Finding More Time vs. More Energy | Immad Akhund (father of 2, co-founder and CEO, Mercury)

So it's very hard to take advice and apply it. Like you have to be open to it, but you're given all this responsibility of this like infant. I think you can get yourself like overly worked up about it and like try to like assemble all this advice and like, you know, it's not that complicated. Just keep them alive and, you know, be flexible.

Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. In today's conversation, I sat down with serial entrepreneur Immad Akhund. Immad is the founder and CEO of Mercury, a business banking platform, and one that I'm a happy customer of. He has also founded 2 other companies, ClickPass and Heyzap, the latter of which was acquired in 2016. He's a husband and the father of 2 kids.

Hi, Adam.

In our conversation today, we spoke about he and his wife's decision to start a family at a young age, especially by San Francisco standards, and how he navigated founding and running several companies, including Mercury, with young children. We talked about the differences between finding more time and finding more energy, how to think about skill building when your kids, and how to deal with disagreements with a spouse. Our conversation was filled with discussions about the parallels between being a co-founder of a company And the co-founder of a family. I hope you enjoy it. I would like to welcome Immad Akhund to the Startup Dad Podcast. Immad, it's a pleasure to have you here today. Thanks for joining me.

Thanks. I'm excited to be here.

I wanted to just jump right off and ask you about where you grew up and what life was like growing up. So tell me a little bit about your childhood and your family.

Yeah. So from the age of, well, 0 to 9, I was in Pakistan and, you know, I have 3 older sisters, but we're all within 5 years of each other. So a 4-sibling family. And, you know, at the age of 9, my parents decided, hey, there's more opportunities in the UK. My dad had actually studied and worked in the UK for a long time. So he was already a passport holder and so were we. So at the age of 9, we decided to move. And that was a big jarring move for me, just like, you know, shifting my whole life and it's different language and all that kind of stuff. But eventually I settled in and grew up in Northwest London. And then I was there, I guess, until the age of 23 when I moved here for my second startup.

All right. And here is the Bay Area. You live in the greater San Francisco Bay. So awesome. Where does the rest of your extended family live now? Are they in the UK? Are they all distributed all over the place?

So my immediate kind of sister's parents, they live in the UK still. And then on my mom's side, my family's mostly still in Pakistan and my dad's side all over the world.

All right. You are the founder and CEO of Mercury, which I have happily been a customer of for many, many years. I think probably around the time we met, which was 4 or 5 years ago, but this is not your first stint at founding a company. Is that right?

Yeah. So I have been doing startups continuously basically since 2006. So I only really had one job pre-startups. I worked at Bloomberg for a year and then I did one startup in London and another one in the US. And those were relatively short runs. And then I did a startup from end of 2008 to when we sold it in 2016, which is called HazeApp. And then straight after that, there was a 1-year period where I worked at the company that acquired us, but then I did take a little bit of time off, had another baby, and then started Mercury in 2017. Wow.

What is it about this idea of kind of starting and building a company? Because it's a grind and you've now, I don't know if you have a pain threshold or a love of that or something, or you're a masochist, but why keep kind of going back, taking more bites out of the apple?

I'm definitely a weird person. You know, I had this like really distinct feeling when I first started my startup in 2006. And I think if I Firstly, describe my feeling working at a company. Like the contrast of the feeling is like kind of the reason for it. I would work at Bloomberg and I'd go in as late as possible. I would leave as early as possible. We would play a lot of like, they had a foosball table. We would do that. And they'd like hand me a task and I wouldn't be able to, there was no mode to speak to the customer. I would find the tasks like fairly easy and fairly boring. And, you know, I try to knock it out. But at the end of the day, I would do all of that and I would feel so tired. You know, it was weird feeling because I was like, I'm not working hard or anything, but I was just like, had no motivation at the end of the day.

Yeah.

Because it was just like a very draining environment for me. And, you know, maybe I was doing it wrong and all that kind of stuff, but it was just not like a fun thing at all for me. And then I started my first startup and it was just like the complete opposite. It was like, I was the master of my own failures, right? Like I was, everything was up to me. I was working really hard. I was young, no commitments, anything. I was working like wake up at 9 AM or whatever, and then work through till midnight. And, you know, my evening activities were go to startup events. So yeah, that's just all I did. You know, maybe I'd spent like one day of the weekend off, but it was very intense, but I felt like very energized through that intensity.

Yeah.

And I was like, wow, this is like an amazing feeling. Like, and I felt like for the first time I like knew my purpose and knew like what the point of life was. Like before then, like I had this job because that's what you do. I'd studied computer science and, you know, I kind of like coding. I do like coding, but there wasn't like a meaning or deep purpose to it. It was just like something I did because like I needed to go to college and like, I just thought I would be really good at this subject. And I was, but like, it wasn't, there wasn't like a purpose really attached to it. And this just feeling of like doing something and like having that idea and fun and all that stuff. It was just so great. I was just like, hey, if I can, I would be so lucky to be able to do this for the rest of my life. Right? Like that was my feeling. It was nothing to do with money really. It's just like, hey, if I can survive doing this, I literally was like, yeah, will someone give me money so I could like just keep doing this? Like that was my take. It was very much not, obviously there's like illusions of like hitting like it big.

Yeah.

and all of that stuff. But I really just found it so fun. I was willing to just do it like as long as I could just pay my bills, right?

Yeah. It sounds like you've been a builder for a long time and that's kind of how you're wired. Yeah. And for the last 12 years or so, you've also been building a family, which is kind of what this show's about. So you have a partner, a wife, and you have 2 kids. How'd you meet your partner?

