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

Marina Mogilko 0:00 How can Bilt help me stop flying economy?

Ankur Jain 0:04 The amount of money you spend on rent every single month is astonishing. [chuckles] With Bilt, 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.

Marina Mogilko 0:18 You work with-

Ankur Jain 0:18 We work with British Airways and United Airlines and Alaska Airlines and Emirates and Hyatt and Hilton. I mean, people are using their Bilt points [chuckles] to cover their down payments.

Marina Mogilko 0:27 Why do you think no one has done it before? [upbeat music] Ankur, thank you so much for doing

Marina Mogilko 0:35 this. You're-

Ankur Jain 0:35 Thanks for coming by.

Marina Mogilko 0:36 Yeah, you're doing something super cool. Okay, tell me, how can Bilt help me stop flying economy? Can you explain the whole concept?

Ankur Jain 0:45 I mean, look, the amount of money you spend on rent every single month, and historically you've gotten no rewards back, is astonishing. [chuckles] Um, and so five 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. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 1:15 Okay, tell me, so does it apply to everyone? 'Cause I'm renting from a, a person, right?

Ankur Jain 1:21 Yes.

Marina Mogilko 1:21 Would it work there, or it's just for corporate?

Ankur Jain 1:23 No. So you can now, with Bilt, anybody can sign up, set up their home to pay their rent, and start earning rewards. At one in four 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.

Marina Mogilko 1:50 Does my owner, the owner of the house, has... Does he have to give consent?

Ankur Jain 1:52 The bill payer. So we have- so when we are the payers-

Marina Mogilko 1:54 Uh, so you're gonna send him-

Ankur Jain 1:55 That's exactly right

Marina Mogilko 1:56 ... just a wire?

Ankur Jain 1:56 So when we're, uh... For the one in four apartments that use Bilt today, it's all seamless.

Marina Mogilko 2:02 Mm.

Ankur Jain 2:02 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.

Marina Mogilko 2:11 Can you tell me... So my rent is $1,700

Marina Mogilko 2:13 a month.

Ankur Jain 2:14 Yep.

Marina Mogilko 2:14 How much can I earn?

Ankur Jain 2:16 I mean, it depends how you pay, but if, you know, assume one X points per dollar, that's 7,800. It's expensive rent, by the way. [laughs]

Marina Mogilko 2:23 I know.

Ankur Jain 2:23 7,800 points.

Marina Mogilko 2:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs] It's too cute. [laughs]

Ankur Jain 2:26 [laughs] 7,800 points, you know, a month that you can now

Ankur Jain 2:30 use, and you can convert those into whatever your favorite airline or hotel programs are.

Marina Mogilko 2:34 You work with all the-

Ankur Jain 2:35 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-

Marina Mogilko 2:42 So it's one-to-one transfer?

Ankur Jain 2:43 All one-to-one transfer.

Marina Mogilko 2:44 So just transfer-

Ankur Jain 2:45 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.

Marina Mogilko 3:05 And that's through the app? So if I'm renting from someone, I would log in to Bilt app, and it will show me all the local-

Ankur Jain 3:10 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. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 3:33 Yeah.

Ankur Jain 3:33 Uh, you go to your local Barry's, you get a complimentary smoothie.

Marina Mogilko 3:35 How

Marina Mogilko 3:36 do points convert to dollars? If it's 8,000 points, how many dollars if it's, like, Chase, or how does it work?

Ankur Jain 3:42 Like, depend- again, so 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-

Marina Mogilko 3:51 Okay, so-

Ankur Jain 3:51 ... some tickets, it's worth less.

Marina Mogilko 3:52 Okay, got it.

Ankur Jain 3:52 Right?

Marina Mogilko 3:53 Mm-hmm. [chuckles]

Ankur Jain 3:53 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.

Marina Mogilko 4:07 That- and that's how you do it,

Marina Mogilko 4:08 right?

Ankur Jain 4:08 It's really that simple.

Marina Mogilko 4:09 Why do you think no one has done it before?

