Stop being House Rich & Cash Poor: Tap into home Equity without Tapping Out with the CEO of Hometap
Jeffery Glass is the CEO and Founder of HomeTap, the groundbreaking company revolutionizing the way homeowners access their home equity. In this episode of Fintech Confidential, Glass reveals the secrets to success in the real estate market and shares invaluable advice for entrepreneurs.
Three important items Covered:
1️⃣ Discover the game-changing alternative to traditional loans that homeowners are raving about.
2️⃣ Uncover the shocking impact of rising interest rates and inflation on the residential real estate market.
3️⃣ Learn the essential steps to building a strong team and finding the right capital partner for your entrepreneurial journey.
Also, watch the entire episode on YouTube.
Links:
Hometap
Website: https://www.hometap.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hometap-equity-partners
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HometapEquity/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hometap_/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hometap
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOS30gqJ9HVS3cCbH_M4LxA
Fintech Confidential
YouTube: https://fintechconfidential.com/watch
Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen
Notifications: https://fintechconfidential.com/access
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential
X: https://twitter.com/FTconfidential
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential
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Time Stamps:
The mission of HomeTap [00:00:00]
Unlocking the secrets of homeownership and crushing traditional loans!
The origin story of HomeTap [00:02:33]
How Jeff Glass turned personal experiences into a game-changing financial solution!
HomeTap's mission to change homeownership financing [00:08:40]
Making homeownership a breeze for cash-strapped homeowners!
The importance of homeowner experience [00:12:27]
Creating a homeowner experience that will blow your mind!
Ensuring transparency and clarity for homeowners [00:14:08]
No more confusing financial jargon - HomeTap keeps it simple!
Providing capital for homeowner needs and opportunities [00:15:56]
Get the cash you need for life's challenges and dreams!
Home equity and target demographic [00:24:05]
HomeTap's got your back if you're sitting on a goldmine!
Tailoring services and marketing [00:26:51]
Home renovations made easy with HomeTap's tailored services!
Resilience and market trends [00:32:13]
Why residential real estate is the ultimate investment!
The impact of rising interest rates on housing [00:35:23]
Rising interest rates are killing the housing game - find out how!
Future goals and plans for HomeTap [00:40:51]
HomeTap's big dreams of becoming a national sensation!
Competition and defenseability in the industry [00:45:06]
How HomeTap stays ahead of the game in a cutthroat industry!
The importance of passion and dedication in entrepreneurship [00:48:36]
Starting a business ain't for the weak - Jeff Glass spills the tea!
Challenges and considerations of being an entrepreneur [00:50:18]
Think you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? Think again!
Optimizing for success over ownership [00:53:51]
Why success trumps ownership in the world of entrepreneurship!
This is a Production of Diamond D3, Media
ABOUT:
Jeffery Glass:
Entrepreneurship has been a passion for Jeff since his teenage years. By age 22, he started two college marketing businesses that helped pay off some of his college loans. Over the next two decades Jeff ran 4 other successful businesses and learned a ton about what it takes to start, build and grow technology and data-driven companies in this ultra-competitive world. He’s also been in the investor’s seat, spending 6 years as an MD at Bain Capital Ventures.
Jeff is currently the co-founder and CEO of Hometap, a data-driven residential real estate platform that is changing home ownership financing. Hometap invests in residential properties, making passive investments alongside homeowners, and participates in the future value of the home. For homeowners, this is a simplified, sensible alternative to debt and monthly payments that allow them to pay off bills, build their savings, and fund the things that come up in life. For investors, this is a new asset class, allowing them to participate in the multi-trillion-dollar residential real estate market without the operational and management hassles of owning and operating homes.
Jeff lives in Brookline, MA with wife and three children. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Business School.
Hometap :
Hometap is a smart loan alternative that allows homeowners to access their home equity to do more in life without taking on debt. An investor, not a lender, Hometap gives homeowners cash in exchange for a share of their home's future value. They can use the money for anything they'd like, from paying off credit card debt to starting a business or buying a second home, without the hassle of monthly payments or interest. When the homeowner settles the investment at or before the end of the 10-year effective period, Hometap receives an agreed-upon percentage of the sale price or current appraised value.
Tedd Huff:
Tedd Huff is the Co-Founder of Voalyre and the President and founder of Diamond D3, a professional services consulting firm focused on global payments and marketing. He is also a video podcast host and producer of Fintech Confidential.
Over the past 24 years, he has contributed to FinTech startups as an Advisory Board Member, Co-Founder, and Chief Experience Officer, providing strategic and tactical direction for Global Payments OpenEdge, Heartland Payments, Nuvei, and TSYS, among others, focusing on growth while delivering innovation, process improvements and user experience-driven value to simplify the complexity of payments.
Diamond D3, Media:
DD3 Media is a media creation, management, and production company that delivers engaging content globally
Transcript
Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: think about what is true
Speaker:for many homeowners.
Speaker:you save up, you buy a house, put down that down payment.
Speaker:If all goes well, every month, you are able to pay the mortgage and
Speaker:start to pay down the debt over time.
Speaker:And also if all goes well,
Speaker:the value of your home increases.
Speaker:that's great.
Speaker:in fact, if you look at most, most people's net worth, what you'll see
Speaker:is a very, very meaningful percentage of people's net worth tends to be
Speaker:the equity value of their homes.
Speaker:The good news.
Speaker:The bad news is, You can't use it
Speaker:unless you sell the house,
Speaker:My friend who was one of the, the people who inspired me to think
Speaker:about this business, is he had all of this equity in his home.
Speaker:He had a financial need to, to use it, but the fact that it's trapped inside your
Speaker:house, it doesn't give you any utility.
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Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Welcome to Fintech Confidential, bringing
Speaker:you the people, tech, and companies that change how you pay and get paid.
Speaker:Welcome to another episode of FinTech Confidential.
Speaker:I'm Tedd Huff, your host.
Speaker:We're bringing you the most innovative minds in the FinTech industry.
Speaker:Today we have the pleasure of hosting Jeff Glass, the CEO, Co-Founder of Hometap.
Speaker:A company that's revolutionizing home ownership financing.
Speaker:Hometap provides homeowners with a smart alternative to traditional loans,
Speaker:allowing them to tap into their home equity without taking on more debt.
Speaker:Jeff, welcome to the show.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Tedd, thank you so much.
Speaker:I'm so excited to chat with you today.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Well, Jeff, we've realized over
Speaker:many of these episodes that not everybody just kind of gets into
Speaker:FinTech because they grow up.
Speaker:As a little kid, most people want to be firemen or
Speaker:policemen, heck, even cowboys.
Speaker:But FinTech doesn't fall on the top of the list, so I'm curious.
Speaker:Can you share with us what your journey getting into FinTech was really about and
Speaker:what inspired you to venture into it?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Yeah, I'd love to.
Speaker:I was a little kid, I thought I was gonna be a professional bowler, so have Have
Speaker:you ever had one of those on your show?
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: You know, you know, you are the first
Speaker:professional bowler, visionary, or, yeah, I guess we could call it that on the show.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Yeah, bowling meets FinTech.
Speaker:That's, that's what I'm all about.
Speaker:Uh, uh, lucky it was about seven or eight years ago.
Speaker:It was 2016.
