From Selling Bug Spray Door-to-Door in Silicon Valley to Raising My First $1M in Venture Funding

How I went from accounting to a coding bootcamp, wound up homeless, sold pest control, and started a startup to help millennials become homeowners.

Hello World! My name is Kris. I am the founder of Rown and I am raising my first $1M in angel and pre-seed venture funding. Rown is reimagining the path to homeownership and putting millennials on a proven track towards building wealth and investing in their future. We are building a new and flexible rent-to-own solution that will drastically expedite the time it takes to save for a down payment and become a homeowner.

Here are the facts: Millennials are the largest generation in the U.S. and we are the first generation in history to be worse off than our parents. Why? The increases to costs of living have been exceeding real wage growth. Since 2008, the cost of a college degree rose 65%, setting us up to finish school with an average of $30,000 in student loan debt. Economic conditions have also driven up home prices (25%) and rents (40%) during the same timeframe. Rent alone accounts for 45–50% of our monthly budgets, and an urban lifestyle will end up costing us $200,000 in lifetime rent-spend (double that amount for the Bay Area). Saving enough for a down payment is projected to take many of us two decades to achieve. With real wage growth barely outpacing inflation and the purchasing power of the dollar nearly unchanged from 40 years ago (that was pre-COVID stimulus spending), it looks like we will be renting a while longer than generations before us with no real end in sight.

We may be the most college-educated generation, but despite our collective brainpower and tech-savviness, we are the worst-paid generation with the highest unemployment rates. Most of us have nothing saved at all for a down payment or retirement, and our average net worth is a measly $8,000. To top it all off, half of us are saddled with credit card debt, and our healthcare costs are expected to rise another 33%.

We are facing a student debt crisis, a housing crisis, and a wealth gap. We missed out on an economic boom and a massive stock market rally. We survived the Great Recession, but now the COVID Recession is taking shape with record unemployment and looming evictions. Economically speaking, we might be the unluckiest generation. It’s a perfect storm that would have George Clooney scared.

Is it really a wonder why we are renting for longer and delaying major life milestones like getting married and buying a home? I’m no mathematician, but I think it’s clear to see why “affordability” is the hurdle we haven’t cleared yet. Avocado toast is not the culprit.

Rown is exactly what I wish existed for me seven years ago before my career fell apart and I found myself living out of my car.

It’s no secret that homeownership is a key factor in building wealth and part of the American Dream, but saving for a down payment feels like an impossible task today. Many have talked about the housing crisis and wealth inequality, but few have proposed any actionable plans to address it. Even fewer have stepped up to the plate to DO something about it. This once-in-a-lifetime pandemic and another economic crisis have only accelerated and amplified the urgency to take action NOW.

My path to becoming a startup founder has been unconventional (to say the least) and is still a work in progress. But the insights I’ve gained from my experiences have put me on a clear mission to help millions of people feel unstuck and make Rown a reality. Rown is exactly what I wish existed for me seven years ago before my career fell apart and I found myself living out of my car. It turns out that my battle with imposter syndrome was just getting started, and I was in for a bumpy ride. Here are the highlights:

PART I: A Career to Nowhere

Excel-ed to death

I went to Arizona State University and majored in Accounting. I was captain of the lacrosse team, worked part-time, and I busted my ass to get through school. I landed the Big 4 internships that led to a full-time position in public accounting. I thought I was on a clear path to becoming a CEO or CFO.

In reality, my career in accounting felt like a fast track to nowhere. The work I did as an auditor was filled with endless busywork and long hours in cramped audit rooms (some would be better described as storage closets). The job felt empty and unfulfilling, always looking backward into the past, and never forward into the future. I was great with Excel though! Private equity wasn’t any better because I was still doing all of the grunt work. I dreaded going into the office because every day, week, month, quarter, and year felt like the same day, as if my name was Bill Murray (gotta love the 90s). It was miserable, but at least there was free lunch and a beautiful ocean view in Santa Monica, CA.

While working full-time in LA, I went through startup accelerator programs like the Founder Institute and YC’s Startup School. I attempted to launch two startup ideas (logistics and travel-related) but neither succeeded. I call them my “false starts.” That’s when I found myself dealing with some extreme career dissatisfaction. I left private equity in November 2018 to search for what was next. “If I could just build an MVP!” I thought.

By now, my career rut had spilled over into all areas of life and it eventually affected my relationship with a truly amazing and supportive woman. After six years of dating, I ended the relationship because I knew I needed to get to the root cause of my issues, and that was going to take time. I moved out of our apartment, threw all of my stuff into storage, and I crashed with some friends until I could get settled into my next adventure as a developer (cue career change #1).

