In this interview, Immad Akhund reflects on his third startup exit—a $45 million sale that allowed him to buy a house in San Francisco and shift his personal finances. He explains that while the cash infusion was life‑changing, the core driver remains passion for building products. Akhund describes why he chose to re‑enter entrepreneurship in fintech, identifying his own frustration with traditional banking as the catalyst for creating Mercury, a digital bank tailored for startups and other digitally enabled businesses. He outlines Mercury’s product‑first approach—offering APIs, virtual cards, and a new Treasury feature that invests excess cash in money‑market funds—highlighting how these tools address specific startup needs. Akhund discusses the strategic focus on startups as a vertical, leveraging community networks, accelerators, and low customer‑acquisition costs, while keeping an eye on broader markets like e‑commerce. He positions Mercury against incumbents such as SVB, Wells Fargo, and Chase, noting that fintech platforms like Stripe Treasury are complementary rather than direct competitors. Finally, he emphasizes Mercury’s commitment to responsive, human customer service to counter the negative experiences typical of traditional banks, and shares his long‑term vision of scaling within the massive $4 trillion U.S. banking industry.
Chapters
So, you know, obviously at Horizon Capital, we work with founders who are looking to exit their SaaS companies all the time. And I understand, you know, it can be an emotional roller coaster when you're exiting company. Obviously, it's not your first exit. You said it's your third time. But, you know, what was that process for you? And has it changed your life? After that exit, or was it the first one? And then after that, it's just like a game of repeat?
Yeah, I mean, it definitely changed my life. I mean, before that point, you know, I've been doing startups from 2006 to 2016. So I was never, you know, I did, obviously I raised money and I had like salary, but yeah, I wasn't getting, I was, I was always paying myself like just enough to survive, right? That was my, that was my modus operandi. Like I was like, okay, you know, how much do I pay myself so that I don't run out of money, but I wasn't like living in any way like above my kind of means. And that was a very, you know, significant exit for us. And, you know, we managed to get a house in San Francisco, and obviously that's, that's an expensive thing to do.
Sure.
So, so yeah, it was definitely significant in that sense. But in another sense, you know, it doesn't— like, money doesn't change your life, and it's better to just do something that you're passionate about. So, you know, I'm doing a startup again, and it's not— yeah, to be honest, it's not that different from doing my previous startup. I mean, we raised more money and things like that, but that's just Yeah, when you're doing a startup, like whether you have personal money or not doesn't like change the fact that like it's still a pain in the ass to do it. So, so yeah, I think like it was definitely positive. It's also bittersweet a little bit, right? Like, it's like you work on something for a really long time.
Yeah.
You do have to like put your heart and soul into like making a product work and making a startup work. And then like when you sell it, like You know, it's like, kind of like giving up your baby. And that part is hard. It's very personal. I think for us, the reason we chose to sell it is we were not— I mean, I was passionate about what we'd built, and we'd worked hard towards it, but it wasn't an industry that was— yeah, I wasn't like, oh, I really want to spend the next 10 years of my life in ad tech. And yeah, it was something we'd kind of stumbled into. And ad tech is like a difficult space. It's— I think it's not It's not that hard to make like a reasonable-sized company, and we, you know, we sold it for $45 million, uh, but it's very hard to make a huge company. So the impact you have is like somewhat limited, um, whereas in like SaaS and like fintech, uh, you can make like really big company, have a much bigger impact. Uh, so that was kind of what kind of pushed us towards like taking an exit.
Yeah, it makes perfect sense. So, um, so you had some, you know, obviously a life-changing event at that point. You've had like a good exit. Now you can kind of focus on a new market and maybe more towards your passion and something maybe you see longer, you know, seeing yourself in this business more for more than 10 years. Would you say that's accurate with Mercury?
Yeah, I see this as a long-term thing. I mean, if I sold it, I'd just have to do another company. So as long as this is going well, I might as well just keep, keep doing this. And, you know, and it's fun. Like banking is like the space where Yeah, a lot of other spaces in software, there's a lot of people who've already made a bunch of progress, whereas I think in a lot of places in fintech, uh, we're, you know, we're kind of in the first innings. Like, uh, we're maybe 3 years into kind of innovation when it comes to like depository banking. So I think there's a lot more that's going to happen and, you know, we can be like a pivotal part of that.
Yeah, definitely. So Mercury, a bank intended for startups, why did you So why did you decide— so you said that, you know, there's some opportunity there, you saw a lot of room. Why did you decide on fintech and when, you know, building this bank? And why did you feel like startups was this space that was underserved? Or where did you see that?
