AMONG THE big surprises of the pandemic economy was the housing boom. As fleeing city dwellers and cramped work-from-home families bid up the price of spacious suburban homes, rockbottom interest rates enticed existing homeowners to refinance in record numbers. By the end of last year, 13.6 million mortgages worth $4.3 trillion had been closed, shattering the previous all-time record of $3.7 trillion in 2003. It was a miraculous feat, considering that most of that lending was done while in-person meetings were taboo and overworked loan officers operated from ad hoc home offices as their dogs barked and children fidgeted through remote classes.
Truth is, the mortgage market probably would have melted down were it not for a secret weapon: Nima Ghamsari, a 35-year-old Iranian immigrant who made hundreds of thousands of dollars playing poker online while at Stanford; joined secretive big-data startup Palantir Technologies upon graduation; and then, at just 26, quit that dream job to start his own software company, Blend Labs, in 2012. “I have always felt like I wanted to bet on myself. I’m willing to take a lot of risk,” he says matter-of-factly.
Though invisible to ordinary borrowers and comparatively low-profile in its Silicon Valley home, Blend has had a staggering impact. It now provides digital infrastructure to 287 U.S. banks, including such big mortgage lenders as Wells Fargo and First Republic Bank. In 2020, Blend software was used to process $1.4 trillion in mortgage and consumer loans, up nearly threefold from the prior year. Its staff grew to 750 from 425 before the pandemic. Blend’s revenue doubled last year to about $100 million, Forbes estimates.
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