Yeah. So I actually met my partner about 3 weeks before I left London. I met her in London and, you know, we had like, I don't know, maybe like 3 or 4 dates. And I was like, you know, I was young and I was like, yeah, you know, I'm just moving to the US for maybe a year. We'll see how it goes. Right? Like I didn't move going like, oh yes, like this is where I'll spend my life or anything. And initially because of visa issues and things like that, I was back a lot. So Even though it was long distance. And actually the funny thing with long distance, especially when you're an early entrepreneur, long distance is great because you just have this like focus time when you're away and you could just be focused on your startup. And then you have like, oh, a week or two off and you spend a focused amount of time with your girlfriend or whatever. And it wasn't as good for her because she was a podiatrist in the UK and she was like, where the hell are you? And eventually we got married and got together.

All right. And she moved to the United States.

Yes, exactly.

And now you have 2 kids. So tell me about your kids. How old are your kids?

Yeah, I have 2 girls, a 12-year-old and a 6-year-old. One's in kindergarten. The other one is in 6th grade. And yeah, I live in San Francisco proper. So I recently moved to Cow Hollow, which is where they go to school.

All right. And you became a parent at a pretty young age. If you have a 6th grade daughter, you do not strike me as a very old guy. You might even be a couple of years younger than me.

I was 27 when I became a parent.

27. And that is, not only is that pretty young, it's pretty young by Bay Area standards. A lot of people wait for a very long time. So what was that decision like to get started? You were also building a company when your first daughter was born and when your second daughter was born. So what was that thought process like?

There's a few factors. I think this one, which might seem a little silly, is my wife moved here on a Uh, it's called an O-3 visa. So I was on an O-1 visa and she had an O-3 visa. And there's actually, this is true for a lot of spouse visas, she wasn't allowed to work. So I think it's completely silly to like, why would you want someone in the country that's not allowed to work? But anyway, a separate problem. So she wasn't allowed to work and she was doing some projects and things like that. And she's an entrepreneur too, in her own way. But it just, you know, there was that factor and I felt like the company was doing a little well. We'd raised a $3 million Series A, which Wow. And it's hard to believe, but yeah, I guess inflation slash other factors meant that's what Series A's were like back then. This is like 2011. So between the fact that she wasn't allowed to work and I felt like financially okay, I was like, hey, we both want kids. I guess why wait was kind of a factor at that point. Like I knew eventually I would get a green card and she could work at that point, but that was still like several years away.

And you mentioned that your wife is a bit of an entrepreneur. So I take it that she is not a podiatrist in the San Francisco Bay Area. What does she do?

When I first met her, she was also doing kind of a business on the side. It was a dating website and a few other things. And when she moved here, she wasn't allowed to continue to be a podiatrist. She would have had to like retrain. I think it's like 5 years or something ridiculous. So she wasn't interested in that. She's done a few things recently. She started a fashion design label, but that's what she's working on.

You have started multiple companies since becoming a father. You founded Mercury, as close as I can tell, when your oldest was around 5 years old or so, and your youngest wasn't even born yet.

I founded this in August 2017. She was born in April 2017.

Okay. Okay. So close. So very, very close to it. So I already mentioned you probably have a very high tolerance for pain given your serial founding situation. But I think a lot of dads, especially some folks who listen to this show, and I get a lot of questions about this, people would look at that and say, why? How can you build a company and have a newborn, for example, or have multiple kids under a certain age? And so I'm going to ask you the exact same question, which is, why did it feel like the right time? And then how did you make it work when you're starting a company and you have a 4-month-old, that's kind of a lot. And I know you mentioned that your wife was able to stay home because she couldn't work, but still you don't get a lot of sleep. Anyone in the household doesn't get a lot of sleep. So, so I'm curious about that.

There's a few factors here. Number one, you know, I decided I was going to do startups forever. So I don't think you can just be like, life doesn't go on, right? Like, I'm like not a fan of people. Like sometimes I talk to people and they're like, hey, I'm not dating anyone because like I'm doing a startup or like I'm not doing exercise. I'm like, yeah, that's just. Like startups are long process, right? Like no one will tell you it's not going to take 10 years even for a successful startup. So you can't just pause life. And I've never been, I mean, maybe actually when I first started doing startups in 2006, I was maybe like, hey, I'm going to pause. Like, this is like, I'm all in, et cetera. But a few years in, I was like, okay, you know, life has to continue. And one of the things that taught me that was actually, you know, my initial set was like very like Y Combinator startups, right? Like it's like, early-stage people. And back then, especially my first startup was 2007, these were very young, straight out of college people. And there was this mindset that everything that's not startups is like a distraction, right? But then my company was seed-funded by Union Square Ventures and they're New York-based VC. And I guess every VC is like this, but yeah, I went to a bunch of their events at Yeah, the founders are a little older. They tended to have kids often, especially the successful ones. And I could be like, hey, you know, one of the good things about this podcast is we're creating role models for other entrepreneurs, but it was nice to see that role model, right? Like it was a different shape of a startup entrepreneur that was still doing very successful startups, right? Like the average Union Square Ventures company is more successful than the tiny YC companies and they were doing with kids and the, you know, there was lots of kind of open conversation about how to do that. So that was one factor. I think the second thing for me was, you know, once you have a company and it's a little more established, and let's say you have 10 employees and you've done a round and all that kind of stuff, I mean, some companies manage it, but like, I've never been of the type of person to say like, hey, you're working at a startup, you're going to be working until like, you know, 9 PM and you're going to be working weekends. I'm like, my take has always been to at least employees that like, hey, do your best work while you're there. And I don't think an incremental 1 hour of work into the evening is like that healthy and it's going to get you that much further. And frankly, most people just don't do that anyway. So like you'd have to be like really like pushing that kind of narrative. But anyway, when I looked at it, I was like, okay, they're working 5 days a week, 10 hours a day. Is me working 5 days a week, 11 hours a day really going to make that much of a difference to the company? Right? Like I'm only 10% of the company. If I'm working 10%—

Right.

percent more, that's only 1% extra work hours. But on top of that, like, I don't think my 11th hour of the day is as productive, right? Like, I think productivity falls quite a lot. So at some point I was just like, okay, you know, it doesn't make sense for me to be destroying the rest of my life in order to get like this incremental 1% work.