Speaker:And, uh, within a very short period of time, I, by, by pure coincidence, sat
Speaker:down with, uh, with a couple young folks who were talking about how difficult
Speaker:it was to purchase a home and the amount of capital that would be needed
Speaker:in order to put a down payment down.
Speaker:And then within
Speaker:a few weeks later, I was sitting down with a friend of mine told
Speaker:me this horrible story about how his mother-in-law had gotten sick.
Speaker:His wife had just lost their job.
Speaker:And despite the fact that they had built up all this equity in their home over
Speaker:many years, they were forced to sell their house in order to pay for the
Speaker:care for their, uh, mother-in-law.
Speaker:And it just got me thinking, gosh, there's gotta be a financial solution
Speaker:here that doesn't involve just more debt.
Speaker:A home is such an important part of people's lives.
Speaker:And, uh, that's how it all started for me.
Speaker:\ Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: I, I've had family pass
Speaker:and going through that.
Speaker:I've also got myself where I've bought and sold home sometimes in
Speaker:a good way, sometimes in a bad way.
Speaker:I didn't always exit well.
Speaker:And it's made me approach the way I look at home purchases
Speaker:, and investments in general.
Speaker:Can you tell us about how your early entrepreneurial ventures and how they
Speaker:shaped your approach to business?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Wow.
Speaker:That's a great question.
Speaker:Yeah, I've been a serial entrepreneur, uh, so I've been, uh, been working on
Speaker:various businesses most of my life.
Speaker:one of the things I, I think that has shaped me a lot is
Speaker:recognizing the fact that when you build an interesting company,
Speaker:You're not just building something that might hopefully have some
Speaker:financial benefit to shareholders and investors and those involved,
Speaker:But you're doing something that's kind of helping people
Speaker:or helping other businesses.
Speaker:And, and so I would say as I've gotten older and, and more experienced and
Speaker:more entrepreneurial experience.
Speaker:It becomes more and more important to me to not just focus on businesses
Speaker:that have good financial opportunity, but equally, or in my case, I feel
Speaker:even more importantly, are doing something really good for others.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: It makes me curious, as I was looking
Speaker:through your background and you spent some time at Bain Capital Ventures,
Speaker:how did that experience influence your decision to start Hometap?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: It influenced me a lot.
Speaker:So the story on how I got to Bain Capital Ventures.
Speaker:Was, I had been a serial entrepreneur.
Speaker:I had been involved in three, you know, small businesses for
Speaker:15 or 16 years prior to that.
Speaker:Bain Capital Ventures had been an early investor in the third one of those three.
Speaker:It did fairly well and honestly, like being an entrepreneur is hard work.
Speaker:I had, uh, young kids, so I had three children.
Speaker:They're all all pretty young.
Speaker:I was pretty exhausted from 16 years of serial entrepreneuring, if that's a word.
Speaker:and I thought, gee, I, I think I'm only qualified, uh, or hopefully qualified
Speaker:to either start companies or perhaps to be helpful to other people who
Speaker:are involved in starting companies.
Speaker:And so I was very fortunate
Speaker:that after my business was acquired, you know, Bain Capital Ventures offered
Speaker:me a role inside their partnership.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: You talked about the company
Speaker:being very mission oriented.
Speaker:Can you share the origin story of Hometap and, and what the driving
Speaker:force was behind its creation?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Yeah, I look it, it, it does lead a little
Speaker:bit back to your previous question around what'd you learn, you know, during my
Speaker:time as a venture capitalist, which is the, the businesses that, that I saw that
Speaker:did the best and frankly where the teams were the happiest, were the businesses
Speaker:that not only had a financial goal, had a real mission and soul to their businesses.
Speaker:And I had the privilege of seeing, you know, not just companies that I was
Speaker:directly involved with, but, you know, tens and hundreds of companies that,
Speaker:we were involved with as a firm.
Speaker:And you really start to see that, that those companies that have a mission,
Speaker:that have a soul, that have a purpose,
Speaker:they're more inspired, they do better, they outperform and
Speaker:they're doing great for the world.
Speaker:And so, um, so back in, this is years later,
Speaker:after my time as a venture capitalist and I was back at the operating side and
Speaker:I was looking to start another company.
Speaker:And without question,
Speaker:I went through a couple of years of saying, okay, I
Speaker:wanna start another business.
Speaker:But the business has to have a purpose.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: It has to have a reason for being.
Speaker:And as I described, I had these situations where I was seeing
Speaker:anecdotally how people's homes were not working for them and how homes
Speaker:were, home ownership was inaccessible.
Speaker:Or even when you had a home,
Speaker:that wasn't necessarily working to your advantage.
Speaker:And so that kind of led me, I was not a serial residential
Speaker:real estate entrepreneur.
Speaker:I wasn't a resi guy.
Speaker:I wasn't an asset backed guy, which is
Speaker:the terms that you'll hear in my industry.
Speaker:I, I was just an entrepreneur trying to find an idea that had a real purpose to
Speaker:it, um, where we could make a difference.
Speaker:And that's how Hometap started.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: How has Hometap's mission evolved
Speaker:since that initial thought?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: It hasn't.
Speaker:So on day one, once we got real conviction that there was an opportunity here to
Speaker:help homeowners and build something lasting, we, we began the business with
Speaker:this mission of making home ownership less stressful and more accessible.
Speaker:we began that journey focusing on homeowners who, uh, I would
Speaker:say fall into this category of being house rich and cash poor.
Speaker:So you're a homeowner, you've lived in your home for a decade
Speaker:or more, you've paid down interest you, your home's appreciated.
Speaker:You've done everything right.
Speaker:You now own a big percentage of the equity of your home and your
Speaker:home's worth a lot of money, a big percentage of your net worth.
Speaker:But yet we all know this, life happens both positive and negative.
Speaker:the opportunities of life to renovate your home in a way that makes living
Speaker:in your home nicer and creates more family memories or fund a small
Speaker:business that you're working on, send your daughter to college.
Speaker:Or the challenges like my friend who had this healthcare emergency with,
Speaker:with his in-laws or, uh, or you're dealing with trying to pay down some credit card
Speaker:debt or you're dealing with your divorce or some of the harder parts of life.
Speaker:And so those challenges and opportunities, they hit us all.
Speaker:what we realized was there's an opportunity for your house
Speaker:to really help be the solution.
Speaker:And our financial products are really designed to help homeowners around that.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: I really would like to understand
Speaker:a little bit more detail,
Speaker:like how is Hometap driving its mission to change home ownership financing?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: So let's take a typical
Speaker:homeowner who's doing fine,
Speaker:The tens of millions of American homeowners who've been in their house
Speaker:and they've paid down debt and things are generally fine, and now some
Speaker:opportunity or challenge comes up.
Speaker:Historically, if you needed to deal with that and find capital to take
Speaker:advantage of that, you did one of two things, which is, number one,
Speaker:you might further refinance, right?
Speaker:You borrow more, which means you have more monthly payments, more debt,
Speaker:you have a little more stress in your life, some more constraints around
Speaker:your spending and what you need to do.
Speaker:It's not a horrible idea.
Speaker:And in fact, it's the right for many, but not necessarily for everyone.
Speaker:The second alternative you would have is you could sell your home, right?
Speaker:My friend that I described, he had, I think he had seven or $800,000
Speaker:worth of equity built up in his home.
Speaker:He needed to free up a hundred to in order to pay for his mother-in-law's care.
