463: Why Small Customers Matter with ​​Immad Akhund of Mercury

Hey, Founder Fam. Before we dive into another incredible conversation, I want to share something really special with you. Whether you're just joining us or you've been following us since the beginning, you've been a critical part of our community working to change entrepreneurial education. I started Founder almost a decade ago with the mission to provide entrepreneurs access to the world's greatest business leaders. Our goal was to break down barriers to entrepreneurial education, and that's taken us on a journey from Founder Magazine to this podcast and beyond. And today marks the next step in that journey, Founder Plus. I'm proud to introduce you to Founder Plus, which is an all-access pass to each of our online courses and programs and their proven frameworks for success. It puts every strategy we've compiled from world-class instructors at your fingertips while connecting you to a global network of like-minded entrepreneurs. Founder Plus will take your business to the next level for today and tomorrow. So whether you've just joined our family or You've watched us grow from humble beginnings. We're really thrilled to have you join us in this exciting new phase of making the Founder brand and this company the world's best entrepreneurial community to launch and grow your business. So finally, before we get into today's episode, I'm inviting you to come back, check out Founder Plus, and go to founder.com/membership. I'm really excited, guys. This is an incredible new evolution of entrepreneurial education, and our mission is really to get as many of these founders that we interviewed to teach and also give back on the Founder+ platform and really go more in depth with the knowledge and the experiences and the lessons learned that they're sharing all in Founder+. So guys, please go check it out if you're enjoying these interviews. That's it from me. I hope you enjoy this episode. Now let's jump in.

What you need is thirst.

You need to be a thirsty human who is intent on learning.

It's a really fascinating exploration of human potential.

Now, now, now. The Founder Podcast. Even the greatest entrepreneurs had help. If you wanna learn from the most successful founders on the planet, you are in the right place. Branson, Mark Cuban, Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, Arianna Huffington, Seth Godin, Steve Case, Gary Vee, Sophia Amoroso, Barbara Corcoran, Daymond John. Learn from the greatest minds in business today with interviews hosted by Nathan Chan. This is not your average entrepreneur podcast. The Founder Podcast.

Hey, Founder Fam, welcome back to another episode of the Founder Podcast. Today we're speaking with Immad Akhund, the CEO and founder of a company called Mercury, a bank for startups that is a fintech unicorn valued at $1.6 billion. And in our conversation, we discuss how Mercury is disrupting the banking industry for startups and founders, plus we'll dig deeper into the financial strategies that startups need to overcome challenging times. Please welcome to The Founder Podcast, Immad Akhund. The first question that I ask everyone that comes on is, how'd you get your job? Okay, how'd you find yourself doing the work you're doing today?

So I started doing startups in 2006. I had a, a job at Bloomberg, uh, in their kind of R&D stuff. So I was a programmer and it was like really boring. I found it very unmotivating. You know, I just felt like I was a cog in a pretty big machine. And I had a, you know, I had a friend and we would always read TechCrunch and see things launching and got like excited about them. And at one point he had an idea around kind of property And, you know, I was like, okay, let's just like leave this job and go do that. And it was just, uh, it was just the two of us. We raised no money. We were kind of working out of my apartment, uh, in this like tiny one-bedroom, uh, but it was just really fun. Like, I was like, wow, you can just like make things and you can be like super motivated in life. And I, uh, that was the start and I've never kind of looked back since.

Yeah, wow. So 2006, so you founded 4 companies since then, your most recent Mercury, uh, fintech unicorn valued at over $1.6 billion. Uh, can you tell us about your first company? Was this it, that first one?

Yeah, that was the first one. It was called RevMap. Uh, we kind of pivoted halfway. Eventually it was kind of like a Yelp for London, and this was early on. Yelp did exist but wasn't popular in London. Um, and really we just made all the mistakes you could make, you know, no money raised. It was just the two of us. We had no idea how to get distribution. We just thought you could build something, launch it, and then suddenly it just magically becomes successful, which didn't really happen. And my ex-co-founder at the time was like, hey, I'm getting married and I need a job. So he left me to get a job. And honestly, that startup wasn't going anywhere, but it did just hook me on the idea. And I I kind of went and found some other co-founders to do a new startup and move to San Francisco. We did Y Combinator in my second startup. So yeah, that was that startup. It was, you know, we did all the things wrong, but it was still like a fun journey, which I think is like actually one of the most important things is to like enjoy what you're doing even when you're making mistakes.