Yeah.

And it's not the best work anyway. And I think over time, you know, so I didn't have a kid until 2011. By that time, I'd already been doing startups for 5 years, right? So Like over time, it was obvious to me, like, you know, my early days where I was working till midnight, like I was messing around, right? Like I was procrastinating on Hacker News. There was a lot of that time where I was pretending to work and like, I was serious about working, but that's just like, it was limited how much work you could do for 13 hours a day or 14 hours a day. Whereas like later on, I think you could become like a little more self-introspective and go, actually, like, this is my productive time and this is how much time I was just kind of messing around.

Yeah.

So I think those two were like big factors for me. I think the second thing, which I would like push back on a little bit is like, sometimes people look at like time as like a resource. It's like, oh, I only have so much time in the day and all that stuff. But actually, like the thing that's more of a resource is energy. And, you know, if you're doing something that energizes you, you're willing to give it time, right? Generally speaking, you can do the things that give you energy and you can do more of them. Whereas like things that are draining and there's lots of things in the startup world or the baby rearing world that are very draining. Those things take away time. But overall, I would say like there was definitely hard bits, especially the first 3 months of having a baby. But overall, I would say I always came out with net energy from my kids. I'm not saying I would like net more sleep or something like that, but I, you know, it's fun interacting with kids. I think it's such a joy to be around kids and like see them grow and, or even take them places, right? Like I like to be involved in my kids' like extracurricular activities and like I took my 6-year-old swimming on Sunday and it's just nice. She has so much fun. And I feel like that kind of purpose and meaning is like, yes, I get that from the startup, but I also get it from my kids. And I think that grows your time, which is a hard concept. But yeah, and all these things that people are like, sometimes people complain about sleep or changing diapers or whatever. And I'm like, that's just not that big a factor. It's annoying at the time, but it passes and it's not a defining characteristic. No one's like, my parents aren't saying like, oh my God, like, Imad, your sleep at the age of 2 months was so annoying. Like, they don't care. Like, that's just not a defining factor for like having kids. It's just like a very small kind of aspect of it.

Yeah, it's sort of like building a company in a way, in that if you think about it in the long term, right? Like any moment that you're in, in your company or any moment that you're in With your kids is kind of a fleeting moment. Like it's going to change. Your company's going to change. Your kids are going to change. So if you're like not sleeping and not, you know, and changing a million diapers and stuff like that now, it's not going to be that way 5 years from now. Well, for most people, right? So I think that's a really good point. And I also really liked the point that you made there about it's less about time and more about energy. You can do a lot and you can sustain yourself for a long period of time if you have energy. from your family, if you have energy from your company, it kind of makes it worth it to keep grinding. So what's the earliest memory that you have of becoming a dad?

One of the weirdest things is like, you know, it's like day 2 and you're ejected out of the hospital. You walk home and there's nothing. They're like, here's a baby. And you're like, what the hell? I remember that being such a distinct memory. And going like, well, like, what am I supposed to do? It's like, you know, I mean, you figure it out, but it's so jarring because like, you know, a lot of life, there's like a process, right? It's like, here's school or even startups, right? Like I did Y Combinator. It's like, here's a program. It's 3 months long.

Yeah.

And now you're like in charge of this like life that you have to like make sure you support. And I was, you know, I'm an, I'm a bit of an overachiever at times. So I'd read all these books and like, you know, we'd done this course and all this stuff. And I was like, yeah, it's almost useless compared to like actually doing it, right? Like, it's like, okay. And like half the stuff you find on the internet is contradictory, right? Like there's like, should you sleep train them or not? Or, you know, all this stuff. I mean, by the time I had my second child, I knew what I was doing, but the first child, I remember it was like pretty crazy.

Yeah.

And like, yeah, we live far away from our parents as well. So that made it like probably extra hard in its own way. I remember that was a very distinct memory. I don't think it was the earliest memory. The earliest was just like, Yeah, I was there when the birth was happening. I also have like a pretty, pretty strong memory of like every step of that way, but thankfully we didn't have any complications or anything.

Not a lot of people have mentioned that memory, this idea of like, they just kind of give you the baby and they're like, good luck, you're out. Yeah. I had someone on the podcast who was like, the only thing you need to do to be able to take your kid home from the hospital is show them that you have a car seat. That's it.

That's it. And we didn't even have a car seat actually. Right.

Because you walked.

Yeah. No, no, we had to go get it because our first child was 3 weeks early. So I hadn't bought the car seat yet.

One of the things that happens when you become a parent is you get a lot of advice about what to do. And you mentioned you read a lot of books, you're looking on the internet and stuff like that. When you think about the younger version of Imad, what is like the one piece of advice that if you could go back in time that you would tell yourself, this is something you really should pay attention to? And then the opposite side, what's something that you would say 100% ignore, do not pay attention to this piece of advice?