Ankur Jain 4:12 I mean, trying to drive... This is an- it's an interesting, first of all, problem to drive [chuckles] any new adoption in legacy industries, right? I mean, these bus- these industries are not known for change. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 4:22 Yeah.

Ankur Jain 4:22 Right? Um, as you know, most people that still own a checkbook, it's because their properties require you to pay by check still.

Marina Mogilko 4:28 Yeah, I know.

Ankur Jain 4:29 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. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 4:44 Yeah.

Ankur Jain 4:44 Right? Problem is, if you talk to the rewards partners, they go, "How many properties you got?" [chuckles] You talk to the property managers, they go, "What are your rewards?" [chuckles] You go to the merchant, they say, "Well, show me the buildings near you."

Marina Mogilko 4:55 Yeah.

Ankur Jain 4:55 And you have this exactly, this cold-start chicken-and-egg problem. And so we spent two 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- [laughs] is doing it."

Ankur Jain 5:20 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're 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 gonna fly again, [chuckles] but if they do, we- it's probably young people, not our typical business travel. And businesses, if you're a local business, everyone's locked up at home. [chuckles] 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 [chuckles] where the first couple people in each stakeholder group started coming together, and then the flywheel just-

Marina Mogilko 6:18 When Ankur started Bilt 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 gonna 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 gonna 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.

Marina Mogilko 7:18 But you had those two years when you just heard, "No, and no, and no."

Ankur Jain 7:22 We just kept trying, [chuckles] and trying, and trying, and trying. P- 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-

Marina Mogilko 7:43 How does that work?

Ankur Jain 7:44 Well, you pay your rent. When you came, what year did you move here?

Marina Mogilko 7:48 2015.

Ankur Jain 7:49 So I don't know if you

Ankur Jain 7:50 remember this, like, you probably had to go build your credit history. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 7:52 Oh, yeah, no one would give us a rental.

Ankur Jain 7:54 Isn't it crazy?

Marina Mogilko 7:55 Yeah.

Ankur Jain 7:56 They're like, "Oh, you need credit history to get access to credit, but you can only build your credit history by getting credit." [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 8:02 Yeah-

Ankur Jain 8:02 [chuckles] Just does-

Marina Mogilko 8:03 ... and so there were only a few apartment buildings that was- that would give us an apartment.

Ankur Jain 8:06 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.

Marina Mogilko 8:16 But you have to connect with those credit agencies, right?

Ankur Jain 8:19 Exactly, and they had 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 sh- 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. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 8:43 Of course, yeah.

Ankur Jain 8:44 Which is, like, also mind-boggling. So we spent i- and I thought, "Well, if I figure this out, this is gonna be the key that gets properties to sign up." So we spent 18 months in Washington DC, talking to the housing department, the Mor- Fannie Maes, 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.

Marina Mogilko 9:28 Only if you pay through Bilt, though.

Ankur Jain 9:30 Well, we offered this as a service. I mean, uh, we- it wasn't a Bilt-specific thing. It was a regulatory update, right?

Marina Mogilko 9:37 Oh, so now everyone who pays rent-

Ankur Jain 9:39 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-

Marina Mogilko 9:47 Part of the perk

Ankur Jain 9:48 ... for Bilt. 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?" [chuckles] And I'm like, "I spent 18 months on this." But no, 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 Bilt, um, and people using their Bilt points [chuckles] to cover their down payment.

Marina Mogilko 10:16 Okay, I need to understand your entrepreneurial mindset. Because if somebody gives me the problem you just described, I would be like... I won't be able to solve it. Like, it's been around for tens of years, and-

Ankur Jain 10:28 Yeah. [clears throat] Okay, so my goal by the end of this interview is to convince Marina to move to New York.

Marina Mogilko 10:34 [chuckles]

Ankur Jain 10:35 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. Somewhere along the lines, and I, 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, uh, one of the products they own called Tinder.