And so what was the second startup and you got into Y Combinator?

Yeah, that one was called ClickPass. It basically made it easy to log into websites. Like we were on Hacker News and Washington Post and things like that. And you'd click a button and you said, log in with Google. And we would like manage all the kind of UI and developer experience for the website. That did pretty well. Like we had, I think, a few million users. We had this kind of built-in distribution. But we had no way of making money. So we were just like, okay, you know, we'd raised some money, a few hundred K, and, you know, we'd built something, but it was hard to get to the next level without like actually making money or having like a good idea of how to make money. So we ended up doing a talent acquisition with that startup. which led to my third startup.

Yep. And what was that?

Uh, so that was called HazeApp, uh, which is in 2008. And I did this startup— so the first one was like 7 months, second one was 1.5 years, and the third one I did for 8 years. Uh, so that was most of my startup journey. Uh, it also went through Y Combinator. I did it with a really old friend of mine, um, who I'd known since I was 13. Uh, I think having a strong founder relationship actually meant that we lasted a very long time, even though our first idea and our second idea kind of sucked. That was like 4 years in. We did a third idea that got us to profitability, but still kind of sucked. And then we did a fourth idea, which was finally one that had actual product-market fit. And then it was, yeah, so the fourth idea was in developer tools, basically like if you— I'm making a mobile app and you want to show a video ad. Normally it's kind of a pain to go integrate 5 different ad networks, figure out like this one works well in Turkey, this one works well in this situation, et cetera. So we built something that would like make it so you just integrate us, we take care of all of the optimization for you and give you like nice dashboards and things like that. And that was very successful, especially among kind of mobile gaming, uh, apps, and we ended up selling that for $45 million in 2016.

Yeah, wow. Um, I have— before we get to Mercury, I'm curious, I have to delve deeper. So how long were you working on the final iteration of it before you found product-market fit?

Uh, so it depends where you start, right? So we had a— it was— everything was a sequence of things. Like, we never did— we did 4 pivots, but all of them were like sequential pivots that were like, oh, what about this thing that's related? So we had a mobile gaming social network. So Heyzap was like an actual app for a bit and had lots of users, but the users would never stick around. But then we started showing ads to those users and we were like, wow, we're making money on this. And like, I remember someone gave us like, we'd never made money for like 3 or 4 years at this company. And like, there's this like Japanese gaming network, like Um, just like DC or something like that. Anyway, they gave us a $60,000 check and they were just like, give me some users. And I was like, whoa, $60K for users? We can do that. We have lots of users. Uh, so that got us into advertising and then, but the app wasn't working. So we were like, okay, you know, why don't we just make an ad network? And at that time, uh, that app was really big on Android. Uh, but Android didn't have many focused ad networks. Uh, So that got us into the ad network space where we weren't big, but we actually made enough money and we were profitable. We only had like 13 people, but it wasn't going to be a startup success in the ad network space. It's just very hard to build that. You can build a company that's successful, but it's very hard to be a huge startup in the ad network space. And then while we were in ad network, we saw this pain point that people had where they were plugging in us with other ad networks and they didn't know how to do that. And it was hard for us to persuade them to integrate us because it was so much work for them. So we're like, oh, why don't we just make this easy for people? So there was basically like a 3-year progression to get to this idea and even understand it well enough that we could come up with this idea. But then once we came up with the idea, we started doing it. It took us about, I would say, 9 months from launching the first version to having something that really, really worked really, really well and was like, just started growing really, really fast. And the process was kind of interesting. We just like, we had a smallish sales team, like 5-ish people, and they would just go talk to developers that we wanted them to use our product. And the developer would say like, oh, if you build this thing, we would probably use this. And we would just build whatever was the top thing that the most people were asking for. And we just kept doing this every month. We would just build whatever's the top thing. And then after 9 months, we had like the best product in the market. Um, it was, it was very much just like iterating in that space.