So it's very hard to take advice and apply it. Like you have to be open to it, but you're given all this responsibility of this like infant. I think you can get yourself like overly worked up about it and like try to like assemble all this advice and like, you know, it's not that complicated. Just keep them alive and, you know, be flexible. And I think that actually takes you a long way. I think, I guess the other thing that's related to that is like, you kind of have to like understand, like, you know, what you're going to do, what your partner's going to do and have like really strong lines of communication that are like always open and be able to understand each other's needs, right? Like one thing that quickly happened is like, I'm always a morning person and she's always been a nighttime person. So like she would go until 4 AM and I would wake up at 4 AM and do the rest. And like, we found a rhythm, but like, you know, those types of things, like understanding what each person's needs are and things like that and adapting to that are really important. I think this advice is probably for like slightly later, like when they're not babies, but, you know, I had this impression as a Pre-dad, I had this impression that like, this is what I'm going to be like with my kids, right? I was like, I'm going to do these things. I'm not going to swear. I'm going to be like this, like role model of XYZ, et cetera. But then, you know, when I had kids, I realized like, I'm just going to spend all my time with them, right? Like, it's not like you spend half an hour with them a day, you're spending like all the time with them. So like, in order to do anything with them and to be a role model of some type, like you basically have to change yourself to be that. Like it can't just be like something you project for your children. Like if you want to be like a hardworking person and have them aspire to that, like you have to be a hardworking person. Or if you want to be fit, then like, yeah, like all of these things you just have to change yourself to be. And I actually think like in some ways it makes you a better person because you're like, you know, you look at your kids and go like this, you know, if I want them to aspire to do something, I have to then do it myself. And yeah, you have to kind of actually—

Yeah.

live that. So that is like an interesting aspect that no one had like kind of told me before.

Yeah.

I think the other thing that I try to do is I do think the most important thing you can do, I mean, beyond like basic needs or whatever, is to give your kids love. I think like make them feel secure. And I mean, it's good for you as well. Like I think it's fun to have a loving environment, but I think everything else is like kind of secondary. And people should probably like focus a little bit more on like giving their kids like a happy, healthy kind of environment.

That point just before this one where you said, you know, if you want to be, if you want to model or if you want to sort of project a certain thing for your kids, you have to actually change and evolve to be that way. You can't really like put on a show, right? Because you're with them all the time. What's something for you that you really kind of worked on after having kids that became really important for you in order to demonstrate something to them?

I don't know if I just did it for them beyond like, I'm also like someone who wants to learn and grow myself. So yeah, I've been trying to like go through a fitness kick recently and I think it is important for the kids to see both me and my wife being fit and doing exercise and all these things. So that's one thing. Reading is very important to me, but I would say I've got a lot more into reading in the last like 6 years. And I guess part of it is probably modeling it for the kids and like saying, hey, you should be reading more. And now I'm reading more as well. So it's that kind of thing.

Yeah. My son still really loves to have me read to him. He's 9. So kind of in between your kids, but one of the things that we've started doing is like, I'll read him a chapter from a book and then he'll read a chapter and I'll get my own book and just sit in his room and we'll read Kind of together. So we're like trying to model that behavior, which I've actually found really enjoyable. It also helps me read more.

Yeah.

Because a lot of times after he goes to sleep, I'm not in the mood to read. I'm ready to go to sleep myself. So now I get some chapters in while he's doing his stuff. So I love that. I wanted to ask too, because, you know, I want to talk with you about skill building because that was the thing that you brought up in our prep for this. And I'm curious about a couple of things. One is, You know, you're a serial entrepreneur and the most recent company Mercury is a banking and fintech company. Have you taught your kids much in the way about finance or do you talk to your kids about what you do and what are those conversations like?

Yeah, obviously it depends on which age and with my older kid, like I set up like a stock portfolio for her and I was like, hey, which things do you like? And she's like, I like Spotify and Disney and that kind of thing. And I bought some and then like every now and then we check it and like, that's cool. We see how that's doing. So I think that's been nice. And yeah, we've always historically had like pocket money and then she's, you know, tracked that and she has to pay for certain things. More recently I've like removed pocket money and now she has to babysit or do other chores to make money now that she's a little older. So I think those kind of, in terms of financial stuff, like I can talk about it all day, but like doing these kind of practical things is like a good way to get her.

Yeah.

I have spent many times trying to explain compound interest to her, and I think she kind of gets it, but I don't think she really gets it. But I'm sure when she sees money growing and not growing, she'll get more of a sense of it. And I try to make it so we walk to school, not every day, but it's like a 15-ish minute walk. So I try to talk about something interesting and new a lot of the times when we're walking, either something that they bring up or current affairs or I'm just like, hey, you know, like, like recently we talked about like the Neuralink chess playing thing that was announced and I showed them the video and, you know, I think like those kinds of things, like a lot of teaching from my perspective is like talking about different interesting things and like, you know, showing them how I think about it so that they can like see that, but doing that like on a relatively sustained basis for like years and years kind of builds up knowledge. That's how I've been kind of working at it.

And I think I saw pretty recently that you were thinking about teaching one of your kids how to code or teaching one of your kids how to build a website or something like that. So how's that project been going?

Yeah, my older daughter has been doing the service. It's called Juni Learning or something, which I recommend actually. They teach them Scratch and then they do Python. So she's been doing that for a few years and now we've been doing like various projects together. So she has a Apple Watch and we did like a watch app that like says a joke when you click on it, it changes it. So more recently she was like, oh, I want to make like a web app. And like, she just kind of wants to make like silly apps. So I tweeted about it to see like what people thought I should make it in. I know React, so I'm kind of tempted to just teach her React, but it is, now that I think about trying to teach her that, it seems like quite a complicated platform. So, so I thought I'd ask about it, but yeah, it's nice to like have some projects that we work on together.

That's awesome. And anything that you're working on with your younger daughter or kind of skills that you're trying to build with her? And just so everybody remembers, she's 6 years old, right? Yeah.