Speaker:But yet in his situation, because he couldn't borrow, they sold the entire
Speaker:house, in order to free up the cash that they needed to pay for the care.
Speaker:It's a little bit like you had $700,000 in the bank, and the bank
Speaker:says, you can't take out a hundred.
Speaker:You could take it all, or you could take none but, you know,
Speaker:but we're not letting you
Speaker:take out the hundred.
Speaker:And so, um, so what we've created is we've just created a third
Speaker:alternative, and this is an al alternative that should resonate with,
Speaker:with your listeners because, you know, it's, it's what business people
Speaker:and entrepreneurs and investors do all the day, all the time, which
Speaker:is, it's an equity based solution.
Speaker:So instead of us lending a homeowner more money against the value of their
Speaker:house and giving them more debt, more monthly payments and more burden, what
Speaker:we do is we give them capital today.
Speaker:And in exchange we take a percentage of the future value of the home, when
Speaker:down the line the homeowner sells refinances or chooses to buy us out.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Jeff, can you share some specific
Speaker:strategies or initiatives that Hometap has implemented to achieve these things
Speaker:for homeowners?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Yeah.
Speaker:So look, when you're a financial business, a lot of people think,
Speaker:, the whole ballgame is in having a, creative financial product
Speaker:where the numbers make sense for, in our case, homeowners.
Speaker:And absolutely that needs to be true.
Speaker:But the thing that I've certainly learned,
Speaker:in this business and in some previous businesses is it's not just about the
Speaker:product or, or another way to think about it is the product isn't just the
Speaker:product, it's the whole delivery mechanism and experience around the product,
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: particularly when you're
Speaker:creating something new
Speaker:that requires people to understand it.
Speaker:Where, where there's not a lot of other examples where it's something
Speaker:as critically important as your home
Speaker:and something of significant financial and emotional value to you.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: I would say, um, amongst, in
Speaker:addition to us being innovative
Speaker:on all the data science and analytics and capabilities, in order to
Speaker:construct a financial product that could make sense for a homeowner and
Speaker:make sense for investors, the other thing that we've worked tirelessly
Speaker:on is the whole homeowner experience.
Speaker:That involves both the culture, our operations, our process, our technology.
Speaker:How do you surround the homeowners so that they understand that
Speaker:they're at the center of the wheel?
Speaker:They're the reason why we exist.
Speaker:They can trust us.
Speaker:We're never gonna do them wrong.
Speaker:And everything we tell them is basically,
Speaker:is done in a way where we're just them make the best decision
Speaker:they can for themselves.
Speaker:And so there's a lot around that, it's not just the financial product, it's
Speaker:everything else that surrounds it.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Well, that, that makes me wonder, like
Speaker:how does Hometap ensure the transparency and clarity is there for the homeowners?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: It's such an important question.
Speaker:So transparency, I think the key, if you wanna be successful with a
Speaker:financial product, it starts off with the homeowner has to trust you.
Speaker:And the homeowner can't trust you if the homeowner doesn't
Speaker:understand what they're buying.
Speaker:the homeowner can't understand what they're buying if it's too complicated.
Speaker:So you need to make it,
Speaker:understandable and as simple as possible, which means not having lots of T's and
Speaker:C's and exemptions and this and and rules and all this sort of stuff that,
Speaker:maybe historical financial companies have sort of layered onto these things.
Speaker:So a big part of this thing is really working on simplicity.
Speaker:How do you simplify the product?
Speaker:How do you simplify the process?
Speaker:How do you train our internal people, give them the right
Speaker:economic incentives to always do the right thing for the homeowner?
Speaker:really working on all of those building blocks.
Speaker:I, I would say it's, you know, and there's not one magic thing that
Speaker:you can do that makes this happen.
Speaker:It's really the sum of 50 or 60 small things that in aggregate, create a
Speaker:product that a Hallmark can understand.
Speaker:Therefore, they can make a decision and they can trust
Speaker:what they're doing.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: When you expose the transparency
Speaker:and you provide that clarity and incentivize everybody within the
Speaker:internal and external organizations to provide the best experience,
Speaker:that then changes a lot of the key problems that you are having to solve for.
Speaker:Cause a lot of times those are the key problems that people are solving for.
Speaker:Could you express to us what Hometap has focused on solving in those key
Speaker:problem areas and how the homeowners are benefiting from your solutions?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: What we're trying to do is we're trying
Speaker:to provide capital for a homeowner, uh, to help them solve whatever the needs
Speaker:are in their life that requires that.
Speaker:they fall into these two buckets, the, the challenges of life
Speaker:and the opportunities of life.
Speaker:And so think about things like, I'm paying off debt or I'm, um,
Speaker:I've got a health emergency or
Speaker:I'm unfortunately getting divorced and I've got all of our assets in
Speaker:one single fixed asset, our home, and we'd like to turn this illiquid
Speaker:asset into something partially liquid.
Speaker:Or, again, the opportunities of life, I'm,
Speaker:trying to fund my daughter's college education or fund a new
Speaker:business or renovate the home.
Speaker:Those are the sorts of things.
Speaker:So that's what we're trying to solve for.
Speaker:That's the big picture, what we're solving for.
Speaker:We're trying to make it as easy as possible for homeowners to
Speaker:understand what that capital looks like, what it's gonna cost them under
Speaker:different scenarios of what happens to their house value over time.
Speaker:And really have simplicity in the process.
Speaker:Like one small example of something that we do that
Speaker:, I don't think, many financial services companies do, which is we give
Speaker:the homeowner one point of contact all the way through the process.
Speaker:From the second they come in the door and they wanna understand more, to all of the,
Speaker:information that we need, to the how is it gonna work to what happens once
Speaker:they're, how do we close the investment?
Speaker:They have one person the whole way through.
Speaker:They're not being,
Speaker:sent to different departments at different organizations.
Speaker:It sounds like a little thing, it's actually a hard thing
Speaker:to pull off operationally.
Speaker:It's a fairly expensive thing to pull off operationally,
Speaker:but it's an internally consistent decision, operational decision that
Speaker:we've made that supports the broader picture of simplicity, transparency,
Speaker:make it easy to understand.
Speaker:And if you do all that right,
Speaker:homeowners will trust what you're doing and they'll trust their
Speaker:ability to make a good decision.
Speaker:You'll be able to have a good business, and equally importantly, you'll be
Speaker:able to have homeowners who are really happy with the decisions they've made.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Can you share a specific success story
Speaker:for a homeowner who's benefited from having that single point of contact?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Oh yeah.
Speaker:We, um, I'm so glad you asked
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Your favorite one actually
Speaker:is what I'm looking for,
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: My, my favorite one we had,
Speaker:I, I will misquote this.
Speaker:Uh, so one of the things we're very proud of is that we have, uh, thousands
Speaker:of homeowners who've taken the time to write about us on sites like Trustpilot.
Speaker:So we're close to a five star out of a five star review, which
Speaker:is virtually impossible for a financial services company because
Speaker:in financial services, it's hard.
Speaker:It's difficult.
Speaker:There's a process, there's underwriting.
Speaker:Unfortunately, not everyone can be accepted for a Hometap investment.
Speaker:So when you're faced with that, it's very difficult to maintain
Speaker:, a five star review.
Speaker:And so we have one of the top brands, top consumer financial brands,
Speaker:you can see all the quotes.