Yeah, interesting. So you sold in 2016 and then how did you start Mercury? Tell me about that journey.

Yeah, so I had this idea since 2013. I mean, I always have ideas, like I think it's fun I'm a real startup nerd or whatever the term is. So I'm always thinking of ideas and problems and I'm like, okay, why can't this be better? And in 2013, I met this other company that was doing debit cards for seniors. So completely unrelated to Mercury. And there was just 2 people or 3 people at this company. I was like, wow, you guys are issuing cards? I didn't even know that was possible for a startup that small to do. I was mind-blown that that was possible. I was like, why don't we just do this for startups? Like all the banks kind of suck and I have to use this like bank that sucks. Whereas you guys are doing this for seniors. So this was just this idea I had. I was like, okay, you know, at some point I'm going to do something which is just going to fix banking for startups. And yeah, that seemed like, it seemed like an obvious idea, right? Because since I'd been doing startups since 2006, A lot of things had improved, right? As an entrepreneur, like the tools that you used in 2006 were really bad. I remember when I started Heyzap in 2008, like someone came with the— I needed to run payroll and someone came with like a binder to like sign us up. And we were, it was just the two of us living in like an apartment and like running the business from the apartment in San Francisco. And someone came to like sign us up. to run payroll physically. And I was like, oh, this is crazy that this person's wasting their time to come ahead to get us to fill in a form. Like, why can't we just do this online? And then, you know, a few years later, like, yeah, actually, I know these guys, the Gusto founders, like started doing payroll online. And basically all the startups started using that around, I guess, 2011, 2012. So I just thought the same thing would happen in banking, that someone would just build a modern product that would do it. So I had this idea in 2013. There was actually another company called Seed, seed.co, that tried to do this in actually 2015-ish. And at that point, I was like, okay, never mind. Someone else has solved it. I'll come up with another idea. But by 2017, it was kind of, obviously it wasn't working out. I think they were still around, but they weren't quite delivering the vision that I had, which was like a very startup-focused power user bank. Most of the people that had done anything in this space had ended up doing like a mobile app to run your bank. And it's like kind of consumery feeling, but for like a small business, which I think there's a space for. But I knew that a startup that's going to go raise like $5 million is not going to use a mobile app to do all their banking. Like they need to have power user tools. They need to be able to do wires and do user management and all of these kinds of things. So it was obvious that in 2017, this space still existed and that the problem existed and someone should fix it. The tricky thing was I'd never done anything in fintech. So I had to basically approach this thing as like, I know nothing about how to actually do this apart from like, I can build a product and I can recruit a team for that. And I knew that the customer problem existed. But, but I was— I mean, that was the scariest part, like doing something where I was just like, I have literally not— no clue about fintech, and I had to go from kind of zero to like getting enough faith that I could do it. Uh, yeah, that was like the first part of the problem.

Hey, Founder Fam, before we jump in, I want to take a quick moment to talk about our sponsor Omnisend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for ecommerce founders. We've been recommending Omnisend to Founder students and members of our platform for a while now because it just works. So whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling it to 7 figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get results. And did you know, on average, Omnisend customers make $79 for every $1 they spend, which is an insanely good return on investment? And if you're already on another platform, here's the thing: in 5 days, you could actually be paying 35% less without doing an absolute thing. Omnisend will move every flow across, list, and template. You just show up when it's done. And finally, because you're part of the Founder Community, you get 50% off your first 3 months with the code Founder50. Just head to omnisend.com/founder, and that's founder without the E, to get started. All right, now let's jump in the show.

So, uh, talk me through kind of what made you want to start the next business, like with Mercury. You just sold your other company. Like, where did that desire come from? Most people would kind of go, oh, I can, you know, focus on family, focus on health, focus on— yeah, like, where did that desire— because it sounds like you didn't take much of a break, or did you take a bit of a break? Did you travel around the world?

