The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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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: 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: 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: 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 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: Framing new products in familiar categories is underrated
“Taking the problem, the solution, and then translating it into the boxes people understand today is so underrated in marketing.”
Jain: Bilt Rewards processed over $100B in housing volume
“And by the way, we did over a hundred billion dollars of housing volume through our platform, right?”
Jain: Mat Ishbia and UWM Invested $100M into Bilt
“We just brought in United Wholesale Mortgage. The CEO and founder there, Matt Ishpi, is one of the most talented operators I've ever met, and he's built the largest mortgage business in the world. And when Matt and I teamed up to go build, built for homeowners…”
Jain: Bilt took its first outside capital from real estate owners
“And so when we started this, I mean, the first bit of capital, like we just bootstrapped this and I funded a lot of this upfront just with my partners. And the first money we took in was from real estate owners. It was folks who owned businesses like Related A…”
Jain: Missing a cultural mismatch past 90 days reflects poorly on managers
“If you catch in the first 90 days, that's great. If we catch it after 90 days, that's on you. And that speaks to your leadership ability here at the company too.”
Jain: Bilt Secured HUD Approval to Apply Rewards Toward Down Payments
“We spent 18 months Going down to DC, spending time with the Department of Housing, with Fannie Mae, with Freddie Mac, with FHA, and all these different groups, and in October of 2019 because we started this problem, like, beginning of 2018, actually the first,…”
Jain: In a crisis, ask what makes this the best outcome
“What we try to do is say, okay, what has to be true for this, for us to look back in a year from now and say, this was the greatest thing that happened to the company? And it's a totally different mindset, but it forces you to say, yes, this may feel like a cr…”