Speaker:The other thing we do is we anonymize these things, of course, but in
Speaker:our monthly all hands meetings.
Speaker:I have one tomorrow in fact.
Speaker:We will share a couple of homeowner testimonial and stories about how
Speaker:homeowners have used our capital
Speaker:and how we're fulfilling our mission of trying to make home ownership
Speaker:less stressful and more accessible.
Speaker:But one of the quotes, and again I'll butcher this, is we had one person who was
Speaker:so happy and excited about getting Hometap capital that the quote was working with
Speaker:Hometap was like a breath of fresh air.
Speaker:they've
Speaker:changed my life.
Speaker:And, and if you go to Trustpilot, you'll see, you know, thousands of people who
Speaker:express that sentiment, where we're freeing them from the burden of debt.
Speaker:In many cases, they're using our capital to pay off other debt.
Speaker:And so not only do we not increase their debt stress, but they're using
Speaker:it to reduce other debt stress.
Speaker:Clean up their balance sheet, improve their FICO scores, sometimes,
Speaker:be out of the burden of debt and just be able to live a less stressful life,
Speaker:for the time that they're in their home.
Speaker:So it, it's, I mean, it's, it's why we created the business.
Speaker:It's, it's why we get excited to go to work every day and,
Speaker:and I'm really proud of it.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: there's a quote that
Speaker:you've used multiple times.
Speaker:You've even mentioned it already today on the show.
Speaker:The house rich, but cash poor.
Speaker:Can you walk us through how Hometap addresses this challenge?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Yeah.
Speaker:So think about what is true for many homeowners.
Speaker:you save up, you you buy a house, put put down that down payment.
Speaker:If all goes well, every month, you are able to pay the mortgage and
Speaker:start to pay down the debt over time.
Speaker:And also if all goes well
Speaker:and over periods of time, historically, this has of course
Speaker:been true, home prices rise, and so the value of your home increases.
Speaker:And so the combination of your house getting, becoming
Speaker:more valuable and the debt
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: going down as you're paying off the
Speaker:interest means that you're owning more and more of the equity of the home.
Speaker:Your debt as a percentage of the total value of the house
Speaker:goes down over time, typically.
Speaker:And so many, if maybe most homers over time, wind up in that situation.
Speaker:And, and that's great.
Speaker:And in fact, if you look at
Speaker:most people's net worth, what you'll see is a very, very meaningful percentage
Speaker:of people's net worth tends to be the equity value of their homes.
Speaker:It's a great way to
Speaker:continue to build up equity and long-term savings and, uh, and net worth.
Speaker:That's the good news.
Speaker:The bad news is, You can't use it unless you leave the house.
Speaker:Unless you sell the house,
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: So, as in the case of my,
Speaker:my friend who was one of
Speaker:, the people who inspired me to think about this business, is he had
Speaker:all of this equity in his home.
Speaker:He had a financial need to, to use it, but the fact that it's trapped inside your
Speaker:house, it doesn't give you any utility.
Speaker:it looks great on paper.
Speaker:It makes your net worth grow.
Speaker:But in terms of personal utility, personally, like being able to
Speaker:improve your life or do the handle the priorities of life today,
Speaker:it doesn't necessarily help you.
Speaker:So when I think about what it means to be house rich and cash poor, I think
Speaker:about those homeowners of which there are many, where your net worth is highly,
Speaker:attributable to the equity value in your home.
Speaker:But your actual liquidity, your actual cash, your ability to spend on the things
Speaker:that matter to you, is under stress.
Speaker:And so that's how I think about what it means to be,
Speaker:house rich and cash poor.
Speaker:the thing that I also think a lot about here is that ironically, over time,
Speaker:for many people, the value of your house increasing in a way, makes you
Speaker:even more house rich and cash poor.
Speaker:The house rich part you get, which is if your house goes up in value,
Speaker:you're, you're more house rich.
Speaker:That's a good thing.
Speaker:But the cash poor part is,
Speaker:you know, what, comes along with the fact that your house is increasing
Speaker:in value, your property taxes go up, your insurance goes up, you know,
Speaker:the maintenance on the house goes up.
Speaker:for many of us, as our cost of homes, the value of our homes goes up, we
Speaker:actually start to feel even more poor.
Speaker:Because the cost of staying in that house increases, but
Speaker:, our income isn't necessarily increasing.
Speaker:Just cuz our house value is going up doesn't mean that our income is going up.
Speaker:And so that's why there's this squeeze on many, particularly middle
Speaker:income American families and why
Speaker:we've started our business, our, uh, focusing on this
Speaker:product that that helps them.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: That was a fantastic explanation
Speaker:and, and so deep into understanding how you perceive the house rich
Speaker:cash poor side of the house.
Speaker:And you'd mentioned earlier that you don't say yes to everybody.
Speaker:Who would you say is the ideal customer for Hometap?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Unfortunately, we can't
Speaker:say yes to everyone.
Speaker:Um, we continue to work on product innovation and ways
Speaker:to be able to offer product to expand it to more and more folks.
Speaker:But
Speaker:the number one, again, if you're focused on a product that's helping
Speaker:people who are house rich and cash poor, the, the number one criteria for
Speaker:us to be helpful to you and frankly for you to even want our capital, is
Speaker:that you have to have at least a decent amount of equity built up in your home.
Speaker:So we tend not to be that attractive to very recent home buyers who haven't
Speaker:yet been in their home long enough to have built up that equity, either by
Speaker:paying down debt over the years or from their home, appreciating over time.
Speaker:tend to be, um, really attractive to homeowners who, again,
Speaker:are kind of middle class,
Speaker:doing fine financially from an income and net worth standpoint.
Speaker:Um, but they're not rich, but they're doing fine.
Speaker:like, they're like most of us.
Speaker:they're, and they're, um, and they've been in their home for 7, 10, 12 years.
Speaker:Uh, they've built up all of this equity and now they have some capital need.
Speaker:The other place where we tend to be really attractive is you think about
Speaker:folks who are 45 to 55 years old.
Speaker:You're
Speaker:in the most complex part of your financial life.
Speaker:Your parents are getting older, maybe they've got some health issues or
Speaker:just need some help financially with whatever's going on in their lives.
Speaker:Your kids are getting older and so maybe they're going off to college or maybe
Speaker:you're trying to help support them as they start their independent lives.
Speaker:You've been in your house for 10 years the kitchen really could
Speaker:use a bit of a renovation, and you really wanna stay in your house for
Speaker:at least another five or 10 years.
Speaker:you wanna do that.
Speaker:So you kind of pull, you're looking over your shoulder, you haven't
Speaker:really started that 401k contribution as early as you wish you did.
Speaker:And now you're looking saying, Hey, I'm, that's retirement's
Speaker:maybe not that far away from me.
Speaker:you've got all this complexity going on in your life and then you realize, wow, I
Speaker:own 50, 60 and some of our homeowners, 70, 80% of the equity value of their homes.
Speaker:Uh, gosh, maybe what I do I'll sell off a percentage of this to Hometap
Speaker:and I'll be able to use that capital for something that's even more important
Speaker:to me than whether or not I own that extra X percent of the home value.
Speaker:that's really the sweet spot.