Ankur Jain 11:12 I was their product head there for two years, and it was an amazing experience, but, like, at the end of it, you know, first of all, there's only [chuckles] so much, uh, fulfillment you can get optimizing swipe right, swipe left, right? [chuckles] 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 was a juice press company-

Marina Mogilko 11:39 Yes

Ankur Jain 11:39 ... that had raised, like, hundreds of millions-

Marina Mogilko 11:41 Juice Barrel

Ankur Jain 11:41 ... of dollars.

Marina Mogilko 11:42 Yeah.

Ankur Jain 11:42 And I was sitting with this venture capitalist who was pitching me on some idea. He's like, "So Ankur, you gotta come look at this business. It's gonna change the world. It's a perfect next opportunity for you." I was like, "Okay, tell me more." [chuckles] "Like, we're thinking about putting $100 million in it, and it's unbelievable. They've figured out how to create non-replicable goods like Prada bags on the blockchain."

Marina Mogilko 12:06 ... Oh, like authentication?

Ankur Jain 12:07 Oh, like-

Marina Mogilko 12:07 I think-

Ankur Jain 12:08 No, it, it's some stupid NFT, like, thing.

Marina Mogilko 12:11 Ah.

Ankur Jain 12:11 Whatever.

Marina Mogilko 12:11 Got it.

Ankur Jain 12:11 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 [chuckles] had raised $200 million. And I'm thinking to myself, "You

Ankur Jain 12:34 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?"

Marina Mogilko 12:43 Yeah, but I think the mindset is the government has to solve it, not the-

Ankur Jain 12:46 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 innovations to 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

Ankur Jain 13:20 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 want to raise money for my startup..." Like, it was chatbot, then it was NFT, and then it was crypto-

Marina Mogilko 13:34 I remember all of that, yeah.

Ankur Jain 13:34 ... 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-

Marina Mogilko 13:45 Mm.

Ankur Jain 13:45 -like, it's not what, it's why. [chuckles] Um-

Marina Mogilko 13:49 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?

Ankur Jain 14:00 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 [chuckles] that you don't even realize how absurd some of the things you s- [chuckles] 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. [chuckles] Um-

Marina Mogilko 14:27 How many times did you want to give up?

Ankur Jain 14:30 I don't think about giving up. It's like, that's not... When you wake up every day, it's the most fun- [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 14:34 Yeah, but like-

Ankur Jain 14:35 -experience, like-

Marina Mogilko 14:35 ... confronting people in the industry, like, who are telling you that it's impossible.

Ankur Jain 14:39 That's literally what everybody's... Everybody hates- everybody loves to say no, and I just like, my mindset, and I'm sure you are the same, right? It's like, no just means ask again differently [chuckles] 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. It's 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 just keep, keep iterating and keep iterating until it is a no-brainer.

Marina Mogilko 15:06 So never wanted to give up? You were just, like, laser focused.

Ankur Jain 15:09 Giving up on what? Like, the big vision and purpose of what you want to do? Like, I don't believe in setting goals that are like, "Have 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 really, like... It's not a very exciting, fulfilling metric, [chuckles] right?

Marina Mogilko 15:27 But how do you set goals, then?

Ankur Jain 15:29 What is the problem you're solving? Like, I see a user problem I want to solve, and we just obsess over that.

Marina Mogilko 15:34 So you never gave yourself, like, a timeline, like, "Okay, if, if I can't fix it in two years, then probably that's it?"

Ankur Jain 15:40 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. [chuckles] But until then, you really only want to 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 [chuckles] business issue than the return on the investment. And then eventually, the investment ho- hopefully becomes even more, right? That h- 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?" [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 16:44 Yeah.

Ankur Jain 16:45 Right? And as a founder, that's not always the best thing. Like, it took us four years to launch Bilt, right? We didn't launch... We started working on it in 2018. We didn't launch in market until 2022.

Marina Mogilko 16:59 Have you raised money during that time?

Ankur Jain 17:01 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, [chuckles] we said, "Hey, why don't you invest in the company and own a part of this, and we can build this together?"

