EP21 Brian Ma - Iterative Capital - My KPI is how many peoples’ lives have I changed

Frontier Fintech Podcast

“My life is not that long and the only thing I want to do is making a big impact”

Brian Ma is the Managing Partner of Iterative Capital, a YC-style accelerator focusing on increasing Southeast Asia’s GDP. He is also the Founder of Divvy Homes, a $2B company that allows customers to build equity credits as they rent. This episode is so special as we went through his founder journey and lessons learnt from founding 2 failed startups and 1 unicorn.

Brian is a third culture kid who moved to the U.S. when he was 8. He got into college at the age of 15. When he graduated, like many of us, he didn’t know what to do. One thing he knew was he wanted to make a ‘big impact’ and starting a company would allow him to do that. At 17, he joined Zillow as an early employee and helped the company grow from 13 to 300 people. He then left to start his own company at 21.

Those companies failed, but the lessons he learned paved the way for Divvy Homes, a company that reflects his passion for the real estate market. The idea was incubated at Max Levchin’s incubator HVF where Brain spent 6 months validating if this idea was going to be big enough.

Today, Divvy Homes is disrupting the way people buy homes in the U.S. and the company is valued at $2B. Through the journey, what made a difference was being intentional about finding a really ‘big problem’. Having clarity on the end goal helped him figure out steps he needed to take and who he needed to hire.

There are so many valuable lessons in this episode. This is just a glimpse of what founders can learn at Iterative Capital, a Southeast Asia-based accelerator program. His next goal? Increasing SEA’s GDP.