Speaker:Uh, there's a range of course, but that's really the sweet spot of,
Speaker:of homeowners that find Hometap to be particularly attractive.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: How would you describe how Hometap
Speaker:tailors the overall services for that particular demographic?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: The first thing that we do well, in
Speaker:some ways we don't because what I'd say is one of the strengths of Hometap
Speaker:is that we don't put restrictions on how the homeowner can use money.
Speaker:our view is it's your house, it's your money, it's your equity.
Speaker:You should do what you wanna do with it.
Speaker:Um, so that's, that's
Speaker:our philosophical approach.
Speaker:I will say that from a marketing standpoint, since we do see the
Speaker:common use cases of how people tend to want and use our capital,
Speaker:we do tend to, to market around those use cases to, so that if people are in market
Speaker:they're poking around trying to find, you know, capital, which historically would
Speaker:be borrow to go renovate their kitchen.
Speaker:We might show up there and say, you know, Hometap may be an interesting
Speaker:alternative for you to think about,
Speaker:for that renovation.
Speaker:So we do focus our, our marketing on that.
Speaker:, a little bit of a, of a nod towards the future.
Speaker:You know, we work, really, this is a lesson I've learned as an entrepreneur,
Speaker:which is it's way better to do a couple of things super well than to try to do
Speaker:lots of things in a mediocre fashion.
Speaker:Having said that,
Speaker:we've done a really great job with this product, and it's grown
Speaker:nicely and it's scaled nicely.
Speaker:Working very hard to think about what that roadmap looks like and how do
Speaker:we continue to add more value and be aligned with our homeowners so that we're
Speaker:more than just money for homeowners.
Speaker:we're able to help them with other things that, that where we can be helpful.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Can you share with us some specific
Speaker:steps that Hometap, Hometap takes, while that was a tongue twister,
Speaker:to ensure that the services provided to the homeowner is
Speaker:actually a really good fit for them?
Speaker:Chargebacks drain revenue and may threaten your ability to process payments, but they
Speaker:don't need to be a cost of doing business
Speaker:you can resolve up to 40 percent of chargebacks before they're ever filed.
Speaker:Here's how it works.
Speaker:When one of your customers contacts a participating bank to dispute
Speaker:a charge, you'll be notified.
Speaker:At that point, you can avoid the resulting chargeback
Speaker:it's fast, easy, and effective.
Speaker:You can be set up in preventing up to 40% of chargebacks in just 48 hours.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: first of all, there's a, uh, there's a
Speaker:rigorous underwriting process, so you need to make sure that you're eligible,
Speaker:for a Hometap product.
Speaker:The second thing is that we work really hard to make sure that all
Speaker:of our people who are talking to homeowners are well trained, uh, in
Speaker:all the ins and outs of the product.
Speaker:And in equally importantly, not just
Speaker:the mechanics, but really have empathy the homeowner, um, and try to understand what
Speaker:the homeowner is trying to, to accomplish.
Speaker:The third thing is we're we really focus on making sure
Speaker:that, you know, nobody has any,
Speaker:economic incentive to push money.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Hmm.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: know, whether, if a homeowner comes
Speaker:to us and they're looking to solve a problem of x thousands of dollars,
Speaker:there's nobody who makes any more because the homeowner takes twice that amount.
Speaker:Or
Speaker:how much the homeowner takes from us, we don't care.
Speaker:Like, it's just, it's as long as they're qualified for the amount,
Speaker:it's up to them to determine how much solves the problem in their lives.
Speaker:That's a really important part of our culture and making sure that, and then
Speaker:the other thing we do, um, is besides all of what you would expect in a
Speaker:financial service product in terms of, compliance and regulatory and oversight,
Speaker:the other thing, is really important is we've provided a lot of tools for
Speaker:the homeowner that are simple to use.
Speaker:Calculators so that you don't have to build your own spreadsheet to be able to
Speaker:say, well, if I take this much and my home goes up in value or goes down in value,
Speaker:what will that cost me at the end of a certain period of time?
Speaker:So I think the combination of all of those things is what we put in place to
Speaker:really make sure that the homeowner knows,
Speaker:what they're doing, why they're doing it, and feels, feels really good.
Speaker:One little anecdote I'll share with you that we're really proud
Speaker:of, as I mentioned, we, work incredibly hard to build our brand
Speaker:and to build trust with homeowners.
Speaker:And we've done really nicely
Speaker:, with site reviews.
Speaker:But if you look at our stats today, our reviews, they're really high across
Speaker:the board, but homeowners satisfaction and scores for Hometap are slightly e
Speaker:they're great across the board, but they're even higher for the homeowners
Speaker:that have completely G not only taken a Hometap investment with us,
Speaker:but have settled that investment,
Speaker:down the line because they sold their home or they refinanced us.
Speaker:And to us, that's really a great sign that we're doing things right,
Speaker:which is, you took money from us and you loved us, and then X years
Speaker:went by and now you sold your house,
Speaker:or you refinanced, or you bought us out.
Speaker:And then you love us slightly even more.
Speaker:And so that's, to me, incredibly rewarding to know
Speaker:, that people who've gone all the way through the cycle, are, are excited
Speaker:to have done business with us.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: The real estate market has shown over
Speaker:the long term of continuing to increase.
Speaker:But, that doesn't stop it from having downturns or corrections
Speaker:as it's called a lot of times.
Speaker:How are you seeing, or how do you perceive the current market for
Speaker:home equity investments and where are you seeing Hometap fit in?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: I think you're right, which is for sure
Speaker:if you look historically, you see that residential real estate is, is one of the
Speaker:most, resilient asset classes over time.
Speaker:And for sure you see that residential real estate, like all asset classes,
Speaker:stocks, bonds, equities, anything else you could name, they go through
Speaker:cycles and they go through periods of, of up and down and cyclicality.
Speaker:that's another one of the benefits of, of Hometap for a homeowner, which is if
Speaker:you're a homeowner, you're a portfolio of one, you have one house in one market
Speaker:and you have a huge percentage of your net worth tied up into this one asset.
Speaker:Whereas, know, if you're Hometap or our investors who are investing
Speaker:in pools of these things, they have the benefit of a diversified pool.
Speaker:we've lost money on individual investments, of course we have.
Speaker:And we always will because homes don't always go up in value and
Speaker:sometimes bad things happen.
Speaker:But the beauty of it from the investor side is that you get
Speaker:this broad diversified portfolio
Speaker:over a longitudinal period of time.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: And so it works out,
Speaker:You know, ideally, has so far, knock on wood, will continue
Speaker:to work out for investors,
Speaker:in a positive way.
Speaker:Um, but for the individual homeowner, when that one in whatever percent goes,
Speaker:goes wrong, it could be really painful.
Speaker:And so it's, it is a nice added benefit of the fact
Speaker:that we can kind of take on more risk than any individual homeowner
Speaker:necessarily wants to take on.
Speaker:What I'll say about the current market is, um, it's, it's
Speaker:a, it's a tricky one, right?
Speaker:What you're seeing right now is home prices are flat-ish.
Speaker:They're slightly starting to slightly come around nationally in terms of increase.
Speaker:There has been a period over the last, uh, 12 months or so
Speaker:where home prices have declined.
Speaker:And that's on top of the fact that we've seen real inflation.
Speaker:So in real terms, they, you know, they've declined, uh, a decent amount.
Speaker:And that's just, that's part of the business, right?