Yeah, I mean, I didn't like— I didn't necessarily go like, oh, let's do a fintech company, and then I tried to come up with ideas in it. This is like very much a personal pain point of mine that I could see that as an entrepreneur, like, banks really sucked. Uh, we could do a much better job. Uh, so, you know, I kind of think about it as, as like, A, there's all of these kind of just like a better product you can build in banking. So in the same way that, you know, Zoom is just a much better video conferencing and therefore it wins, I think Mercury does that as well. Like, we're just a much better kind of online banking experience and, uh, we win partly for that. B, there's a bunch of features we can build that are specific to the types of entrepreneurs we serve. So we have APIs, we have virtual cards, and like those things kind of, you know, Actually, we just launched Mercury Treasury this week, uh, which lets you put your, uh, excess kind of cash into money market funds and treasury bills. Uh, so we can keep layering on these features that are like really help our vertical and like go beyond just like this is a bank account. Um, and so, yeah, so yeah, I felt this pain point, uh, unlike a, you know, when you zoom out a little bit. Banking is a freaking huge industry. I think it's like, I think in the US it's like $4 trillion or something like that. I mean, that's very abstract, but it's a really big industry. You know, the top 500 banks are all worth more than $1 billion or something in the US.
Wow.
So yeah, from obviously like, I wanna do something big, I want it to be valued a lot. So picking an industry that's big, you know, gives you a lot of options to grow into that. Why I wanted to serve startups is, you know, it's a space I understand very well. It was— it's important in fintech to have like good kind of user acquisition and think that through quite a bit, right? Like, uh, you know, CACs can be pretty high in fintech if you don't think it through. If you can pick a vertical like startups that there's already kind of strong communities, so, you know, entrepreneurs talk to each other a lot. Most of our growth has come from kind of entrepreneurs sharing Mercury with each other. Um, there's also kind of channels like accelerators, seed funds, et cetera, that you can kind of channel. And then also, you know, startups tend to be— tend to make a reasonable amount of noise. So, you know, they're online, they're on the internet. And then lastly, I think—
That's great.
Building a product-first company, you kind of want to have product-first entrepreneurs. And that's inherently like startups want— startup entrepreneurs want like these modern products and use them. So all of those things have mostly played out. Our long-term aim is to serve any digitally enabled business. Startups is one. We also serve e-commerce companies. Any US business can actually sign up to Mercury. Over time, we'll increase that envelope.
Cool. When you compare it to all the bankers, the space being quite competitive, I would say, even though it's more traditional, there's also fintech. There's guys like, I think, Stripe, was it recently, that also kind of announced their own banking system, or Square, I can't remember. Um, you know, so it's going to get more competitive. What would you say are some, like, main factors or value props that maybe can make you guys more, more competitive?
Um, yeah, I wouldn't say it's that competitive. Sometimes things from the outside look a lot more competitive than, like, they actually are. Uh, like, if you were actually an entrepreneur and you were looking to, like, actually use a bank, uh, most of the time we're competing against, like, these big incumbents. So whether it's SVB, which is like more startup-focused, or Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America, all of those people, that's really our main competition. And, you know, who we think about— Stripe launched something, it's called Stripe Treasury, but it's not a competitor. It's like a banking-as-a-service layer.
Okay.
I'm sure there will be more competitors over time, but from my experience, you know, as a startup, you always have like some boogeyman competitor.
But at the end of the day, like, yeah, they will do their thing, you will do your thing.
And most of the time, you know, I think I really wish I could remember who did, who said this, but most startups die from like suicide, not homicide. It's very, it's very rare for you to go and like, you know, be destroyed because someone like outcompeted you.
Yeah.
Like if you stay focused and do your thing, like you'll figure it out. And banking is just this huge, huge space. So, it's not something where I'm like, oh, we're nowhere near running out of customers that we could help.
Sure. Yeah. That's a good quote. I like it. But then, one side of it is you're competing with these big banks, traditional banks. And when I think of most people who open a bank right now, or historically, it's been a more personalized experience, right? People walk in. They see a teller, they get that kind of experience with how to open the bank and getting a targeted service. And I think that builds a loyalty and retention with users over time because they have that teller they can work with or account manager or whatnot. What's kind of your guys' strategy for overcoming that challenge and making it more personal versus just like another software tool I can just pick from and kind of make it transactional?
Yeah, I'd say there's 2 parts of that. Like, number one, you know, we've invested a lot in having a great customer service. And like, we're— yeah, if you talk to our customers, they'll like say, hey, you know, Mercury responds quickly and we, you know, we respond with like real humans who know what they're doing and can actually solve your problem. Mm-hmm.
So although you say like banks deliver personalized experience, like it's not, People have a very negative experience most of the time when they interact with their bank. It's like you talk to someone, they can't solve your problem, they don't get it often, and then you, you know, get a runaround. And like, uh, so it's not like a fun experience for people to interact with banks. So that's step one. Step 2, I would say I actually mostly see, yeah, and this is like a personal mentality, but I think a lot of like, especially tech entrepreneurs would like feel this as well. Every time I have to interact with a bank, It's like a failure. Like their product has failed. Uh, they haven't been able to solve my problem. Like I want to click a button and things happen. Like I don't want to go call someone or talk to someone or even worse, like going into a branch. Like I just can't imagine like me ever wanting to go somewhere to get something done. I can do it online. Uh, so there is like a certain set of people where they do prefer having that relationship and going and meeting someone in a bank branch. And like, yeah, those banks will still exist for that type of person. But I think, I personally think that most people who, you know, do their business online are familiar with like, you know, they use Slack, they use whatever, like they want to do, they just want to get on with things and have them be kind of intuitive and easy and built into the product. And that's what we were building towards.
