Unicorner - 🦄 Special Edition: Bilt Rewards

When we first came across Bilt a year ago, we had just newly signed a lease for our first apartment. Very soon, one of us remarked, “Imagine if you could just put all these charges on a credit card for points.” We learned that it wouldn’t be possible with our credit cards due to the merchant fees that greatly outweigh the potential rewards that could be received.

Soon thereafter, we discovered Bilt. When we last covered Bilt, we focused on its connection to the mission of Kairos, its parent startup studio that builds solutions to the world’s leading problems. But when we revisited it, we had some questions. Earning points with no fees… sounded more complicated than it was on paper. How did Bilt make it work? When we talked with Bilt’s CEO, Ankur Jain, we asked him about the building process.

We were surprised by a lot of what we heard. Bilt’s life as a startup has been anything but an easy one; in fact, despite the many obstacles it has cleared and the new funding it has secured, its journey is still a nascent one. Ankur shared a story of a phone call the company received while developing Bilt’s core product. Due to the laws that governed credit cards and rewards programs, Bilt’s lawyers couldn’t find a way to legally create a service that could give rewards on rent. From there, the majority of Bilt’s lifetime has been spent pushing legislation, building rewards partnerships, and creating a real estate network. This process of bringing all these people to the table was critical to Bilt's launch. Per Jain, “if we had known four years ago how difficult this would be, we probably would have never done it.”

At the moment, Bilt is in a unique position. It’s the first and only service to offer rewards on rent. It's built a robust rewards marketplace and a rental alliance with millions of properties. Industry giants in the finance space haven’t made clear moves into this area, but it is something Bilt needs to pay attention to. According to the team, the new funding will help cement strategic partnerships in the space (and perhaps also stifle the possibility of new competition). As Bilt steps up from its newly claimed unicorn status, it enters a world of challenges that—in our opinion—it’s well equipped to face, and we’re eager to watch its progress.