Marina Mogilko 17:21 Yeah.

Ankur Jain 17:21 And, you know, that just further cemented our presence in the space. Um, but look, I think it's also, like, look, you're an immigrant. Like, part of this is you're opening... You gotta if you come from an immigrant family, like, you gotta survive. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 17:34 Yeah. What was special about your upbringing, you think,

Marina Mogilko 17:37 that made you, made you-

Ankur Jain 17:38 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. 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 a job, like, working their way, like, day and night. They met in New Jersey-... got married in California. They moved to California, where they got married, and they were still living in an apartment with another couple 'cause they couldn't afford their own place.

Marina Mogilko 18:19 We had the same story [laughs] -

Ankur Jain 18:21 Right?

Marina Mogilko 18:21 - we were sharing an apartment with someone.

Ankur Jain 18:22 But that's like the st- 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 [chuckles] it's funny, like, they were living in this apartment, and my dad was- they had just got married, and he was thinking about, "How in the world am I going to afford a honeymoon? [laughs] I can barely afford to pay rent."

Marina Mogilko 18:43 Well, California is a honeymoon. [laughs]

Ankur Jain 18:45 Well, yes. [laughs]

Marina Mogilko 18:46 Just that.

Ankur Jain 18:47 Like I said, give me till the end of the show, she'll be in New York. [laughing] Um, but we, we like... So they, 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 twenty companies in different cities, maybe one of them will fly me out for an interview." [laughs]

Marina Mogilko 19:05 Oh, genius. Genius.

Ankur Jain 19:07 "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 [chuckles] 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?" [laughs] She's like, "Why?" And, um, 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- [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 19:34 Good that they could-

Ankur Jain 19:35 - rural suburbs

Marina Mogilko 19:35 ... buy a home.

Ankur Jain 19:36 Yeah, I mean, it was-

Marina Mogilko 19:36 Most people can't do it now. [chuckles]

Ankur Jain 19:38 It's- that was tough. I mean, that was their first big break. Um, and I remember, like, you know, we lived a pretty

Ankur Jain 19:43 normal life. And then when I was five or six, my dad comes home one day, and he's sitting with my mom, and I re- 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, my mom was like: "We just spent our whole life trying to get to a stable place, [chuckles] and you wanna quit?" [laughs] Like, um, and, you know, at the end of it, she said, "Okay, I support you."

Marina Mogilko 20:09 Do you remember that conversation?

Ankur Jain 20:10 Yeah, it was not a, it was not a pleasant conversation. I remember. I was five or six. It was very- [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 20:14 Wow!

Ankur Jain 20:15 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, [chuckles] 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. [chuckles] And you just-

Marina Mogilko 20:46 So you saw your parents working every single day?

Ankur Jain 20:49 - and you just literally watched them build these businesses from the ground up. Um, it's funny, like, my dad and I 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 i- it's... People often ask, they're like: "Well, did you ever feel..." To him, they say: "Do you ever feel guilty, you know, figuring out how to balance your work life and personal life?" And he- 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.' [chuckles] And you wonder why sometimes, like, 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 [chuckles] at home, hanging out, and there's actually some value in them seeing the hard work and the grit it takes."

Marina Mogilko 21:57 Interesting, but, like, I, I wonder, w- you, you didn't have time for extracurriculars then. Well, your parents didn't have time to drive you around.

Ankur Jain 22:04 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, seven, eight, nine, 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, those years was crazy. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 22:32 What would be your advice to new parents on how to-

Ankur Jain 22:35 How old are your kids now?

Marina Mogilko 22:36 Five and three.

Ankur Jain 22:37 Okay, so you bring them along with you ever?

Marina Mogilko 22:39 Sometimes, yeah. They went, uh, to One Billion Forward summit in Dubai with me.

Ankur Jain 22:43 Amazing.

Marina Mogilko 22:43 But they, they don't like it. They're like, they hate when somebody takes pictures with me.

