Ric Elias

I had a couple part-time employees in the beginning, no equity.

And so Bankrate, this publicly traded company, uh, a friend of a friend knew the CEO.

I went in to meet with him.

Zero plan, no deck, no business plan.

And, um, so yeah, in 2020 I switched into just being the full-time evangelist, spokesperson, which is what I love doing.

And at that same exact time, pandemic hit, I'm not traveling.

I also realized I had more time to focus on now investing my wealth, and I had a couple interesting people knock on my door, including Ankur Jain, uh, the CEO and founder of Bilt.

And I thought, "Well, if this isn't an opportunity to take some of this time now that I have not managing this company." So I, I really started angel investing at that point and throughout the pandemic.