Not hacking it as a hacker

With a new year and a fresh start, I was all-in with Coding Dojo’s immersive coding bootcamp in Costa Mesa, CA. One problem though: I was broke. I had already emptied my retirement account and I had barely enough cash to get by. I looked into month-to-month leases and some “creative” living arrangements, like a travel trailer or van. After a few weeks and no luck, I settled on living out of my Mazda CX-5 to save money for food, gas, and the best winter camping gear for nights below 40 degrees. I figured it would only be for a couple of months and just a few short hours a night. I told myself that it was all going to work out, and it would be one of those funny stories to share later when I could look back and laugh at it all. Not laughing yet though…

Coding was painstaking and slow. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t keeping up with my cohort despite being the first one in and the last to leave each day. Don’t confuse FILO with the FIFO and LIFO accounting methods (yes, I’m still an accounting nerd at heart). Meanwhile, family life back home in Phoenix was rocky. My mom and stepfather separated, and I was trying to help keep the peace by mediating their divorce remotely. When that didn’t work, it was clear that it was time to put life on pause and move back to help rip off the band-aid.

It turns out, the divorce wasn’t the only thing I was going to end up helping with. What was supposed to be one day of cleaning houses, turned into an entire year to save Mom and the housecleaning business that was her life’s work. With workdays lasting 12 hours or more, I developed a truly disgusting morning routine; my 4 a.m. wakeups, 5 a.m. CrossFit classes, and 6 a.m. cold plunges in the pool became my ritual that kept me grounded during all of the chaos. If you haven’t done a five-minute box breathing cold plunge in the middle of winter, you’re missing out!

The moment of clarity

Living out of my car and trying to start a new career got me thinking about how things had gone so wrong. After all, I checked nearly all the boxes I was supposed to: go to school, get a good job, find a great girl… but now I was homeless, jobless, single, and broke. My imposter syndrome, high self-doubt, and low self-worth had now reached their peaks.

Desperately wishing I owned a property, or a piece of a property, an idea around “transferable equity” sent me on a quest to immerse myself in real estate. I binged endless hours of real estate podcasts, like Bigger Pockets, while my body went into autopilot cleaning each day. When I needed a break from real estate, I re-binged my familiar and favorite startup podcasts like Jason Calacanis’s This Week In Startups and Angel, NPR’s How I Built This with Guy Raz, Gimlet’s The Pitch, and TechCrunch’s Equity. I love when Alex Wilhem geeks out on financial statements and IPOs (told ya, I’m still a nerd). In addition to Jason, the voices of Charles Hudson, Jillian Manus, Garry Tan, Clara Brenner, Alfred Lin, Sarah Tavel, and Ben Narasin became my support network.

It felt as if the Universe threw me a bone and said, “Kris, you’re going to Silicon Valley!”

Helping Mom also afforded me the time I needed to reflect on who I was, my self-worth (or lack thereof, at the time), and some of the other struggles I had been facing. After listening to Peter Rahal’s episode (RXBAR co-founder) on How I Built This, I developed some suspicions around something that I felt could be playing a role in my own life. After a full day of neuropsychological evaluations in June 2019, I was officially diagnosed with Dyslexia and ADHD. A little late at 30 years old, but better late than never, right?

WHAM! Life hit me like a ton of bricks. All of a sudden, things started to make sense. I began to see that the career I had chosen wasn’t wrong, but the safe and traditional ways of doing things didn’t fit my unique perspective. I wasn’t an uninspired and poor performer at work because I wasn’t as smart as my peers after all. I was chronically unemployable because my brain is simply hardwired differently and it was not meant to sit at a desk all day long staring at tiny details [music playing in the background: “I can see clearly now the rain is gone…”].

PART II: Imagination Doesn’t Fit In a Box

Borderline delusional

I understand now that my brain lives and thrives in the abstract of “what if?” It observes the world from a 30,000-foot view, recognizes patterns, and connects dots that others can’t see. It constantly comes up with new solutions to problems that others have become blinded to, or have simply accepted as truth. It’s clear now that entrepreneurship is actually the perfect outlet for my business background and creative problem-solving skills; building a high-risk and insanely ambitious startup sounds right up my alley.

With my diagnosis being my first big “aha” moment, my “transferable equity” idea began to take shape and the seeds for Rown were sprouting. I had validated my idea with my real estate network and within the startup community. But, now what? I was still broke and house cleaning wasn’t going to make me rich. I didn’t have a trust fund or a rich uncle to invest in my idea. The “Bank of Mom” could only go so far and a “regular job” was the last thing I wanted. Thankfully, a random conversation with a young real estate agent named Madelyn led to an introduction to an opportunity in summer sales (cue career change #2).

Your new bug guy

Growing up in the Mormon Church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), I’ve heard every summer sales pitch imaginable. But after my conversation with Bryce, a summer with Aptive Environmental sounded like my best chance to bootstrap my idea. I was going to be selling pest control door-to-door, but not in Phoenix. Bryce would be leading a team in the San Jose and San Francisco South Bay areas of California. It felt as if the Universe threw me a bone and said, “Kris, you’re going to Silicon Valley!”

