00:10From Dallas, Texas, I'm Alison LaForge, and on this episode of 10 Minute Talks,
00:14I'm joined by Alex Song, the co-founder and board member at MakeCard. Alex, thank you for sitting
00:20down with me. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to jump in, and I want you to
00:26sort of lift the veil behind what's going on at MakeCard. What inspired you and your co-founders
00:34to build the company? Absolutely. We're super passionate about what we do at MakeCard.
00:39We're a venture-backed startup. We're based in New York City, and we are a credit card company
00:45that aims to do two things. Number one, really focusing on home affordability, home ownership,
00:54and making the burdens and the cost of home ownership as light as possible. Secondly,
01:00we're also very passionate about the mortgage industry, and so we also aim to partner with a
01:07slew of mortgage companies to help them deepen the intensity of the relationship that they have
01:13with their borrowers in a way to drive active engagement, brand loyalty, and ultimately to
01:20drive retention and recapture. It's really a dual passion of mine personally because I started my
01:24career as a mortgage investor. Over the last decade plus, I was deep in the world of residential real
01:31estate, and then over the last couple of years, I actually was also deep in the world of credit
01:35cards as well. And so both personally and professionally, MadeCard is really, really drives me,
01:42you know, kind of to do what I do. I love what I do. That is fantastic. So let's talk
01:47about you for a
01:48second, Alex. Let's dig a little bit more into your experience and how your background has shaped your
01:56vision for improving the home ownership experience. Yeah, absolutely.
02:00Absolutely. As a homeowner myself, I think everyone probably, you know, this resonates with them,
02:07which is, you know, the first time you buy a home, everyone is always caught, you know,
02:12by surprise by all of the expenses, the things that come up, all the things you need to worry
02:18about and think about on a day-to-day basis. The mental load, not to mention the actual commercial
02:25aspects and the liability and kind of all the things you have to pay. You know, as someone who
02:32has been deep in the mortgage and residential real estate ecosystem, that's something that I knew very,
02:37very deeply. What we do know is that within six months of buying a home, the average homeowner tends
02:43to get a credit card more often than not, over 50% of the time. And so there's definitely a
02:50need
02:51for credit just because of all the things you have to buy. That's a problem that resonates with us.
02:57And then secondarily, you know, with everything that we know about in terms of elevated mortgage
03:03rates, rising home prices, not to mention inflation, the ever escalating cost of insurance, taxes,
03:11groceries, you name it. It just means that this problem more so today than probably at any time
03:17over the last 10 years is an exceptionally salient one, which is why we decided to start this company
03:23and to address this problem specifically. It's something that we think about academically
03:29and we feel personally as well.
03:32The company sounds very interesting. Your experience perfectly ties into it. Not many people get to
03:39pursue their personal passions professionally, but I'm curious about your perspective on what
03:46really makes your approach unique and why collaboration across the housing industry is important.
03:54Yeah, absolutely. There's at least two things that we're very proud of that make us exceptionally
03:59differentiated. Number one is our emphasis on data, our emphasis on leveraging that data,
04:08understanding consumer behavior and essentially nudging the consumer to spend intelligently. A lot of
04:16that actually comes and is largely inspired by my prior company. And so prior to founding MadeCard,
04:23I was actually one of the early executives and head of finance at a company called Ramp. Now,
04:28Ramp is one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing fintech companies.
04:33My cards and my wallet.
04:34There you go. We are one of the fastest growing fintech companies in history. One of the things
04:41that we were able to tap into and really discover is that everyone wants to spend responsibly. Everyone
04:47wants to be disciplined and everyone has good intentions. Now, wouldn't it be awesome if you had
04:52the automation, the technology and the data to make that easier? And so that's what we aim to do with
04:59consumers. We're not really like every other credit card company. We don't want consumers
05:04to spend more. We actually want them to spend less. I think someone who is really keen about
05:11financial discipline and budgeting, etc., that's a good customer. That's someone that we want.
05:16I would say that's thing number one. Thing number two that really differentiates us from most credit
05:21card companies also is that we're not out there doing a ton of direct mail or performance marketing.
05:28We're not buying leads indiscriminately from Credit Karma or Google or anything like that.
05:34A large portion of our business is predicated on B2B to C distribution. So we partner with large
05:42mortgage companies, home builders, moving and storage companies, and even a handful of solar companies to
05:48distribute to their customer base. And you can imagine we're able to leverage quite an intense
05:54relationship in an effort to basically help them essentially become more responsible homeowners.
06:03We love what we do, and our partners also are very, very keen about working with us.
06:09One data point that I'll share with you is that earlier this year, obviously we had our big
06:14announcement, our funding, and then we came out of stealth. We launched in conjunction with Fairway
06:18Mortgage. They're fantastic, and I love working with the team there.
06:22They are great. Within weeks, we were in all 50 states. Within weeks, we were in hundreds of
06:29households. And what's interesting also is that within a matter of probably a few weeks to months,
06:3610 to 15% of Fairway loan officers of LOs have sent at least one applicant and one customer over
06:44to us.
06:45So there's actually a tremendous amount of buy-in from the team, the company. And so we are very,
06:52very happy.
06:53That doesn't surprise me at all. Rising tides lift all. And this is something that, as you mentioned,
07:00is a critical aspect of homeownership that's often sort of left out of the conversation. But I have to
07:06ask you, how do you see technology and innovation facilitating new opportunities to help more
07:13Americans achieve and, to your point earlier, sustain homeownership?