I mean, practically speaking, you know, anything on a computer or things like that, she's just like a little young for, like, sure, she can't even read it, but she's really into sports. So swimming, soccer, and basketball she's been doing and some gymnastics. And then B, we just like, I have like literally right outside in this corridor, there's like 6 balls. So I try to make it so there's always like balls around so we could just like kick a ball back and forth and things like that. And she can also kind of do that for herself. But yeah, it's mostly been around that and just like talking to her. Yeah, my wife is working on her own, like reading and things like that, but I haven't been doing it too actively.

So your kids are 6 years apart, which is a pretty good spread of age, at least in the United States. You usually get a lot of people like 2 and a half or 3 years spaced out. Has your parenting style evolved in between your oldest daughter and your youngest daughter? You kind of mentioned this a little bit.

I think the biggest change between the older one and the younger one is like how I behaved in the first 2 years. I think in the first 2 years, there's a lot more like, you know, stress, I guess, or you can get very stressed about having a kid. Like, it's like, Yeah, there's, you end up going to the hospital for every little thing. There's sleep. There's like a lot of transitions that happen in the first 2 years and potty training and all that stuff. So I just feel like with the first one, I was just like, yeah, every step was like new and it was changing. And I felt like it was always hard to keep up with it. I just remember being like very worked up about every step and like trying to be like useful and on top of it and like learn about it and do all this stuff. With the second one, it was just like, I feel like the first 2 years just kind of whizzed by. I was like, oh wow, she's 2 now. That's crazy. And I mean, obviously like different children had like both had unique challenges, but I just felt like a lot less stressed and worked up about it for the first 2 years. After that, like what has changed? That's a good question. I mean, I feel like, I don't know. Okay. Both kids are so different. And like, this was one of the surprising things about having kids is like, you know, you get a lot built in the personality. Yeah. You know, my first kid never got into sports and I was a very sporty child, so it was very hard because I was like, surely we should be doing more sports. And like, she just, I exposed her to a ton of sports and she was just never into them. And the, you know, the younger is completely opposite. She's very into it. So that's a— my experience around that is very different between the two. And I don't think I really changed that much. It's just the kid was very different. I think with the first one, I tried to teach her a lot of age-inappropriate things early on. And it was kind of a frustrating experience for me and her. Whereas the younger one, I try to be, think a little bit about like, what is age-appropriate and be like a little bit further from that, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

It's interesting. I mean, you care so much and you're so focused on the first one that in some ways, maybe I even did some better stuff with her. Whereas the second one is a little bit like, okay, you'll be fine kind of thing. Like I remember with the first one, like, you know, there was like no technology, no iPad, nothing until the age of like 2 and a half or something. Whereas with the second one, we're like, you know, there's like her sister has some and like, et cetera. We still have like a lot of restrictions, but we were definitely like a little more flexible.

Yeah.

So I don't know, there's some regression there, I guess.

With your older daughter, you mentioned you tried to kind of teach her, do sort of age-inappropriate things with her. And I don't anticipate that means you're, the two of you are sitting down watching R-rated movies together when she's 5 or anything. But what's an example of something where you got out of balance with thinking like, oh, she's capable of this?

Or— I mean, all this stuff, like, yeah, like I'm really into maths and coding and stuff like this. So I've I was like trying to teach her algebra when she was like 7 or something. I've been trying to teach her coding and things like that since the age of like 7 as well, or 6. Well, maybe 8 for that one. But either like there's, I've always like pushed fairly hard to try to like do like some of the things I'm interested in to try to engage in. And like, now that she's 12, she's finally like actually at a level where she can get it and I can like do it. And like, and I'm like, okay, you know, was it worth me like kind of getting frustrated trying to teach her something that she was like clearly not ready for?

Yeah.

But maybe, you know, I did expose her to things and like, hopefully like helped her form her brain.

You know, you had one kid when you started one of your earlier companies and you had 2 at the start of Mercury. Has that changed how you think about running a business or being a CEO or how you manage at all?

You know, the 2 companies were like 8-ish years apart, right? 2008. And I think It's hard to disentangle like how I changed as a person and what I learned as an entrepreneur from like, okay, you know, what I learned from being a dad. You know, this Mercury was like a distillation of like, you know, all the things I'd learned from my 3 startups before. I definitely did things that were like unique and yeah, some of them you could probably tie back to this parenting stuff. So, you know, one thing that was really important to me was I tried to set myself up to never be a bottleneck on things that needed to get done at the company. So, you know, I'd often talk to other entrepreneurs and I'm quite an active investor. I've invested in 300 companies. So I'm always talking to entrepreneurs and like, you know, so often you talk to them and I'm like, oh, you know, what's stopping you growing? Or like, what's stopping you doing this faster? And it's often about them, right? Like the CEO will be like, oh, I just like, I don't have time to do this and that. Or like, I'm doing the sales and I'm the bottleneck on that, et cetera. I mean, it's different when there's 3 people and you have no funding, but like, this is like a seed-funded company that have like 10 people or something like that. I'm like, you know, is it really good to be the main person that's holding everything back all the time? And there's only one of you. Goes back to my point about like working an extra hour a day. I just think like when I set up Mercury, I just thought that was flawed. Like I don't want to be the bottleneck on things. So from like basically the start, we initially had 8 people after we raised our seed round. There was a couple of things I did bottleneck, like fundraising, bank partnerships, but most other things I was never the only person working on. I mean, I always tried to set myself up from that stage onwards as like the accelerant, but not the blocker. So, you know, initially I was doing front-end engineering, but like there was 2 other people doing it as well. And I just sped it up by 33% or so. And yeah, obviously your role as the CEO changes over time, but I've almost always gone like, if I do ever become the bottleneck on something, How do I go hire someone that can like do a better job than me? And then how do I instead focus on the things that I can accelerate? And that's a good model also for like having a, I mean, I don't love the phrase work-life balance, but like having a family and having life outside work is like, if you are the bottleneck and like, yeah, like Mercury is very important to me. It's my startup. Like it's my life in its own way. But if I'm always the one like slowing things down, then I feel like I need to work harder. Right. Whereas like, if I'm like, hey, things are working well. Even without me, like continuously, like at the helm, that allows me to like actually step back and it's good for Mercury as well because, you know, then you can focus on like some high-level things. You don't have to be always stuck in like doing the thing.