I took a little bit of a break, but it was short. So, I mean, I'm not good at just sitting around. Like, I don't get it. Like, I'm not— I've never been like— even when I go on a beach holiday, I'm like, I fill my life with activity. I'm like, okay, let's go snorkeling or scuba diving. And, you know, I don't— or maybe I'll read a book, I guess. But there's only so much sitting around I can do. So, even when I was supposed to take time off, I was still fairly active, like investing in companies, thinking of ideas, and like doing this stuff. Um, so that's one element. Uh, you know, for me, it's never been about like the end result, right? Like, like it's never been about, okay, I sold my company, now I'm done. Like I can just relax somewhere. To me, it's always been the journey. Like I enjoy making things. I enjoy like— having customers and talking to them. And I think you really have— if it's always about the end result, I think you will be disappointed because the end result is like— I was like, okay, now I've sold. I have a slightly better house, I guess, but nothing was that satisfying about the end result. But as long as you enjoyed the journey, it doesn't matter, right? So I really enjoyed making things. I I tried investigating becoming a kind of full-time investor, and honestly, it was kind of boring. Like, you just meet people and you invest in them, but then what? Whereas when you make something, like, you know, like, I enjoyed programming. I enjoy, like, having ideas and bringing them to life. Yeah, there's just so much you can have. You can have a very broad impact as an entrepreneur, and I really enjoyed many parts of that. I mean, it's a grind. It's not easy. Like, it's It definitely would be easier to relax on a beach, or I guess even being an investor, I think is a lot easier. But I think it's important to not optimize for easy. I think it's important to optimize for something that you can be excited about when you wake up in the morning.

And you've invested in over 250 companies, right?

Probably more than 300 now. I'm still a fairly active investor. Invest in like probably like 10 a quarter.

10 a quarter. And are you getting a lot of inbound or you just go on AngelList? Like, yeah.

And when I started investing again, yeah, it was all hustle. Like it was 2016. I sold my company. I was kind of bored because I had to work at this other company for a year and, you know, it wasn't very engaging. And I was like, oh, maybe I want to be an investor. So then I I'd reach out to companies I saw that launched on Twitter and I would look at all the Y Combinator companies, try to find out who they were and try to invest in them before Demo Day. I talked to all my friends and found all the ones that were investors and met up with all of them and said, hey, send me leads. And I'd send them leads and try to build that network. So the first part of anything is hard and there was a lot of hustle to get to the companies. Nowadays, thankfully, it's a lot easier. So, you know, when you invest in a bunch of companies and you're helpful to them, they introduce you to their friends. So that's one big source. A lot of investors know that I invest, so they introduce me to companies they invest in. I get a lot of inbound because people know that I invest and Mercury's fairly successful. And also we target startups. So like a lot of people know about me. So yeah, mostly nowadays, you know, I look at most ideas that people send me and I basically like try to make a judgment on it. I'm fairly opinionated about like what markets are interesting to me and like where the world is going. So that makes it easier. I'll just not talk to someone unless I really like their idea in the first place. And then I'm mostly vetting like that they're thinking about it in a good way and they seem like strong entrepreneurs, which is much simpler.

I've got to delve a bit deeper before we go back to Mercury. Where do you think the world is going?

When I say I don't know exactly where the world is going, but I know where I want it to go, right? I want to have a space-based civilization where we have lots of satellites in space and we can send people to Mars and the Moon, and we can have an industry in space, right? That's one thing I want. AI to be way smarter so that people don't have to do boring jobs. We can have robots that clean the toilets. We can just move away from all this boredom and drudgery that most people have to do. I think robotics and AI is quite interesting, but there's obviously kind of this new level of AI, which I think also people think humans will be removed from the equation, but I think— In general, we will have humans just doing like things that humans can uniquely do, which are like the things that humans want to do. I don't think humans want to write like really boring copy for a blog because of SEO reasons, right? Like there's all this, or like people don't want to write emails. Like there's just so many things people have to do that no one really wants to do. And I think AI will help enable that. So those are 2 interesting things that I think are like particularly interesting right now. Yeah, I think there's lots of interesting things in bio, but I'm just not good enough to judge entrepreneurs and ideas there. So I mean, I would like to see CRISPR be a bigger thing and we can edit our genes and animal genes and plant genes and become way more optimal there. There's some really interesting stuff in climate tech. I would love for— I just invested in a nuclear company, actually. I would love for nuclear to be way more mainstream. I think the easiest way to solve climate change is to have 90% of our electricity come from nuclear, whether it's like fission or fusion. So that's an interesting space. But yeah, I think lots of people are really pushing the boundaries of like, you know, people think about like investing in climate tech as like fixing climate change, which is obviously important. But actually the more important thing is like, Well, not the more important, but equally important thing is like coming up with better ways to do energy for humans, right? Energy is like this kind of significant part of the GDP. If we can improve that, that leads to like a lot of really good consequences.

Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this episode and learning a ton. As you know, in this series we interview some of the greatest founders of our generation to find out how they did it. However, if you're thinking of starting your own business and you want to hear from some incredible stories from everyday people like you or I who are actually in the trenches, only been building their business for maybe 1 year or 2 years, like that are building right now and they're really in the early stages but they're getting success, you should come and check out our new podcast From Zero to Founder hosted by our community manager Molly Flynn. These are in-the-trenches stories from our very own successful students that have gone through some of our programs. People just like you who are deep within the process of building their very own successful business. These are the founders of tomorrow. You can find the From Zero to Founder podcast on all platforms. And remember, it's Founder to Founder.

You invest in, you said, 15 companies, around 15 companies a quarter.

10 per quarter, 40 per year.

40 per year. How many people do you have to speak to and meet to be able to do that?

It's not that much worse because I come with a pretty opinionated thing. So most people, I'm just like, there's a very large set of startups I'm just not gonna talk to because they're not, I mean, they might be reasonable startups, they're just not in my interest area. So mostly, I think I probably speak to 2x more than I invest in. So to do 10, I'll speak to 20, but that's like whatever that is, like 8 per month. I mean, it helps that Mercury sells to startups as well. Like, I, you know, I think, I think speaking to a founder and being helpful to a founder is like kind of a fun job. Um, so doing that on the side basically is like, you know, I'm more than happy to do that.

Yeah, and you said something interesting. It's either the idea and you kind of quickly work out if they're a strong entrepreneur or not, What did you mean by strong entrepreneur? How do you define that? How do you work that out?

It's definitely like an amalgamation of different qualities. A very obvious one is like how deeply have they thought about the thing that they've— that they're doing, right? Like they should be able to answer any question you've posed to them and have like a really thoughtful, meaningful answer. And you should be able to like really engage and have a deep conversation around their topic. So that's one big thing. Second thing, which is, I guess, a little personal, but maybe leads to a better entrepreneur is like, you know, how much do I want to like talk to this person? Like if, you know, one of the implicit promises I'm making is if I invest in someone and they send me an email and say like, you know, they're like, it's 6 PM and they need some advice and they're like, hey, can I have a call? I will say yes. Right. So like, I really want to invest in someone where I can say yes and like look forward to that conversation. Whereas like, you know, Often there isn't a chemistry where I'm like, okay, this person I actually want to talk to and I would enjoy talking to. So that's element number 2. I think the 3rd one is perseverance. Where have they shown previous ability to really grind through and fight through things and overcome obstacles? It doesn't have to be an entrepreneurial thing. Maybe they launched something else or maybe maybe the athletes at school, right? Like, it can be a lot of different things, but I do think, like, being an entrepreneur can be a real grind. And like, you know, you can feel like the whole world is kind of against you. So how do you—

how—

where have you shown that you can like overcome that and have that kind of strong fortitude? Um, those are probably like 3 things. Uh, I think the other one that's like kind of related to the idea space is like I really want to understand where they see the future and like, and that do they have like a strong kind of ethical and worldview that like is in line with mine and in line with that idea, if that makes sense. Like, you know, people don't know, like I can have what I think the idea should get to, but if they have a very different view of like where they want to take their idea, then, you know, which is fine, they should have their own view. Uh, but I want to make sure I'm not pretending that their view is my view, which I've done in the past as an investor. Like, sometimes I, I have an idea and I, I push that idea on other people and I think that they have it, but they have a completely different idea.

