Immad Akhund picks investors who were recently entrepreneurs because they give practical advice on hiring and sales. He wants busy investors who won't waste his time, and he avoids big egos. A large network means even small odds of help add up to real contacts.
Chapters
I have a massive bias towards entrepreneurs as investors. So, you know, every one of the VCs that invested in Mercury was an entrepreneur previously. Almost everyone that was a seed investor was an entrepreneur. I just think like they've gone through the journey, especially active entrepreneurs. They're like, you know, if you're like, hey, how did you go hire your first salesperson? Like they have opinions about that. I have opinions about that. So whereas like if you go to a, you investor that's been an investor for like 20 years. I mean, they might have opinions about it, but they're not like from direct recent experience. It's hard to like really draw from that. So I think that's one bias I have. Number 2, you know, if they're active entrepreneurs or just like successful people, they're not going to bug you, generally speaking. Like you don't want to go to people who have the time to be annoying. You want to go to people who are so busy that you are lucky to have some time with them. And I mean, generally speaking, if they're investors, they will make themselves available if you ask them good questions. But I think that's my second bias to go towards people who are busy and don't necessarily— aren't going to waste your time. And I wouldn't say, I mean, there's definitely some investors that have been very, very useful. But if I make an ask of an investor, if I'm like, oh, I'm looking to hire a designer, like who knows a designer? Most investors don't, but if you have 120 of them, which we do at this stage, let's say there's a 2% chance they do, that's still 3 people that'll respond to that email. So it's not always, actually quantity does help is kind of what I'm saying. It's like, I think as long as you do a good job of communicating with them, you don't know when someone can be helpful and will be helpful. Mm-hmm. And yeah, even to this day, if I send an email, I'll have some investor be helpful that hasn't been very active and helpful so far, but they do that one thing and it can be quite impactful to the company. I would say lastly, you want to avoid like investors that, you know, kind of like trigger your asshole radar, if that's the right way to say it. Mm-hmm. If they've got too much ego, if they've got like, if they're just annoying to like talk to. Yeah, there's definitely been investors where I've been like, oh man, this person, like maybe they have a good reputation, but like that interaction was like really off-putting and I have not pursued them. And I think actually, you know, that's a reasonable thing to do. And like, you really are committed. You know, what, we're like 5 years in and I still talk to many of these investors. So you're really committing to work with this person for a long time. So like, it shouldn't just be them judging you. You should be judging them as well.
