Like, at the end of the day, when I think about Bilt, I think about the company as something that says, like, if, if American Express was this company that was like, Look, you're rich and you've made it, and I'm gonna give you a, like, you know, the Trump era gold card to tell everybody that you've made it. Like, I think our generation's a little different. I think we want to do all those aspirational things, but we want to, we need a little bit of, we want help getting there. I want to like life hack a little bit. And so Built's whole thing is do the things you're doing and we're gonna make it rewarding to do the things you want to do.

Yeah. Right.

And that's it. And so, If we do that right in 5 years, like I hope Built is your most, your way you earn rewards on housing, how you earn rewards on your healthcare, your transportation, your groceries, your everyday life expenses that matter. Like that is what we want to fix for people. That same pie chart that we drew in 2017 that I was telling you about, we started with housing and I'd like to hit each of those key, uh, pieces. And, and that's what I want to focus on is these areas where people are spending more to live.

Yeah.

And getting less. And can we help you get a little bit more so you can do a little bit more of the things you want to do?

So our closing tradition, the podcast is called Erica Taught Me, but really today's all about Ankur Taught Me. So what do you want people to walk away from this being able to say Ankur taught me this?

Look, I think the one takeaway is life is expensive and it's hard, and there's no life quick, easy hack, but there are ways to create a lot of wealth. if you just take some basic steps around things like relentlessness, pursuing things to drive ownership and equity. And I think it's such a, uh, just not talked about. People always want the quick dollar, the quick flip, the quick hustle, and it's just, it doesn't work. Uh, Built has been 5 years in the making to have an overnight success, right? And really, I would say that it all goes back to when I first started coding when I was 10 years old. It's been, 23 years in the making to get there. And it is just, it is like everything else. It is just persistence and patience and focusing on a purpose and you will get there.

Thank you.

Thanks.

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