Yeah.

And one last question before we move to Mercury. What size checks do you usually write? What's the maximum?

Uh, it's normally $50K to $100K. I have a small fund that I do it with.

Yep. Okay. Yep. So you have your own fund, not just angel. Yeah, awesome. Well, let's talk about Mercury. So you had this idea for this incredible fintech startup, and, uh, what, what did the, what did the founding team look like, and, uh, how'd you assemble it? How long did it take to kind of build the first version of the product?

Um, the founding team, sort of my 2 co-founders are, um, people I worked with at my previous company. So I'd already worked with them for 5 years and it was basically like the best engineer I'd worked with and the best kind of sales and product person. And then there was 8 kind of initial people. 5 of them were people I'd worked with at my previous company for 5 years. And then the 3 others we kind of found through combination of kind of referrals and like online. kind of job search. And, you know, at my previous company, because it had gone on for 8 years, I'd already filtered out so many people that I couldn't work with and that hadn't worked out that like picking the best people that I'd worked with was like a pretty good kind of methodology. And then it took us a while. Number one, we had to, in order to provide banking services, you need to have a bank partner. Like most people that do it are not banks themselves, and Mercury is not a bank. We actually work with 2 different banks right now, Evolve and Choice. So we actually went deep with one bank. I won't name them, but yeah, they gave us like all of these promises about what was possible, all these features that they could deliver for us. We went fully integrated with them. It took us basically a year, and we were close to getting ready, but they kept saying, oh, this other feature. So one thing that was really important to me was having support for non— so you'd have to have a US business to use Mercury, but we wanted to be able to support non-US residents because I was an immigrant when I came to the US, and I didn't want to be in a position where I couldn't use Mercury, which I thought would've been silly. So I really wanted to have support for like non-US residents. And this sponsor bank that we were working with had promised us support for that. And every few months they'd be like, oh, we're working on this, we're working on this. And they were just like, it just wasn't happening. So a year into this like integration and these integrations are pretty deep. It was like, you know, maybe half the engineering work we'd done. They were like, oh, we can't do this. So then we had to like pivot and switch sponsor bank. So that delayed our launch quite a bit. So overall, it took us about a year and a half to get to our first version of the product live in market. But one of the kind of weird benefits of it was because it took so long to get this backend piece done, we ended up really polishing the product. We redid our onboarding process from scratch, maybe even twice, which is kind of crazy because normally the Silicon Valley mantra is launch as quick as possible and do the MVP. But we just couldn't launch because we didn't have a backend partner that was working. So we ended up like really having a much more polished product when we first launched. I actually think that was like part of the reason we were successful because people were just so impressed by how much work we'd put into having this like extremely polished like initial product.

And how did you use Twitter to grow?

Yeah, Twitter was actually like our kind of a main growth channel, especially at the start. Even now it's actually a significant part of our growth. Yeah, I think it's really important understanding where does your customer live, where do they engage, and how do they make decisions. And at least, I think this is still true with startup entrepreneurs, they're really influenced by VCs and other founders. They want to— it's much harder to— the way we decide what products to use is we go online and say, okay, what are other people using that that are also entrepreneurs or VCs, or they think about the world in a similar way, let's say. We first, back in 2017 when I first started, after I got a lead investor with Andreessen Horowitz, I basically was like, hey, I'm going to leave like a million dollars and I'm going to try to get as many angel investors as possible to invest for the extra million dollars. So I actually had 60 total angel investors. And a lot of them were people that people respect and knew. And the 2 ones at the time that had a pretty big Twitter following that tweeted about Mercury that helped a lot was Justin Kan and Elad Gil. I don't know if I've even told them how helpful they were, but those 2 tweets made quite a big difference to not just spreading the word, but also making people feel like they could trust Mercury because the difficult thing in banking is you're actually asking for a lot of trust. It's not a software product that you can just try it out. You have to put real money, you have to send the money to somewhere, and you have to hope that they do a good job with your money. both the security of it and also the infrastructure supporting it, basically. So you really have to like build that trust with someone and that's hard to do as a tiny startup. So, you know, I think having those kinds of people that were influencers that other people trusted and they had a good Twitter brand was like a real driver for us. And still is like, we have a, you know, if you search for Mercury on Twitter, There's a lot of— I mean, nowadays most of the trust and, uh, and stuff comes from our users, right? Like, there's a lot of users we have that use Mercury, uh, and they're big proponents of us, which is obviously even better than an investor because a user is actually using it and they have the real experience.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Um, so that traction channel happened organically, not on purpose.