I love that way of thinking that striking a better balance with your family helps remove you a bit from being the bottleneck to your company because naturally you're not there all the time. Other people have to be able to make decisions and move things forward. That's a really good Way of thinking about it. I wanted to talk a little bit about conflict and managing through disagreements because this is kind of the third topic that you mentioned in our prep. So we all know that partnership is super important when you have kids and you have a spouse, but it is also very hard to agree 100% of the time with your spouse, especially when it comes to things about kids or family decisions and things like that. And so I'm curious to hear about how you manage disagreements and maybe where's an area where you and your wife have difference of opinion.

Funnily, I would say like the way me and my wife work with each other and manage disagreements is similar to how I work with my co-founders at my startup or like how I work with people in general.

She's your family co-founder, so it makes sense.

And the way we normally do it is like, We try to not care about the same things as much, if that makes sense. So there's certain things that I care a lot about and when it's obvious that one of us cares a lot about it, the other one, like, on the whole gives the other person space to like make the decision on it. So for example, I care a lot about sports and my wife doesn't necessarily. I end up organizing most of them and taking my kids and things like that. And my wife cares a lot about education and she ends up doing a lot of it. And yeah, it doesn't mean we don't help each other, but it does avoid arguments when you have zones of control. It's like, hey, this is your zone of control and this is mine. And actually, I would say most of the time the arguments happen when either it's not defined whose zone of control a certain decision is, or It's something that you both care about so much that you both want to like be part of that zone of control. If it's the former and it's just not defined, then like, I think you just have to spend some time like going, okay, you know, actually you care a lot more about this than I do. Like you do it. If it is something that you both care about and you really want to like come to it. And I mean, that's healthy too, right? Like it's good to know like, hey, we really both care about this and let's hash it out and figure out like what's the right answer. And then I would say like, relying on like having like a very respectful kind of logic argument rather than like an emotional kind of like argument where you're like, you know, being mean about each other or something like that, I think is like the key. But most of the time, like if you do this well, like it's relatively rare for something to come up as like in both of our zones of control and care, right? Like it's just like relatively rare that I'm like, you know, I definitely 100% care about this and I disagree with you. That's like actually like kind of unusual. We're both like fairly different personalities. I'd say like, that's also true in the startup world, right? Like, I think like the way I split responsibilities with my co-founders are like fairly well defined and they really care about the things they care about. And I also care about them, but I'm happy for them to like take the lead and I don't need to be the end decision maker on those things. And so that works out well.

Do you find that you and your wife have to carve out specific time to sit down and talk about, sometimes divide up these things or figure out who cares about what, maybe when there's a new thing that kind of comes into life, just like I guess you'd have to do with a co-founder.

Yeah. I mean, actually one of the risks when you have like kids and a family is to make too much of your time logistics, right? Like, I think it's actually like a little dangerous to go like, what's happening tomorrow? What are we doing about this? And all that stuff. And you end up like not having any quality time together. You're almost like just like running your family together and not spending any time together. So I think there's always a risk of that. And I think it's important to have like date nights and like do other things that like actually give you like one-on-one quality time together and not just logistics planning. We're not like, you know, I know some families that do like weekly planning meetings and all that kind of stuff. I would say we're like a lot more ad hoc on these things. We have like a shared kind of notes to-do thing and we do plan around that and then we just kind of You know, whenever something has to be dealt with, we talk about it.

Do you have a particular piece of technology that the two of you use to bridge that, or you just do an Apple Notes, or are you—

Yeah, we just do a shared Apple Notes. Actually, we just created one with our daughter as well, which is kind of fun because now she's 12, so you can like have her kind of involved in it and she's like adding things on her mom's to-dos and things like that as well. But yeah, it's shared notes. I think that works fine and it's available on all platforms.

So that actually brings up a really good question that I have for you, which is you're teaching your oldest daughter about coding. You've been doing that for a little while, and you just mentioned this idea of having a shared note. And so, you know, she's obviously somewhat immersed in technology, obviously. And one of her parents is, that's your whole career has been steeped in technology. How do you think about the relationship that you want both of your kids to have with technology as they get older?

Yeah, it's a good question. You know, I'm anti-somethings like I think like short-form video, whether it's TikTok or YouTube Shorts or whatever, it's kind of just junk. It's like junk food. And I've mostly deleted it slash banned it on all of the technology devices they have. But, and you know, I guess like everyone does this, like I watched a reasonable amount of TV growing up and I played a lot of computer games growing up and You know, I feel like I learned a reasonable amount from them and I don't think they're like as negative as it seems. I think everything has to be in balance, but like I actively encourage my 6-year-old to play games on her iPad. And yeah, there's obviously some slightly more educational games or even non-educational ones. I think I would rather she spend time playing a game on her iPad than like watching a TV show on her iPad. And then we have like lots of like, you know, general like rules to try to limit it just because like kids are obviously not good at self-control. So we try to not give them technology during the weekdays. But yeah, I'm, I would say like we're on the flexible side. Like I think all of these things like in some measure are like good and too much they're bad.

