Putting people over profit can be surprisingly profitable.
Tech entrepreneur Ankur Jain, 34, is worth an estimated $1.2 billion, according to Forbes. The former executive of dating app Tinder – of which he still owns 36% – went public in 2002 with his new company Bilt Rewards, a service that lets customers earn rewards for paying rent or buying a home .
Today, Bilt is valued at $3.25 billion.
The wildly successful son of former Microsoft executive Naveen Jain—who was also briefly a billionaire after the success of his company InfoSpace, a search engine, before the Y2K dot-com crash—had this advice for entrepreneurs. young people in a recent Daily Mail interview.
“Start with a problem, not a perceived opportunity,” Jain told the UK newspaper. “These are two very different things.”
“I think one of the most dangerous things that happened to entrepreneurship was that business school graduates started going into entrepreneurship,” he explained.
The academic emphasis on statistics, models and creating new opportunities has inspired young business owners to create unnecessary goods and services – exploiting the consumer – rather than addressing what people want and need in their lives, according to former -Forbes 30 Under 30. lister
“They’ve forgotten to ask what problem they can solve for people,” he said.
Jain went on to boast that Bilt is a perfect example of “taking a real problem that people have and … making it work.”
“This is your biggest expense and now it’s your most rewarding.”
According to Bilt data, the average American renter spends about 30% of his income on housing each year.
Jain previously told The Post that he was inspired to create Bilt — and to focus on building companies that solve “real problems” — after a shocking $100 million pitch she heard from a venture capitalist a few years ago before. The idea: Putting virtual luxury goods on the blockchain.
“I’m thinking to myself, ‘You have the biggest housing crisis, a health care and mental health crisis here in the city… And here you are, talking to me about Prada digital bags on the blockchain,'” he said .
“It was very out of touch not only with big problems, but with big opportunities.”
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Image Source : nypost.com