Speaker:So our view is we can't predict what's gonna happen to home prices
Speaker:or stocks or bonds or interest rates.
Speaker:nobody knows what's gonna happen in the short run to this stuff.
Speaker:And what you've got to do is you've got to build a business that can
Speaker:be resilient enough to sustain itself during those down periods and
Speaker:not get hurt too badly and be able to take a long-term view that
Speaker:says, in the long term, long-term averages will likely prevail and
Speaker:will have a, a really good business,
Speaker:over a long period of time.
Speaker:And we're committed, you know, we're not in this for a, a
Speaker:quick, a quick hit, right?
Speaker:This is a business where we really are on, uh, have a vision to build a
Speaker:long-term durable company that someday you know, is a brand that all homeowners
Speaker:have heard of and we're top talent, who cares about doing something good
Speaker:for the world, wants to come and work.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: What are tr some of the trends that
Speaker:you're observing in the FinTech space, and particularly in relation to home equity?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Yeah.
Speaker:There's several trends the, in the, the residential real estate
Speaker:space that are happening right now.
Speaker:So the first is you're seeing a dramatic impact, from the fact that in the fed's
Speaker:efforts to fight inflation, We've seen a historical quick rise in interest rates.
Speaker:And so what has that done from a residential real estate standpoint?
Speaker:Which is number one, it has made it difficult to, or more
Speaker:difficult to purchase a home cuz the cost of borrowing has gone up.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Number two, it's made it a
Speaker:little bit more challenging.
Speaker:If you're previously thought you might wanna do some kind of cash out refi
Speaker:or second lien mortgage, it's made it more difficult to contemplate more debt
Speaker:cuz the cost of that debt has gone up.
Speaker:number three for sure, you've seen, you know, some homeowners who might
Speaker:otherwise be in the market to sell, uh, right now may be staying in their house
Speaker:a little bit longer they don't want to have to go buy on the other side,
Speaker:and sell house A to go buy house B.
Speaker:So for sure, you've seen the impact of rising rates and inflation, uh, have
Speaker:a pretty meaningful impact on housing.
Speaker:Now if you go back 12 months ago, what people were forecasting is that there
Speaker:would be this, or what some people were forecasting was that there would be this,
Speaker:very steep decline in house values.
Speaker:And as it turns out, there has not been, uh, there's been some decline,
Speaker:but there in a softening, but there hasn't been a steep decline.
Speaker:And the issue is because the, in the US housing market, you also still see pretty
Speaker:close to record low levels of supply.
Speaker:And like any good, anybody who's taken microeconomics knows that,
Speaker:know, prices at the intersection of where supply and demand meet.
Speaker:So even if demand is a little bit slow because of where interest rates are, if
Speaker:supply is limited, there's just not that, you know, not that far for price to drop.
Speaker:And So prices have held okay.
Speaker:We're starting to see prices start to increase again.
Speaker:We're starting to see a little bit more velocity in terms of,
Speaker:homeowners you, um, home transactions is still slow,
Speaker:certainly compared to previous years.
Speaker:But we believe that what you'll likely see is a new normal.
Speaker:And once we all get out of the longing for yesteryear of super low interest
Speaker:rates, and we reset our psychological,
Speaker:point of view and our emotional, emotional ability to recognize where
Speaker:rates are today, things will start to move back towards more normal kinds
Speaker:of transaction volumes and refinancing volumes and, uh, and such for homeowners.
Speaker:I will state that
Speaker:it actually has increased the demand for Hometap product.
Speaker:Because in a, in a world where the cost of borrowing has gone really high and
Speaker:where your discretionary income has been reduced because of inflation, so
Speaker:your, like, your real after tax, after inflation affected income is now lower.
Speaker:The idea of taking on more debt is even more,
Speaker:troublesome or worrisome.
Speaker:And so on the margin, if you have a choice of a more equity-like product
Speaker:such as Hometap that isn't charging you interest every month versus taking on
Speaker:a product, we're starting next month, I gotta start making more payments.
Speaker:You know, we've, on a relative basis, start looking more attractive.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: So with all of these changes and the way
Speaker:everything's been moving around, as you mentioned, interest rates have gone up.
Speaker:I, I think, fi they are about 500 basis points higher than what they
Speaker:were, um, at the lowest point,
Speaker:from the Fed.
Speaker:And you mentioned also that the inventory has been really, really low.
Speaker:How has Hometap responded to these trends and all of the different market dynamics?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: We've re it gets a little bit to the
Speaker:last answer, which is, with all those market dynamics, the need and desire
Speaker:for Hometap like products has grown.
Speaker:And so for us, it just makes us feel even more impassioned about
Speaker:, this is our moment to, to deliver on our mission, to help make
Speaker:home ownership less stressful.
Speaker:Um, and so our team's been, we're working hard.
Speaker:We've been,
Speaker:, we've expanded into more states.
Speaker:We're, um, we're, we've raised additional, uh, capital in order to
Speaker:be able to deploy, uh, over the next,
Speaker:We'll, hopefully continuously deploy, but in particular, you know, capital that we
Speaker:can deploy over the next 12 to 18 months.
Speaker:Um, we're ramping up our marketing efforts.
Speaker:we're trying to do everything we can to make sure that we're operationally able
Speaker:to satisfy the demand that we see a a and I will tell you historically, even
Speaker:when interest rates were really low,
Speaker:, we have never been constrained by the homeowner demand for our product.
Speaker:There's always been more homeowner demand for what we do than our capital
Speaker:ability to say yes to all of it.
Speaker:So we're working hard to raise more capital and continue to refine
Speaker:our technology and operations so that we can continue to scale
Speaker:and, and help the homeowners.
Speaker:Cause that's, that's why we exist.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Well, I'm gonna ask you to pull
Speaker:the DeLorean out of the garage and we're gonna go to the future.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Just to be clear, have, uh, the glass
Speaker:family has three minivans, but go on.
Speaker:I, DeLorean
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Oh, okay.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:All right, so we'll pull the minivan out of the garage.
Speaker:We'll, we'll set the date to the few sometime in the future.
Speaker:What do you see the future holding for Hometap, and can you share
Speaker:with us some of the goals and plans that you do have for the company?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, if I look over the next three to five years, if I could click my heels and
Speaker:make it all happen, I'd say, number one, we've delivered on this homeowner promise.
Speaker:And so we've become,
Speaker:a really well trusted and well well-known national brand.
Speaker:Where homeowners wanna come to us because they know that
Speaker:they're gonna be taken care of.
Speaker:They sort of seek to do business with us.
Speaker:So I'd say that's, certainly would be on the top of my list.
Speaker:Uh, I, I would say the second thing is we will launch multiple products.
Speaker:So today our main product is this product that's focused on,
Speaker:House Rich and Cash Poor Homeowners, which has done incredibly well.
Speaker:But there's a lot of other products that we can launch, uh, both financial
Speaker:products and non-financial products that are aligned with homeowners,
Speaker:that really, and the number one criteria when we think about new ideas
Speaker:is the first thing we think about
Speaker:is it aligned with our mission around making home ownership less
Speaker:stressful and more accessible?
Speaker:It's not what are the margins on it or how, what's the size of the market,
Speaker:or how easily could we sell it?
Speaker:The first thing we look at
Speaker:, is it aligned with our mission of making home ownership less stressful?
Speaker:So I would say that's, that's probably, um, the second thing.