It was now April 2020; the world was on fire and everyone was hoarding toilet paper (batsh*t crazy times). I worked through onboarding, sales trainings, and some startup tasks, like an updated pitch deck and more networking. I was also packing my life up into my Mazda for the next five months. Oh, the memories…

Won’t the real Me please stand up

At the beginning of the year, however, I experienced another “aha” moment. After just one session of Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT), I went through an incredible trajectory shift, mentally and emotionally. Thanks to Sarah at Re-Write Your Life, I dealt with my imposter syndrome and faced my inner demon called “self-doubt.” I am grateful that I am no longer trying to fit myself into someone else’s “box” of success. I am far more aware of who I am and I have embraced my ENTJ personality. I have conviction in my new vision, mission, and purpose. I found my superpowers and my identity.

PART III: Thank You, Next

The horizon is bright

My summer is nearing its end. I’ve heard “no” and “not interested” thousands of times. I’ve been told to go f**k myself. I’ve even been told that bugs deserve to live more than I do. This job is a grind. This journey has been excruciating. But this unconventional path has been worth it in every sense. It’s how I have met and spoken with some of the most intelligent and well-connected people in the world. I’ve sold pest control to doctors, bankers, accountants, lawyers, engineers, project managers, directors, CTOs, CFOs, CEOs, and founders.

They work at some of the most respected and admired companies, startups, and organizations in the world (Apple, Google, Facebook, Adobe, Bank of America, Stanford, etc.). I even sold a former partner at a small investment firm called SoftBank (I’m being a tad bit facetious about its size). And I’ve told many of them about my future plans.

This has all been very, very surreal. The last two years have been an insane whirlwind of compounded pain and growth that I can only compare to an angel investor’s returns, with all the risk to match it. I’ve put everything on the line and I am exactly where I need to be: I am knocking on Silicon Valley’s door.

A new chapter

My Mom is the single greatest example in my life of what it means to work hard and make sacrifices; she is an entrepreneur. She immigrated to the U.S. at 18 years old, spoke zero English, and built a business from nothing. She was raised on a ranch in Mexico with a tin roof, told time by the shadows cast from trees, used oil lamps for light at night, and has a 4th-grade education. Uhh, WTF…? I couldn’t be more proud to be Latinx and second-generation American, but I’m even more proud of her.

The next chapter of my journey as an entrepreneur is just getting started (cue career change #3). Rejection doesn’t scare me, but failure is terrifying. Fortunately, Life has given me a new lens and a new perspective to a very real problem. It’s personal. I’m energized by it every day and it’s time to get to work. I am writing my story from now on and all of this won’t be for nothing.

Next steps

My job isn’t over quite yet. There are still plenty of ants, spiders, wasps, and rats here in Silicon Valley that aren’t going to evict themselves (email me at bugs@rown.com for my “founder discount” anywhere in the country that Aptive services). At the end of the summer, I plan to be in a position to bootstrap the first property for Rown with my sales commissions.

But the reason why I’m writing this, and opening up to the world about my very vulnerable journey, is that I am also raising my first $1M in angel and pre-seed venture funding. I will be acquiring the first batch of rental properties and assembling the team I need to help me create something meaningful. This is just the beginning…

Rown is reimagining the future of personal finance.

A simple ask

If any of this story has resonated with you, I have one small request: please share this with your network. You never know what could come from it and a network effect of two could have a profound reach. I’m hopeful that my very honest story will lead to some extraordinary connections here in the Bay Area and beyond. After all, authentic people and genuine relationships are invaluable. If you have any advice, if you know someone that could help, or if you are a founder, please email me at kris@rown.com.

Software might be eating the world, but it won’t devour it. A few lines of code are not going to solve the “affordability” problem, and it requires doing things that don’t scale to get the train moving. It’s not rocket science (shout out, Elon). Progress happens when we invent new things, but also when we fix old things with a fresh perspective.

Can you imagine a world where the most educated, most technologically advanced, most diverse, and largest generation on Earth doesn’t live paycheck to paycheck and housing affordability is no longer a mystery? I can! It’s an exciting world full of collaboration and unlimited potential.

If we stay in the same lane, we will get to the same place. But if we build a new freeway? Well then, the options are limitless. An uncommon vision requires an uncommon sacrifice, and more than thought leaders, we need action leaders. Let’s build a better tomorrow, starting today. Rown is reimagining the future of personal finance. I’m excited to be part of it and I invite you to join me for the ride.

Do the hard things. Because they are hard.

End story.

But not really…

P.S. My 2020 vision board includes having dinner with Jason Calacanis on September 21st for my 32nd birthday (socially distanced of course). If anyone can put in a good word, please don’t be shy. His podcasts were key to getting me through that year of cleaning houses and I would like to thank him personally.