I mean, I think when it comes to distribution, I'm a big fan of just trying everything, like everything that's reasonable. So we tried a lot of stuff, like we did podcasts, we did events, we did— nowadays we do Google Ads. And I think even early on we started doing ads to see if that would work. But yeah, you just never know what's going to work in terms of distribution. But yeah, so yeah, there's an element of like— Because you try a lot of things, then the things that you work, then you double down on those.

Real quick, before we jump in, I want to shout out one of our sponsors, Xero. I've used Xero from day one of Founder, 13 years now, and it's still how we run the business today. It's cloud accounting software built for founders exactly like us, and it automates all the admin that I used to do when I first started Founder— invoicing, Chasing payments, expenses, all the accounting. It really helps me get paid faster and keep an eye on cash flow. So Founder listeners get a crazy 95% off for the first 6 months. Just sign up through our form at founder.com/zero. Terms and conditions apply. Remember, when you support our sponsors, you are supporting the show. All right, now let's jump back in.

And can you tell us about the Mercury Raise program? What is that and why'd you create it and what's the impact you've seen?

So, well, I won't name them, but one of our competitors has had this trope that they would hold up against us. So I'm a big fan of taking anything that a competitor holds up against you and turning it into an advantage. So one thing our competitive incumbent bank holds up against us at the start was like, oh, maybe these guys have a better product, but we actually help you raise money because we have this great network of VCs, right? And I was like, I don't think anyone really gets help from you from raising money. Like I've never heard of anyone, but it was something they kept saying. So I was like, I always found it annoying. So I was like, you know what? We'll actually set up a program that actually helps you raise money because, you know, we can do that. And that's when Mercury Raises, we were like, okay, you know, they say they will help you raise money, but we'll actually help you raise money. So we set up Raise, where the seed program, we just actually ran it. Basically, a bunch of people apply. We had about 3,000 applications. We selected 60 of them. And then because we've created this kind of funnel, we can then share with investors. And we have, I think, a group of about 300 investors now in that program, which maybe it's 500. So it's grown a lot. Initially, it was just this small idea. I just went to all my investor friends and people who had invested in Mercury, and I was like, hey, if we send you some good leads, would you look at them? And they were like, sure. And then we just emailed our customers saying, if you're raising money, tell me and we'll connect you. And then we've kind of made it more of a program over time. So that's what we do for seed-stage companies. For Series A's, making those kind of network connections are not as valuable. We actually run an in-person thing, I guess about once a quarter where we get together about 30 founders that are looking to raise a Series A and we have panels from VCs and other founders and we help them kind of give them kind of pitch advice and things like that to help them raise a Series A. So yeah, Mercury Raise, it's all about helping you raise your round.

Awesome. And you've also said that your smallest customers are some of your biggest advocates.

Why is that?

You know, I think one thing that people get wrong, especially in, in kind of banking, but often people get it wrong, is like they kind of start thinking about their small customers as a cost center. You're like, oh, I have all these small customers, I don't make much money on them, I'm going to focus on big customers, right? Like that's often, often a way that people treat their small customers. For us, I've always thought about, you know, we have 100,000 customers, but obviously, you know, we have big people, like our top 1,000 customers are like probably, you know, uh, altogether bigger than the, the rest of the 99,000, right? Uh, but those top 1,000 customers don't have time to be on Twitter responding to comments. And there's only a few of them. There's only 1,000 of them. But it's the 99,000 customers that are like on Twitter or Facebook or WhatsApp or whatever, like saying like, you know, whenever someone's like, what bank should I use? Or like, is Mercury any good? Like those are the customers that are going out there and like advocating for us. Yeah, you just, you can't pay for that, right? Like you have to, that's like, you have to really deliver a good service and that's why those people out there advocating for us. So yeah, I've always seen, yeah, and obviously we don't, you should try to make your unit economics work at every size. But the real value that I think that having like a broad base of customers has is that they are like your advocates and they're gonna, yeah, entrepreneurs trust. I mean, I think for every customer segment, but especially entrepreneurs, they trust each other a lot more than they trust a Google ad. So if you can be there, Uh, in those right channels, uh, and have those advocates, it makes a huge difference.

