Bilt Rewards founder and CEO Ankur Jain discusses the rationale behind Bilt's business model and why rental payment history should qualify consumers for mortgages.
Opinion
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.”
Insight
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.”
Insight
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 …”
Insight
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.”
What-if
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 …”
Insight
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”