Ankur Jain 22:46 [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 22:46 They just start crying, "This is my mommy." And they're like- and all the transatlantic flights for them, well-

Ankur Jain 22:53 Well, now you can use your Bilt points to fly them business class, so they'll love.

Marina Mogilko 22:55 Yeah, I, I'm using Amex points right now. [laughs] Yeah, Bilt is, yeah.

Ankur Jain 22:59 Um, I, 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."

Marina Mogilko 23:07 Yeah.

Ankur Jain 23:07 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 for- your kids are so fortunate to have parents who are doing so well and get to see the world and expose them to it, and I think it's amazing. So I think that's-

Marina Mogilko 23:25 Okay, 'cause I t- I feel very guilty, especially now. Like, I left them at home, came here for four days. They were crying like crazy yesterday.

Ankur Jain 23:31 Bring them to New York. I mean, they're gonna live here soon anyways, so...

Marina Mogilko 23:34 Why? [laughing]

Ankur Jain 23:34 [laughing]

Marina Mogilko 23:34 Okay,

Marina Mogilko 23:36 let's wrap our conversation with the New York ma- 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.

Ankur Jain 23:46 Yeah.

Marina Mogilko 23:46 It's, it's a different script.

Ankur Jain 23:47 My, my brother and sister are both Stanford, and they both live now in New York. So what I'll say-

Marina Mogilko 23:52 They have kids?

Ankur Jain 23:54 Uh, no, they don't have kids yet. Um-

Marina Mogilko 23:55 I think that's the game changer.

Ankur Jain 23:57 Yeah. Totally hear you. I, I think, look, you... My belief is, is, is it's so important to be surrounded by, one, different pe- types of people.

Marina Mogilko 24:09 Mm.

Ankur Jain 24:10 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-

Marina Mogilko 24:26 One hundred percent, yeah

Ankur Jain 24:26 -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 [chuckles] of like-- and New York is 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. 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 seven hundred dollars, [chuckles] because you're constantly comparing your ideas to these twenty other startups, and you forget that your customer in Dallas has never used any of them, right? [chuckles] 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? Um, which I feel like you seem like you're into the fashion world, you seem like you're in the tech world. Like, it's gotta be tough. Like, San Francisco is not exactly the best fashion place. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 26:00 Yeah, I know.

Ankur Jain 26:01 [laughing]

Marina Mogilko 26:01 I know. I'm always overdressed. [chuckles]

Ankur Jain 26:04 But, like, not in New York.

Marina Mogilko 26:05 Not in New York, yeah.

Ankur Jain 26:06 Um-

Marina Mogilko 26:06 That's

Marina Mogilko 26:07 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?

Ankur Jain 26:23 I mean, first of all, like, startups are hard and painful, so you have to just expect and accept [chuckles] 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 [chuckles] is just part of the process. So that's number one. But two is, if you, if you remember on the why, right? Like, there's a hundred 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 a hundred different ways you can solve it.

Marina Mogilko 27:08 Mm.

Ankur Jain 27:08 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. [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 27:26 I love that.

Ankur Jain 27:26 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 re-- 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." [chuckles]

Marina Mogilko 27:51 Mm.

Ankur Jain 27:52 Right? And-

Marina Mogilko 27:53 Committed to the idea, but willing to change the path-

Ankur Jain 27:55 Correct

Marina Mogilko 27:56 -together. I love it.

Ankur Jain 27:57 Um-

Marina Mogilko 27:58 Thank you so much

Ankur Jain 27:58 ... anyways, thank you for coming by.

Marina Mogilko 28:00 Thank you so much. Very impressive, and, uh, you've been to St. Petersburg, my new house?

Ankur Jain 28:05 I have, I have, and I want to go back.

Marina Mogilko 28:06 It's-- hopefully, you can go back soon.

Ankur Jain 28:08 I would love to.

Marina Mogilko 28:09 That's amazing. Thank you so much, Ankur.

Ankur Jain 28:10 Thanks for coming by.

Marina Mogilko 28:11 Very inspiring. Awesome.