Summer 2016

About the Magazine

Northwestern is the quarterly alumni magazine for Northwestern University.
Contact or contribute to the magazine.

Campus Life

FlyHomes

Story Tools

Share this story

Facebook  Facebook
Twitter  Twitter
Email  Email

Print this story

Tell us what you think. E-mail comments or questions to the editors at letters@northwestern.edu.

Find Us on Social Media

Facebook  Twitter  Twitter

Student startup provides airline miles for home purchase.

Stephen Lane, a JD-MBA student, and Tushar Garg, a second-year MBA student, teamed up with Northwestern computer science students Zak Allen and Shikhar Mohan, to build FlyHomes, a technology company that aims to make homebuying seamless, transparent and rewarding. Buyers who use FlyHomes earn one airline mile for every dollar they spend on their home purchase.

The online real estate brokerage allows buyers to search for homes, schedule tours and even place offers at the click of a button. In late 2015 the team started selling their first homes in Seattle, where Garg and Lane lived while working for Microsoft. This summer the team plans to expand beyond Seattle — where homebuyers earn on average more than 500,000 Alaska Airlines miles per home — to cities on the West Coast and in the Northeast, with new airline partners. 

The team has taken advantage of the resources provided to startups at the University, including financial and mentoring resources provided by the Zell Fellows Program and investment capital and coaching as a part of the Pritzker Group Venture Fellows program, both Kellogg initiatives. They’ve also found a home in the Garage. “We’ve virtually made it our office,” Garg says. “It’s the perfect space for meeting people from different disciplines and for finding new talent.”