Yeah.

And our 12-year-old, and I don't know if we were really good at this or she's just like very sensible. It's just like, she's just very sensible. So like we don't have to like do too much. And yeah, she mostly likes reading books in, in her spare time. So. that's great. But I am also very anti-social media, especially for teenage girls. I just think it's fairly negative. And we do let her have iMessage and like she talks to her friends through that a lot and has a lot of group chats with them. It's even that, like I can see is distracting her a lot. Like, you know, message comes in, she wants to like see what her friends are saying. But at the same time, like, I don't think it's like too unhealthy. I just, I don't like the idea of like Instagram and all that kind of stuff. I don't know how long I can hold the line. My current plan is to kind of go all the way to 18, but I have a feeling that at 16, maybe I'll have to give in. Yeah. Otherwise, you know, I think technology is a good enabler for a lot of things. And like my older daughter is like very into drawing on iPad and things like that. I don't try to like overly restrict things.

So you have many irons in the fire. You're a founder of a company. You're an investor. You mentioned you made over 300 investments, which that's for a different show, but we'll talk about that at some point. You're a dad. You also have a podcast that I have recently discovered. What do you do to restore your batteries or center yourself or like recharge with all of this stuff going on?

Almost everything I do when it comes to things I do outside my startup, I try to do things that give me energy. So Investing, like I like talking to entrepreneurs, like, you know, they give me like this view into like the future and I like helping entrepreneurs. Like it's fun. Sure. Like at times it's like a little draining, but on the whole, I would say it's like a pretty fun thing to do. And I mostly consider it as like a fun hobby. Same with my podcast. Like, yeah, the main, my main work is really like Mercury and that's, you know, 90% or 99% of my focus and The thing that like does take a lot of energy. And then obviously like making sure my kids are happy and growing. All these other things I try to construct in a way that they're like generally like low effort, low logistics, and mostly like things I would enjoy doing and would do for fun.

Yeah, that's great. As long as you're finding the things that give you energy, you don't have to do that much recharging because your batteries are always pretty full.

It is recharging.

Yeah.

And what are you going to do instead? Watch TV?

That's true.

It's boring.

That's absolutely right.

I mean, I would say I have like a, a lot of mental stamina. I don't think everyone is like this, but like, you know, like even in my spare time, I want to go read like a book about science or something. Like I want to, I always want to be, or like listen to this kind of podcast. Like I always want to do things that like take a lot of mental energy, but like I find intellectual stimulation like really interesting.

So one of the things we talk a lot about on podcasts when we talk about, talk with the professional folks or entrepreneurs, talk about mistakes that you've made in building a company. And I'm sure you've made many. It's impossible not to, right? You've done it enough times. You're going to make some mistakes. That's how you learn. Like you mentioned, Mercury was like an amalgamation of multiple companies, like in one sort of approach.

Mm-hmm.

But I wanted to ask you, what is a mistake that you think you've made as a dad?

That's a good one. I think this is the lesson that I'm often relearning is I think it's very important to like kind of push your kids to do things that they're already enjoying and like doubling down on those rather than like trying to get them to do things they're not enjoying. So, you know, as I said earlier, I often tried to get my older kid into sports and she was never into it. And I think maybe some of that energy could have been like put in towards doing things that she was enjoying and like doing more of those. I think that's one big one. This one, you know, it's tricky to say like how you could, how we would have done it differently, but you know, there's a whole art to like getting into a good school in San Francisco. And when we had our first kid, you know, I was 27. None of my friends had had kids.

Sure.

So we were just kind of figuring it out, right? Like, I mean, obviously we could talk to some of the other parents, but it's not, It's different when your friends or like your direct people are like having kids and you can see like how they got into school and what they did, et cetera. Whereas like even how you pick a school, like everything was very foreign. And I think we ended up making much better choices with our younger kid and now we're really happy with where we are. But it was definitely like a bit of a struggle figuring it out. And I don't know how I would impart that knowledge to a younger version of me. And If there's someone out there, they can maybe ping me and I could tell you like the high level, but it is like a tricky game to play. I don't know if it's like that in every place, but even like knowing like, what do I even care about in a school? Took a while to like figure out all these things. And now I feel like I'm a fricking pro at picking schools and getting kids into schools. But it took a long time and like, there was like probably like some better schooling I could have delivered my kids earlier.

Yeah. Well, I'll tell you one thing we won't do on this show is tell people to email you with all their school application questions. You're a little too busy for that, but I can appreciate that after going through it with multiple kids, you're probably an expert in navigating San Francisco school.

Yeah, seriously. So it is quite an ordeal.

Yeah, I hear they don't make it very easy. I fortunately live outside of San Francisco, so I haven't had to manage it, but I have many friends who have. Doesn't sound fun. So my last question for you before we get into our rapid-fire round is, Aside from, you know, telling people to go sign up for Mercury, which I did as soon as I started my business, how can people follow along or be helpful to you and your journey or as you're building your company?

Good question. I tweet a lot on X or Twitter, and I've been trying to get into LinkedIn. So feel free to follow me there. And I also have a podcast that is currently called Curiosity Podcast, although I'm changing it to Age of Wonder Podcast. Okay. So yeah, follow along. And if you have any feedback or questions about Mercury, feel free to DM me on Twitter. I'm pretty responsive there.

Okay. So Twitter, LinkedIn, and the soon to be renamed Age of Wonder podcast, now the Curiosity Podcast. All right. Well, thank you very much. Now let's do rapid fire if you're up for it.

Yeah, let's do it.

