How Ankur Jain built a $3.1B startup by letting renters earn rewards

Executive overview

Rent is most people's largest monthly expense, yet it has never built credit, earned rewards, or moved anyone closer to homeownership. Ankur Jain founded Bilt in 2018 to fix all three — turning rent payments into airline miles, credit history, and down-payment funds.

Getting there required solving a three-sided chicken-and-egg problem across property managers, rewards partners, and local merchants, with no side willing to commit until the others were already on board. COVID broke the deadlock.

The core insight: focus on the why, not the how — there are a hundred ways to solve any problem, but only one reason worth solving it.

The Bilt product

• Renters earn points on rent payments, redeemable for flights, hotels, rent credits, or a down payment.
• Points transfer one-to-one to major programs: British Airways, United, Emirates, Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott.
• Average estimated value: 2.2 cents per point.
• Bilt now runs payments at one in four US apartment buildings; others can self-register.
• Bilt is the largest reporter of on-time rent payments to US credit bureaus.
• Rental history reported through Bilt can be used by mortgage lenders to qualify borrowers.

The chicken-and-egg problem and how COVID solved it

• Property managers asked: how many rewards partners do you have? Rewards partners asked: how many properties? Merchants asked: show me the buildings near me.
• Jain spent two years pitching New York landlords with no traction — everyone liked the idea but wanted to see others commit first.
• COVID reset incentives simultaneously: landlords needed to drive leasing, airlines needed to reach young non-business travellers, local businesses needed to reach people at home.
• That simultaneous need created the first committed group in each stakeholder category, and the flywheel started.

The regulatory groundwork

• Paying rent on time did not build credit history; the regulations did not specifically allow it.
• Bilt spent 18 months in Washington, D.C. engaging the housing department, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, lenders, and credit agencies.
• In October 2019, approvals came through: rent payments could now build credit, rental history could qualify borrowers, and rewards could fund a down payment.
• Bilt launched in market in 2022 — four years after founding.

Funding philosophy

• Raise venture capital only when the business is already figured out; use it as cheap growth capital, not discovery capital.
• Before product-market fit, seek commercial partners instead — they are aligned with solving their own business problem, not chasing paper markups.
• Jain self-funded early, then brought in real estate owners as investors, cementing presence in the space before raising institutional rounds.
• VC timelines (raise fast, mark up, raise again) are structurally misaligned with the time needed to get hard problems right.

Founder mindset

• "No just means ask again differently" — if someone won't move, the pitch isn't clear enough yet.
• Avoid setting revenue or user targets as a North Star; obsess over the user problem instead.
• Silicon Valley's echo chamber causes founders to compare against other startups rather than serve the actual customer.
• Staying in the why gives freedom to pivot the how without losing direction.
• Committed to the idea; willing to change the path.