Speaker:And, uh, gosh, the third thing, what would be third?
Speaker:I would say number three, if it would be, we've done such a good job on the cultural
Speaker:side of Hometap and creating career development and career opportunities where
Speaker:we're not only a nationally known brand amongst homeowners, but we're a nationally
Speaker:known brand amongst the most talented people who really not only want to build
Speaker:a great career and professional skills and have their own personal development,
Speaker:which all of our, all of all of us as employees, deserve to aspire towards that,
Speaker:but also wanna be part of an organization that's committed to doing good.
Speaker:And so I think if we can, I think we're in a great place on that.
Speaker:I'm really proud of, of the team
Speaker:and we've been blessed with some nice awards and recognition for
Speaker:what we've done there, but I think there's still more we can and will do.
Speaker:And so over the next bunch of years, we're gonna continue to, to make that stronger.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: How are you envisioning the, the
Speaker:overall landscape of equity, home equity investments, and how are they
Speaker:evolving and what are you looking at to prepare for these changes?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: I asked myself the question, how long
Speaker:do we get to call ourselves a startup?
Speaker:Um, and, and I think you get to call yourself a startup, uh, until the
Speaker:point where what you're doing becomes so obvious that all of a sudden
Speaker:lots of other, uh, companies tried to, uh, enter the market because
Speaker:they wanted to skip the, uh, the difficult, also fun, um, but
Speaker:certainly ambiguous early years of is there gonna be a market here?
Speaker:And, and how hard or easy is it gonna be to build it?
Speaker:You know, what we do and, and, and adjacent products to what
Speaker:we do are really important.
Speaker:I think there's a massive market for it.
Speaker:I think there's massive demand for it.
Speaker:There's massive need for what we do.
Speaker:And so I just, I really can't imagine that this won't be a big industry and as
Speaker:a result, I can't imagine that that will not attract multiple competitors, uh,
Speaker:and additional competition in the space.
Speaker:It would be naive to, to think otherwise.
Speaker:when I was a venture capitalist, you know, venture capitalists like
Speaker:to ask the question to businesses, well, what's, you know, what are
Speaker:you building that's defensible?
Speaker:And you know, there's lots of things that you can build.
Speaker:You can,
Speaker:build your brand and you build your operations and your technology and you've
Speaker:got some data science and some analytical advantages and there's things for sure,
Speaker:things that you do to try to build your defensibility around your business.
Speaker:and they
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: The good old moat
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: the, with the good mode.
Speaker:but I actually think the number one, there's a few businesses
Speaker:that have really structural moats.
Speaker:I was an investor, um, at Bain Capital Ventures.
Speaker:I, I led our investment, you know, many, many moons ago in LinkedIn.
Speaker:What an amazing company.
Speaker:What an amazing team, amazing founders and vision.
Speaker:They built a serious moat.
Speaker:I mean, let's, you know, how are get a million of the world's,
Speaker:or I should say a hundred million or a billion, or, I guess when
Speaker:we invested, they had 17 million.
Speaker:I don't even know what their number is now.
Speaker:I'm sure it's in the billions.
Speaker:Billions of people to connect and put their information and
Speaker:all their network together.
Speaker:That's a pretty defensible business.
Speaker:But for all the rest of us, know, I think that the way you defend your
Speaker:business is that you don't stand still.
Speaker:So, we can do all the things I mentioned, build a brand and build great culture.
Speaker:And we will, and are, and we can build some defensibility in our
Speaker:analytics and how we go to market and distribution and partnerships.
Speaker:All those things are critically important and, and we think about 'em every day.
Speaker:But the most important thing we could, I'd say the two most important things
Speaker:we could do is, number one, build a culture that self perpetuates where
Speaker:the brightest people who are most motivated around our mission and doing
Speaker:good for homeowners wanna come to work.
Speaker:And number two, don't stand still.
Speaker:So while new companies are trying to emulate what we did two years
Speaker:ago, we're already working on what's gonna be done two years from now.
Speaker:And that's, that's the key to defensibility, particularly in
Speaker:competitive spaces like ours where, where lots of folks wanna participate.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Well, I'm not gonna ask you to
Speaker:reveal any secret sauce or any secret projects, but are there any
Speaker:upcoming features or services that you would be able to share that Hometap
Speaker:customers would look forward to?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Well, we recently launched,
Speaker:because I'm certainly not gonna share any forward secrets.
Speaker:So I appreciate the effort, but it's just not gonna happen today.
Speaker:Maybe you'll have me back for another, uh, another episode.
Speaker:we recently, launched the product called the Home Equity Dashboard.
Speaker:And the Home Equity Dashboard is a product that allows us to have ongoing
Speaker:engagement with our homeowners.
Speaker:what we're working towards is you being able to add more value for homeowners,
Speaker:not just in providing them with capital, but being able to, over time, provide
Speaker:them with a lot more than just capital.
Speaker:And so this home equity dashboard, which helps homeowner think about,
Speaker:the value of their home and the value of their equity, and certainly allows
Speaker:'em to look at their Hometap capital and what that looks like and what it
Speaker:would cost if they wanted to settle with us and has a bunch of features
Speaker:and functionality associated with that.
Speaker:for us, a, a launching point for hopefully doing a lot more,
Speaker:uh, for homeowners, again, all aligned, aligned with this mission,
Speaker:aligned with the, with the mission.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: You having been a serial entrepreneur,
Speaker:I'm guessing that you might have some advice to someone who's trying
Speaker:to decide what products to focus on.
Speaker:If you could give that one sentence, one piece of advice on how to determine
Speaker:what to focus on, what would it be?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: I would say focus on a product or a
Speaker:service that you're passionate about.
Speaker:This is hard work.
Speaker:we've been at this over six years now.
Speaker:Um, and we've got, we've got way more in front of us than we have
Speaker:behind us, and we're already six and a half years working on this idea.
Speaker:And so it's hard work and it can be stressful.
Speaker:in fact, it's rarely not stressful.
Speaker:Even when it's going great, it's stressful.
Speaker:Cuz when it's going great, you're like, how do I make sure I don't blow this?
Speaker:And when poorly, you're like, how do I make sure I don't fail?
Speaker:So either way, you're stressed out and, and you know, you're
Speaker:an entrepreneur, you're a ceo.
Speaker:You've got, if you're, I think if you take your job seriously, You
Speaker:care an awful lot about your team.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Mm-hmm.
Speaker:You
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: care a lot about your capital and
Speaker:your investors, and you definitely care a lot about your customers.
Speaker:And so you don't wanna let anybody down, forget about yourself.
Speaker:You don't wanna let anybody else down.
Speaker:So you come to work every day saying, what can I do to make sure that
Speaker:I, you know, keep everybody going strong and I don't let anybody down?
Speaker:So this is, this is hard work.
Speaker:It's stressful, it's long hours.
Speaker:I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
Speaker:I've been doing this for 30 years.
Speaker:Hopefully I'll be doing it for another 30.
Speaker:But I'd say you gotta love what you're doing.
Speaker:You gotta be passionate, uh, about, about what it is you're actually delivering.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: So you mentioned loving it
Speaker:and being passionate about it.
Speaker:What are some of the key considerations that should guide them to deciding
Speaker:whether it's something they like or if it's something that they love doing?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: I would break this into something
Speaker:a little bit more subtle besides just the, what you're doing.
