Mesa - The Rewards Platform for Homeowners

Company & Team Introduction

Mesa is the Fintech rewards platform designed to ease the financial burden of many people's largest commitment: homeownership by giving value back for every dollar homeowners spend on housing-related costs. Mesa was started in 2023 by a pair of veterans in the Fintech space who previously worked together at another startup: Kelley Halpin (CEO) and Peyton Hayslette (CTO). Before founding Mesa, Halpin founded Quantivize Health, which was later acquired for an undisclosed sum, before taking on a role as Head of Growth at Paceline, where Hayslette also worked as Head of Fintech Product. Prior to Paceline, Hayslette held several early product roles at startups such as Deserve, FORME, and GoodUnited. The company has attracted an impressive amount of early talent with a leadership team full of alumni from notable Fintech companies, including Robinhood, Uber, American Express, Square, and Bilt Rewards, a similar competitor to Mesa. The company is based in Austin, Texas and has scaled their team to ~13 employees.

Product Overview

Mesa currently offers 2 main products for homeowners:

Mesa Mortgage Marketplace - Customers get 1% of the loan value back via rewards when they originate or refinance their mortgage through Mesa’s marketplace lender/broker partners. Future plans for the marketplace include expanding its range of financial products to services such as home warranty plans, HELOCs, and insurance products to further enhance the value of its reward-based ecosystem.

Mesa Home Owners Card - The credit card designed for homeownership-related purchases. It enables homeowners to earn rewards for a range of home-related purchases, including mortgage payments, groceries, utilities, repairs, gas, HOA fees, and insurance are all eligible purchases to collect points.

Mesa rewards points can be redeemed for various expenses, including mortgage payments, covering refinance costs, or be used via their partner brands for expenses such as travel, home-related services, and an ever-expanding list of other products.

Total Addressable Market

There is a massive opportunity for Mesa to become an incredibly valuable product for both homeowners and brand partners. Mesa is bringing an innovative rewards model that has proven to drive loyalty in other verticals, including QSR restaurants and credit card companies, and applying it to one of the largest verticals in the world where consumers actually spend around 1/3 of their income: homeownership. According to Mesa’s team, over $6T is spent each year on housing-related purchases, and they want to capture a portion of the market while also benefitting customers.

Business Model & The Numbers

Mesa currently has 2 revenue-generating products. The first is the advertising fee it takes to promote different lenders’ and brokers’ mortgage/lending services on the Mesa marketplace. The company also generates revenue through its Mesa Homeowners credit card, which is monetized through a mix of interchange fees and interest revenues (typically 20% - 21% APR).

Traction

Mesa is very early in its development, having just emerged from stealth about a month ago. The company has yet to share any user or sales data but has an invite-only waiting list, and it plans to bring early adopters onto the platform gradually. Mesa has secured key strategic partnerships with their issuing bank, Celtic Bank, and payments giant Visa, with their VP of New Business Development understanding the potential value Mesa can bring, stating, "Our collaboration with Mesa further underscores Visa's position as an innovative leader in payment solutions and brings us closer to our mission to empower ‘everyone, everywhere’.”

Competitors

Mesa is one of the first movers in the homeownership rewards vertical, differentiating itself from many of the broader rewards systems. While homeownership-related expenses are one of the largest markets in the world, they are seemingly underserved for rewards-based programs in comparison to other verticals like QSR, hotel, and airline rewards programs. Mesa’s main competition is Bilt Rewards, a similar startup founded in 2018 focused on rewarding renters with points for paying their rent with the Bilt credit card, which can then be redeemed via their partner network. Bilt has been an incredible success, most recently valued at 3.2B, and the company’s platform spend has surpassed $30B/year. While Bilt serves as the rewards system for renters, Mesa is building a similar system to reward homeowners.

Funding

Coming out of stealth late last month, Mesa announced they had raised a financing round totalling $9.2M, with $7.2M coming from equity funding led by Streamlined Ventures and other participants Vera Equity, Starting Line, Clocktower Ventures, Redwood Trust Horizons, and Assurant Ventures, among others. An additional $2M in debt funding was provided by Silicon Valley Bank, which is now part of First Citizens Bank. There is also some data showing Mesa raised a small pre-seed round in September 2023, but details of the round were not disclosed.