Ankur Jain
Founder & CEO, Bilt Rewards. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Ankur Jain is the founder and CEO of Bilt Rewards, a fintech platform that lets consumers earn points on rent. He previously founded venture studio Kairos, co-founded Humin, and co-founded Rhino.
2shows
2appearances
43statements
11resolved
4supported
3contradicted
36%fully supported
Everything Ankur Jain said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Jain: Founders should avoid traditional VC in their first two years
“I mean, candidly, I'm pretty anti-raising capital from traditional investment groups, especially in the first couple of years of your business.”
Jain: Traditional VC traps founders in a rat race for vanity metrics
“The problem with that is the minute you take capital from a traditional investment fund, you are on this, like, rat race where everyone is chasing growth and these, you know, whatever the hot metric of the month is.”
Jain: Early founders should bypass VCs to partner with corporate buyers
“In the early days, why would you go to a middleman, like a venture firm, whose value add is to connect you to somebody else, who by the way, then still doesn't have any interest in actually helping you, right? Versus going directly to these companies that you …”
Jain: Founders should avoid early VC because partners lack operational understanding
“I think entrepreneurs should do everything in their power to not allow venture capitalists to come into their business. VCs don't generally understand how to run a business. They generally don't understand what your business needs are, and their incentives are…”
Jain: Raising a $100M check is easier than early rounds
“It's pretty much the same process when you're raising a hundred million dollar check. If anything, it might actually be easier. Yeah. Because you're talking to folks at that scale, this is what they do institutionally.”
Jain: Early VC would have killed Bilt's 18-month regulatory fight
“If I had raised venture capital money at the beginning of the company, there's no way I would have had the freedom to make the decision to fight for 18 months to go try to solve that. Because we were looking at this for a 10, 20, 30 year opportunity was worth …”
Ankur Jain: Airlines and hotels make their money from loyalty programs, not core operations
“Airlines and hotels, I know you did a show on this, make all their money on the loyalty program and their credit card programs, not on being an airline and hotel... Delta, United, and American only exist because they make money on loyalty programs.”
Jain: Major airline market caps are lower than standalone loyalty programs
“When you combine the card business and the loyalty business with their airline business is worth less because the airline business loses so much money that the overall company Is worth less than the actual loyalty program in bank business.”
Jain: Aspiring founders motivated only by company size should keep day jobs
“If somebody started the conversation by saying, I want to build a big business, I would say, go stay at your day job. Because it is so painfully difficult, and unless you are so passionate about the problem you're solving, it's not worth it”
Jain: I only build businesses with my close personal friends
“If you start a company with people that you trust, I'm the opposite of the, hey, don't do business with your friends. I only want to do business with my friends.”
Jain: Candidates asking about headcount are red-flag empire builders
“And if someone's asking you how many people they get to manage, like red flag number two, right? Because immediately they're thinking about empire building, not about winning.”
Jain: Bilt is an $11 billion business across housing and hospitality
“So even though the company's an eleven billion dollar business, and we touch housing and hospitality, and we have all sorts of businesses that are hospitality platform services like hotels and restaurants and gyms and pharmacies, we run every business line as …”
Jain: Bilt caps every cross-functional business line at 25 people
“And so we cap these teams of 25 people. We put engineering and product and business development and partnerships and account management and marketing all in that one team. Cap to 25 people.”
Jain: Bilt operates without managers and offers equity buybacks
“We don't hire managers. So that's, I'll start there. We don't do managers. Like, I just don't believe in that. In a world where everybody has to own a piece of this business, and by the way, when I say own, I mean the product succeeds or fails with them, and w…”
Ankur Jain: Pitching naysayers beats 10,000-person surveys for product development
“I find our best product development comes from going to all the naysayers and just trying to pitch them over and over and over and over and over again to see what hits and what doesn't. Like, I don't believe in the, like, go send out a survey to 10,000 people …”
Jain: On-time rent payment is the best predictor of mortgage payment
“It didn't make sense that paying your rent on time every month for five years has no bearing on whether you're eligible to get a mortgage payment. That's the best predictor of whether you're gonna pay your mortgage on time.”
Ankur Jain: Commercial Moon mining and transport will occur in 5-10 years
“Now what we're doing with Moon Express is saying, how do you create the last mile solution to get, you know, whether it's satellites positioned or whether it's, you know, going to the moon and actually mining the moon for, you know, helium three or platinum an…”
Jain: Starting a company with a business plan sets founders up for failure
“I think one of the biggest problems with business school is it loves to tell people to set a business plan with objectives and goals. And like you have, the second you start with that, you have set yourself up for failure.”
Jain: Silicon Valley Has Damaged Its Goodwill and Trust With Regulators
“Silicon Valley has not done itself any favors in building goodwill and trust with the regulators.”
Jain: HUD reversed its denial to let Bilt points fund down payments
“Later that day, I got an updated letter from HUD. That said, dear Mr. Jane, you're pleased to inform that your use case requested is approved, and that was that.”
Jain: Bilt has had profitable unit economics from day one
“We have unit economics that are profitable from day one, right? So we can make money and not need capital.”
Jain: Bilt is rolling out full payment collection to lock in distribution
“So it's like right now we are rolling out a payment solution for every apartment building to collect all rent payments through built. So whether you pay by check or ACH or credit card or the built card, we collect a hundred percent of payments. That is my numb…”
Jain: Keeping cards close to the chest is the worst negotiation tactic
“You see this classic mistake all the time, where people think they need to keep their cards close to their chest and, like, play it coy. Like, that is the worst way to do a deal. Because the truth is that, 99% of the time, there are two or three things that ma…”
Jain: Non-technical founders must aggressively question and push back on engineering timelines
“Most of technology and coding is just logic. By definition, code is a logical structured system. And so asking questions and not accepting the, it just takes three weeks, or it's not possible, or the systems don't allow you to do like the number of times you'v…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ankur's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 FOUNDER'S JOURNALLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Bilt Rewards | 1 | 22 | 43% 3/7 | full record on Founder's Journal → |
 BIGDEALLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Bilt Rewards | 1 | 21 | 25% 1/4 | full record on BigDeal → |