07:18I think a lot of it has to do with what we are able to do uniquely now with AI
07:25that conventionally
07:30payment processing or lending companies or even technologies could not do. I think it's actually
07:36very appropriate that we're at this AI summit. I would say day in and day out, my team, we do
07:43a
07:43significant amount of our work inside Cursor or Cloud or ChatGPT. The reality is we're able to garner much
07:51more leverage from the technology than even my team was able to back at RAMP four years ago or five
07:59years
07:59ago. What's interesting about that specifically is this. Because we are at the point of sale, we're a
08:05credit card company. We really get to see quite a tremendous amount of data around how households are
08:12run, what homeowners do, when they spend, where they spend, how they spend. And what's interesting is that
08:19that used to be a fairly challenging big data problem. You know, again, if you rewind five, six, ten years,
08:26it would have been exceptionally difficult to sift through hundreds of thousands of transactions,
08:31years and not decades of data to come up with insights or recommendations. The reality is we can
08:38do that quite trivially now. We're very proud of that. And the idea is that we'd be able to help
08:45our
08:46homeowners and our customers with behavioral recommendations as well as recommendations
08:52around specific vendors that they can reach out to, specific investments that they can make around
08:59the home that generates the highest possible ROI. And so that's one of the things that we are trying to
09:06reframe the discussion around is your home is meant to be an asset. It is something that you're supposed to
09:12invest in intelligence. Don't just think of it as a liability. Don't just think of it as
09:18a laundry list of expenses. And I think by working with homeowners with their habits, tapping into their
09:25behavior and understanding what the asset ultimately looks like, I think there's ways in which we could
09:30make it, you know, win-win, create more value and home equity for the borrower, more engagement for the
09:38mortgage companies. And then for us, we have a more responsible and a better borrower.
09:43Alex, you are clearly in the absolute thick of it over at Madecard, what the vision is, what your
09:49purpose is, what you're trying to achieve. What trends are you watching most closely that you believe will
09:56reshape how companies engage with homeowners over the next few years?
10:02A couple. Number one is personalization. That's the theme of kind of some of what we are building.
10:09We really want to understand everything there is to understand about
10:14you as a homeowner, as well as your home, your house. That level of personalization, I think before
10:22the age of AI, I think has been tremendously difficult, just because there's a lot of different data sets
10:27that you're trying to make sense of. That's thing number one. What that also means is that for our
10:34mortgage partners, for some of our distribution partners, the engagement is also exceptionally
10:40personalized. So you're no longer sending out indiscriminate marketing campaigns to thousands,
10:46if not tens of thousands of people. Now, I think there are specific live events or there are specific
10:50trigger events in which there's a good opportunity to engage with one of your borrowers.
10:56Well, we can help you do that. I think that level of personalization is going to be
11:04instrumental in differentiating, I think, mortgage companies that will continue to grow and expand
11:09versus ones that potentially will remain stagnant. I think that's one. Number two is really we're at the
11:17forefront of mortgage loyalty and mortgage rewards. That's something that is absolutely massive
11:23in the world of hotels, in the world of dining, in the world of airlines. I mean, just this week,
11:31you saw that I think Blackstone is taking a stake in Air Canada's points program, and they're valuing it
11:39at something like eight or 10 billion. Delta SkyMiles, very famously, I think it's like a 30 billion
11:45dollar program. These programs work a lot. It's really interesting and unusual. And I feel it's
11:52it's such a shame that the concept of mortgage of loyalty and mortgage rewards doesn't really exist in
12:01in really any way, shape or form. And really, we want to be at the forefront of that reward cardholders
12:08for expenses that they're incurring anyways, give them points, and then give them the ability then
12:14to redeem those points in smart, intelligent ways. That is something I'm exceptionally excited about.
12:21Alex, what's next for MateCard?
12:25We are focused right now on a couple of different initiatives. Number one is we definitely want to
12:32deepen the scope and aperture of our partnerships. So I've already mentioned home building, obviously
12:38mortgage companies, solar, moving and storage. The reality is the the homeownership ecosystem value
12:45chain is very deep and very rich. And I think that we could easily spend more time with our friends
12:52in
12:53home improvement, with our friends in all of the different home services verticals, whether it
13:00be landscaping, pools, plumbing, pest control. And so one thing that my team is exceptionally focused
13:06on is just to be able to bring value to homeowners across a variety of different verticals. One partnership
13:14that we're extremely happy about is our partnership with Cinch. Now, Cinch is one of the largest home
13:22appliance warranty companies in the country. We've been able to work with the team at Cinch to offer
13:28every single one of our cardholders semi-annual HVAC maintenance. It's worth a lot of money.
13:35It is. If you own a home, you'd want that. And it's critical. You don't want to miss it.
13:39That's exactly right. We're in Texas right now. It's over 100 degrees outside. You do not want your
13:45HVAC kicking the bucket during this heat wave. This is actually goes back to just kind of intelligent
13:52investment into your home. We don't want there to be a ton of deferred maintenance because that's how you
13:57wind up breaking appliances or you ignore them for too long. This is exactly kind of the ethos of just
14:03investing in the home in an intelligent way. And in our Cinch example, we're actually doing it for free.
14:10The customer actually doesn't have to do anything or pay anything, which is quite tremendous. So we
14:15want to replicate those series of partnerships across multiple angles and multiple parts of the value
14:22chain. Well, Alex, it was fantastic getting to talk with you today. I can't wait to see what's next
14:28for MateCard. Thank you so much.