And when it comes to, I guess, uh, startups and banks, what's a, what's a mistake a lot of startups make with banks, you think?

Um, I think the most common and obvious mistake is you set up your business bank account at the same point, place that you have your personal bank. I mean, it's obvious why people do that. They just want to get on with it and they want to build their business. But the problem is, you know, and people, this happens all the time. And eventually people will hit this problem where they'll be like, you know, you walk in your normal, I don't know, I'm just picking on Bank of America, but let's say you walk into Bank of America, you know, they don't know what a startup is. They don't know, like, if you go raise $1 million, they'll probably like, you know, block your account and say, what the hell happened to your account? You have $1 million. You just started this business. That's crazy. They just don't understand like the startup space. So going to a bank that actually like gets it and will be like celebrating your million-dollar raise and not like shutting you down is like important. I think a lot of people waste a lot of time making that initial mistake. And then later on they're like, okay, now like I've hit, you know, I've hit all these problems. I've had to sit in a bank branch for 3 hours just to get like something basic done. then they'll go explore and find Mercury or one of the other kind of startup-focused bank. But that's probably like something that 30% of entrepreneurs end up doing. So it's quite a common mistake.

Yeah, okay, interesting. Look, we're gonna move to the hot seat round. This is rapid-fire questions and answers. And then yeah, we'll work towards wrapping up. So first question I have is, what don't you compromise on?

I don't think you should ever compromise on like customer focus. Uh, I think it's easy to like prioritize, uh, yourself or your company's needs over your customers' needs, and I think that's like the one thing you should never compromise.

What's the most important business relationship you've had in your career?

I think the relationships that you have with your co-founders are just so So crucial. You know, I think at the end of the day, like you're kind of, those are the people that are like really going through the same thing with you. So that's always been the most important.

What's your favorite thing to hear from a customer?

The favorite thing that makes, I mean, it makes me feel really good. I don't know if it's like the best thing is just like when someone's like, I love your product, right? Like I, there's, I get, I think getting love for a bank account is kind of funny. I was, I definitely like did not expect to receive love from people, but there's definitely like a, A little bit of like, oh my God, you're saving my life kind of feeling that people have when they talk about Mercury, which is a great feeling to have as a builder.

Awesome.

And last one, if you could have dinner with any entrepreneur dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Oh man, it's just too easy. Elon Musk. I mean, he's— I think maybe he has some folly with his Twitter stuff, but like he's, you know, There's so few people who've like made such a broad-based impact, whether it's like, you know, SpaceX or Tesla, um, or even PayPal, right? Like, he's, he's done this over and over. It's an inspiration.

I agree.

Awesome.

Well, we'll wrap there, Imad, but thank you so much for your time. Congratulations on all your success. And, uh, yeah, I'll be watching from afar, uh, with Mercury and all the cool stuff you guys are doing.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Nathan, if someone wants to reach out, feel free to message me on Twitter and check out mercury.com.

Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed this interview. As you might already know, our mission at Founder is to help tens of millions of people every single week with our content either start or grow their business, which is exactly why we're partnering with world-class founders such as Daymond John, Alexa von Tobel, Greta Van Riel, and so many more to teach crucial skills such as negotiation, finance, e-commerce, and so much more. So if you'd like to get access to these free exclusive trainings, please go to founder.com/free. These are 100%— we go super in-depth on teaching a particular topic, and I know that you're going to love them if you enjoy this podcast. So just go to founder.com/free. All right guys, I'll see you in the next episode.