First question. Here we go.

What is the most indispensable parenting product that you have ever I think the best thing, which either didn't exist or I discovered late, was a Doona pushchair stroller. Sorry. And the coolest thing about it is that collapses. So we lived in San Francisco and often we're taking Ubers and like taking an Uber is such a pain in the ass with the child seat. It's like so annoying. Whereas this thing just like completely collapses. It takes like 2 seconds. Super useful product. I would highly recommend it.

You know, other people who I've had on this show who live in San Francisco have said the exact same thing, which is awesome.

It's just amazing. Yeah.

So there must be something there. I should get them to sponsor this show. Okay. What is the most useless parenting product that you've ever purchased?

You know, the funny thing is almost all plastic toys are like completely useless. Like most of the time you buy the plastic toy and then the kid spends all their time with the packaging, you know, the box. And I'm like, what the hell did we buy this?

Yes. Plastic toys. go right in the garbage and just contribute to whatever waste we're creating in the world. Okay, finish this sentence. The ideal day with my kids involves this one activity.

Honestly, just quality time. If we're doing something fun together, I'll often take them to the arcade. There's a couple around San Francisco, and that's like always a kind of a fun thing that they both like doing together with me. Cool.

What is the most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a dad?

I think the hardest thing is like having a baby that's crying on an airplane. I know people sometimes experience it as a passenger and think it's bad, but it's much worse as a parent.

Yeah.

'Cause like you're trying to console them and you're trying to sleep yourself, especially on an international flight. Oh my God. That is a very frustrating experience.

Okay. Yes. For all those people who judge parents on an airplane, just remember the parents are judging themselves even harder.

It's the worst.

So you've got, you know, 6-year-old and 12-year-old. What has been the favorite ages for your kids?

Oh, my absolute favorite age is 3 to 4.

3 to 4. Okay. All right.

I just think they're so cute. They're still like little babies, but then they start talking and they say the cutest things. I just love that age.

What about your least favorite age for kids?

I think anything sub-3 months and then 9 to 12 months, 9 to 18 months. Like there's a time period, actually 9 to 18 It's probably the worst because there's a time period where they start moving around, but they just have no sense, right? Like, and there's no way to communicate. It's like, you just have to continuously be like looking at them and like, yeah, like it's full-on helicoptering because they'll literally fall down the stairs or like hit themselves.

All right. 9 to 18 months. How many dad jokes do you tell on average each day? And how often does your 12-year-old roll her eyes when that happens?

I'm very into dad jokes, like a couple of times a day for sure. My 12-year-old actually still kind of finds them funny, but I'm, I know I'm running outta time. Awesome.

What was the most difficult kids' TV show that you have ever had to sit through?

The number of times I've watched Frozen. I am so done with that movie specifically. And I don't know, there's a lot of other TV shows that, you know, one thing that's really good is Teen Titans.

Oh, okay.

Like, it's actually like a surprisingly entertaining show, which I've had to watch all the way through as well. But at least I didn't mind that one.

I will check that one out. I'm not sure that it's made my rotation yet. So speaking of which, what is your absolute favorite kids movie? We know Frozen is probably the least favorite now. Which one is like a favorite of yours?

What is the one with emotions?

Oh, Inside Out.

Inside Out. I really liked that one. I thought that was like a, at least, I mean, I didn't like it the 4th or 5th time I had to watch it, but the first time I liked, I watched it, I was like, okay, you know, it's like really good ideas there. I feel like they, it gives you like a nice vocabulary to talk to your kids about emotions with as well. I kind of like that show.

All right. Have you ever accidentally mixed up your kids' names?

I mean, every day. Well, I actually, it's kind of interesting. I think like in my head, they have like one box, you know, it's my kids. So like, I'm often like, you know, it's very easy to mix them up. But yeah, it's gotten a little easier actually now that they're older and they like, yeah, I feel like their boxes are separating a little bit in my head, but yeah, it's super easy to do that.

All right. 2 final questions for you. What nostalgic movie that is your favorite can you just not wait To force your kids to watch?

I just recently got them to finally watch The Matrix with me.

Oh, nice.

I made both of them watch it. I tried before, but my older one does not like action movies until recently, and my younger ones are happy to watch it regardless. But we watched it all the way through and yeah, it's kind of fun. It's such a great movie. One of my faves.

Impressive. Impressive. And final question for you. What is your take on minivans?

I had one until very recently. Now I have a Model X, which is almost as big, but not quite minivanny. I love minivans. They're great. Unlimited storage. So flexible.

Yeah. We don't get a lot of pro-minivan people on this show.

Are you serious?

Or sometimes we get a lot of conflicted spouses where one is very pro and one is very anti, but I love that.

Both me and my wife are into minivans.

I love it.

I mean, I am a very practical person and there's just like no one will argue that they're not practical.

It's especially helpful in San Francisco because the doors just slide open and they don't like come out from the car to be clipped by a biker or something like that, you know? So maybe not practical in the size, but okay. Well, we've got a positive vote for minivans. So, all right. I would like to thank you for joining me today, Imad. This has been wonderful. I appreciate everything that you shared and wish you all the best of luck with Mercury and your investing and your soon-to-be-renamed podcast, and of course your family. So thank you very much for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Adam. Thanks for the thoughtful questions and hope everyone enjoyed that.

Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Imad Akhund. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review on Apple or Spotify. It'll help other people find this podcast. Startup Dad is a Fishman AF production. With editing support from Tommy Herron. You can join a community of 10,000 subscribers and stay up to date on my thoughts on growth, product, and parenting by subscribing to the Fishman AF newsletter at www.fishmanafnewsletter.com. Thanks for listening. See you next week.