🦄 Unicorner Startup of the Week: Bilt Rewards
 
 ✍️ Notes From The Editors  
Hope your weekend went well! Are you in LA? Catch us in Santa Monica at the dot.LA Summit at the end of this week! We’ll be there covering the latest and greatest tech updates in Southern California. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to catch all our updates from the event.

As tenants in Los Angeles, we’ve come to understand the world of rent. Bilt Rewards stood out to us—after all, wouldn’t it be convenient to pay your rent with a credit card and get rewarded for it? We hope you enjoy this week’s cover!
 
 - Ethan and Arek 🦄
 
 
Earn rewards by paying your rent
 
 
Bilt earns you rewards points each time you make your rent payments. It does this with its credit card, the Bilt Mastercard, which allows you to make your rent payments with a card (as opposed to cash). The card can be used with any of Bilt’s partner real estate companies, which include 15 of the top 20 major property owners.
 
 
🔗 Check them out: biltrewards.com
 
 
💰 Business Model
Bilt takes part of the transaction fee charged by Mastercard when the Bilt credit card is used. It also charges partnered property managers for points distributed to tenants.
 
📈 Traction and Fundraising
  • Founded under the umbrella of Kairos HQ, an organization that focuses on building companies that solve foundational day-to-day issues
  • Raised $60 million seed round with investors like Kairos, Wells Fargo, Mastercard, Blackstone, and more
  • Over two million US-based rental properties eligible to earn rewards
 
👫 Founder(s)
  • Ankur Jain, CEO: Currently Founder & CEO @ Kairos HQ, Co-Founder & Chairman @ Rhino; Previously VP Product @ Tinder, Co-Founder & CEO @ Humin (acquired by Tinder), Economics @ UPenn
 
🔮 Our Analysis
To understand the motivation behind Bilt, one would have to understand Kairos HQ, its parent company. Kairos HQ was built with the objective of creating common-sense solutions to the world’s leading problems, like housing and healthcare. Rent is one of the biggest monthly expenses for the vast majority of Americans. And yet, in most cases, it doesn’t qualify for the same kinds of rewards that paying many other expenses does. By introducing rewards to rent, Bilt allows people to earn back on their largest expense—an added bonus for the nearly 109 million renters out there. Ankur Jain, Founder and CEO of Kairos HQ and Bilt, told us that Bilt’s goal is to make renting an enjoyable experience and even help build a path towards homeownership. Its partnerships look promising, and we’re excited to see how Bilt changes the renting industry for the better. We’d love to hear from you: what are your biggest rent pain points?
 
📚 Further Reading
 
 
If you enjoyed today's article, forward this email to a friend!
If you're just seeing this email now, subscribe here.
 
Made with 💜 by the Unicorner Team 🦄
 
 
🎁 Bonus Content!
Finding ways to use artificial intelligence in a startup can be tempting to just about any founder. But have you thought about what responsible AI practices really look like? Check out this TechCrunch article from Harvard researcher Tom Zick on how responsible AI practices can mean building better startups.
 
 
Twitter
LinkedIn
 
 
This email was sent to
You received this email because you signed up with Unicorner.