Speaker:I think there's a lot of people out there who want to be an
Speaker:entrepreneur or want to love being an entrepreneur, but really don't.
Speaker:And, and look, there's a lot of reasons not to love it.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: I would love to understand that distinction.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Look, there's a lot, there's a not
Speaker:lot, there's a lot not to love.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: I.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: you, you know, you're starting
Speaker:a company from scratch.
Speaker:If you're doing something interesting it means it's really hard because if it
Speaker:wasn't, somebody would've already done it.
Speaker:Most of the people, you know, when we started Hometap back in 2016, I
Speaker:started talking to people from the residential real estate space and the
Speaker:lending space, both on the homeowner side as well as on the capital side.
Speaker:everybody said there's just no chance this thing is gonna work.
Speaker:But by the way, that's what they said about a lot of other businesses, right?
Speaker:It, it's hard to think about something that doesn't exist yet, and that's,
Speaker:a little bit of a challenge to the status quo.
Speaker:So like it's, there's a, there's a lot not to like, about being an
Speaker:entrepreneur and it's not for everybody.
Speaker:And so I think that's the first question, people.
Speaker:A and there's, look, there's no shame in not liking it, right?
Speaker:Just like different strokes for different folks.
Speaker:, I have some friends who, who've been incredibly successful and worked
Speaker:for many, many years inside larger companies and have over time taken on,
Speaker:you know, more and more responsibility.
Speaker:And I listen to their lives and their jobs and how proud they are
Speaker:and how much satisfaction they get.
Speaker:And,
Speaker:they run companies that everybody's heard of and like, I I, I look
Speaker:at them with a lot of admiration.
Speaker:Um, and they're super happy.
Speaker:And, and frankly they look at me without a lot of admiration.
Speaker:They say, like, what was Glass thinking?
Speaker:he's starting another 2016 or when we started working on the idea.
Speaker:So it's, I think everybody needs to figure out what makes them happy and not, not try
Speaker:to do what you think you should do or what you think other people think you should
Speaker:do, but what really makes you happy.
Speaker:I was starting companies when I was 18 years old.
Speaker:It would,
Speaker:I mean, don't tell my board this, my board's not gonna hear
Speaker:this, this podcast, are they?
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Well, I mean, we, we
Speaker:hope that they subscribe.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: I bet they will.
Speaker:But no, I say, I say that jokingly, which like, I, I, I, I was doing this stuff
Speaker:for free, you know, since I was a kid, because it's just what I love to do.
Speaker:I say, don't tell my board cuz I don't want 'em, you know, I
Speaker:don't want 'em to cut my salary.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Well, you, you prefer
Speaker:to continue to get paid.
Speaker:I get it.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: I, I don't mind getting
Speaker:paid every once in a while.
Speaker:But, um, but I would, I, I, it's what I do.
Speaker:It's, it's what I would do for fun.
Speaker:In, in college, it was my extracurricular activity.
Speaker:So, so I think that, you know, if you can find
Speaker:what you love to do, and then on top of that, you know, you find a
Speaker:product that you really believe in.
Speaker:I just love hearing the stories about homeowners are using our capital and
Speaker:how we're making their lives better.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: And I say, you know, every hour I'm
Speaker:working is worthwhile because we're, we're making people's lives better and what
Speaker:else should I be doing on this earth than trying to contribute in some small way?
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: So last question of the
Speaker:day before we say goodbye.
Speaker:I'd love it if you could share a specific lesson or experience from
Speaker:your entrepreneurial journey that has been decades in the making
Speaker:that has significantly influenced your current approach to business?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: One for sure that I really feel
Speaker:strongly about, uh, that I think younger entrepreneurs in particular, maybe
Speaker:myself included, back, back moons ago, would've stepped in, you know, on the
Speaker:wrong side of this, which is don't for ownership, optimize for success
Speaker:when entrepreneurs hear that, they think about, okay, well maybe that means I
Speaker:shouldn't fight that much with capital about, you know, how much they're gonna
Speaker:get for their investment in my business.
Speaker:and the answer is, maybe you shouldn't, because if you can find the right
Speaker:capital partner who's gonna help you be successful, then on the margin,
Speaker:the binary element of success or failure is way more important than
Speaker:anybody's individual ownership.
Speaker:But I think it goes beyond just like pure dollars.
Speaker:I think it goes into ideas of building a team, sharing
Speaker:responsibility, letting people grow.
Speaker:I still work on this.
Speaker:I, you know, I can't say I'm, I'm, I'm not guilty of this, but
Speaker:like, like let people grow and prosper and let them be successful.
Speaker:And, and, and, It doesn't always have to be about you.
Speaker:And, and do the things that allow the company and the organization
Speaker:and the mission to be successful, whether it's with your team, whether
Speaker:it's with your investors, um, that optimizes for the binary element of
Speaker:let's be successful together as opposed to the sharp elbow of whether it's
Speaker:money or role and responsibility.
Speaker:I still have a way to go in maturing on that, but I'm certainly a lot more mature
Speaker:about those topics than I was 30 years ago when I was working on my first company.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Jeff, we've talked about
Speaker:a lot of stuff today.
Speaker:We've talked about Hometap, we've talked about the origins.
Speaker:We've talked about your entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker:Is there anything that we might have missed out or some additional things
Speaker:that you want the audience to hear?
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: If there's one thing to maybe take
Speaker:away from my experience at Hometap,
Speaker:it's that professionally speaking, I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life because
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Hmm.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: I'm working with amazing people who all
Speaker:share this mission and feel passionate about what we're doing in the world.
Speaker:And so, if you could find that, work hard to get that, because if you could do that,
Speaker:if you solve for the team and you solve for culture and you, you solve for, you
Speaker:know, your employee team satisfaction.
Speaker:Then everything else can get solved for if with having a great team and a great
Speaker:motivated team and a powerful culture, you're gonna have motivated team who's
Speaker:doing a great job for your customers, which is why Hometap has such amazing,
Speaker:homeowner testimonials and, and reviews and satisfaction scores.
Speaker:And you'll do a great job for your investors because you'll
Speaker:build a great product and you'll figure out how to do it with,
Speaker:economics and business model that makes sense.
Speaker:Like everything falls into place if you sort of put that first and you
Speaker:personally will be happier because,
Speaker:we all want to contribute.
Speaker:We all want to be successful and, and be successful, not just for our
Speaker:own families, but, but for others.
Speaker:And at least for me, that's, I feel very grateful and, and appreciative
Speaker:of the fact that I'm, I'm in the, the best place I've ever been in, at
Speaker:across a long entrepreneurial career.
Speaker:Tedd Huff - Fintech Confidential, Host: Jeff, thank you for sharing your insights,
Speaker:the incredible work that Hometap is doing to revolutionize home ownership financing.
Speaker:And to our audience, we hope that you found this conversation nearly
Speaker:as an enlightening as we did.
Speaker:And remember, Hometap is providing a smart alternative to traditional loans,
Speaker:allowing homeowners to access their home equity without the burden of debt.
Speaker:If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, share,
Speaker:like follow, leave your comments.
Speaker:And as always, stay tuned for more insightful conversations
Speaker:on FinTech Confidential.
Speaker:Jeffrey Glass, Founder & CEO, Hometap: Thanks so much Tedd.
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