15 Questions With Mercury Co-founder and CEO Immad Akhund

0:00Immad Akhund: I think that's often true that immigrants are like forced to learn things from scratch and have an outside experience and I think that's actually those two things are like a very valuable perspective when it comes to building startups. So I think one thing that is important and I do value is like people who actually move here. I think if you even take London, right, like it's like somewhat innovative. But if you come from London, come here, like raise money and then go back to London. I haven't seen like I think that mindset is like in Silicon Valley to some extent. And I think the people I pick on London just because I grew up there.

0:40Immad Akhund: Like people are just not that ambitious there. The ecosystem doesn't support ambition. I just think it ends up with a less optimal outcome. I think people actually move completely, are forced to kind of blend into this perspective in a strong way. Last week, I attended One Way Summit, a conference for immigrant founders in San Francisco. While I was there, I sat down with Imada Kond, co-founder and CEO of Mercury. We talked about how the company came together, what he's looking for as an early-stage investor, and how an outsider's perspective can be an advantage when it comes to recognizing opportunities others take for granted.

1:19He also shared practical advice for immigrant founders building relationships in Silicon Valley and why he sees moving here as a form of cultural immersion. I'm Walter Thompson. This is Fund, Build, Scale. Are you building something that's hard to explain? It can be a sign you're working on something interesting, but it also raises the risk that you're missing out on fundraising, sales, hiring, and media opportunities. I help early-stage founders sharpen the narrative. What matters, why now, who needs to care, and why they're the right team to make it happen. If you're preparing for a raise, a product launch, an important customer meeting, a panel discussion, or even a hiring push, I can help you pressure test your story before the stakes get higher.

2:03Visit the Fund Build Scale website to learn more or email fundbuildscale at gmail.com. Thanks very much for joining me. I appreciate the time. Thanks for having me. So we're here at One Way Summit. What's your main interest in being here for this event?

2:20Immad Akhund: I've been an entrepreneur for 20 years now, so I always like to kind of give back to entrepreneurs. I'm a double immigrant myself. My family moved to the UK and then I moved to San Francisco. So, yeah, these are people that I hold dearly, and if I can be helpful, that's my main objective. And you also invest at the early stage with... So how do people usually connect with you? On the investment side? Yeah, normally it's via, like, warm intros. I've invested in 350 companies, so, you know, founders, their friends, other investors connect me. Preferred sectors, or all over the map? You know, I'm pretty broad.

2:58Immad Akhund: I like to do things that should exist in 10 years time. It's my rough thing. So obviously I do B2B in FinTech, tons in AI, but I also do like space tech, defense tech, nuclear. So it's pretty broad. The only thing I don't do is bio just because, you know, I can't really tell these cancer cures apart. Right. Like a Jurassic Park, you don't even know. Yeah, exactly. What's one thing you wish somebody would pitch you that you haven't seen recently or haven't seen yet? Oh, that's kind of like a fun question. I mean, I'd love to see more things that enable like a space, orbital space ecosystem, if you know what I mean.

3:37Immad Akhund: There's been a few things, but like I'd love for 10 years from now, wouldn't it be cool if like we lived on space? There was lots of like industry and tourism. I don't know. There's so many things that could happen in space. I feel like the next wave of that should be enabled by Starship and like cheaper kind of cost to get to orbit but I haven't seen that much of that so I'll be kind of cool to see. What did you need to learn from other founders to realize this was a real problem like worth going after, worth building a company for? Yeah so I started Mercury in 2017. I started as an entrepreneur in 2006 and I actually had the idea for Mercury in 2013.

4:15Immad Akhund: Mostly initially as like something that someone else will do. I was like, wow, it's just so painful to deal with my banking as an entrepreneur. You know, just even basic things like getting an account, logging in, sending money. It's just so hard. And like, I really wanted an API into my bank. And that was completely impossible in 2013. So for a long time, it was like someone will build this. And it is obvious to me someone will build it. And it was very much like through a personal kind of pain point. But I guess like to me, it seemed obvious, right? When I first started, there was no Stripe or Slack or Gusto.

4:49Immad Akhund: All these things were bad and then over time, startups went and attacked every vertical apart from banking. So it was mostly like someone will do it, it seems obvious, but it took a long time for me. I sold my previous company and then for me to get enough conviction that I could do it was probably the harder bit rather than believing that the idea should exist. How much time passed between, I guess, like day zero, Inception Day and taking your first deposit? So we, strictly speaking, we took our first money and incorporated in August 2017. I started thinking about it at the start of 2017, like actively working on it, but not fully in.

5:32Immad Akhund: And then it basically took in a year and a half till we launched. We did have some like beta customers before then, but I wouldn't say we really had, like we launched as soon as we could, but it still took a year and out. So April 2019 is when we launched. And your customer discovery process, what did that look like? Like how do we get our first customers? Well, I mean like the research process before you actually started like trying to go to market. You know one thing that I feel like there's kind of two types of startups, right? Like there's the I don't know what the idea is and I'm kind of discovering and maybe it's a new thing and enabled by AI or something like that and that has like a long discovery process.

6:08Immad Akhund: And there's another type of thing which is like, things exist that do this exact thing, but I think I could do it much better. So in some ways, banks existed. Like I had a pretty good idea of like, what would be the minimum set of features I would need as a startup founder to use a new banking system. Which is like, I need wires, I need ACH, I need checks, I need international wires, I need immigrant kind of founder support, I need multi-user support. Like, yeah, it was a set of things. And there was no, in my opinion at that time, there was no point in launching until we had that minimum set of things because we would launch and everyone would ask, they'd be like, oh, I can't use this until you build X.

6:47Immad Akhund: So there wasn't a long kind of discovery process to figure out what features we needed. Kind of just dog-fooding basically? Yeah, dog-fooding and just understanding what are the minimum things, what do other banks do to enable this kind of thing. And there were still some things missing when we launched, we didn't have all of it. But we had enough that someone could start a company and use Mercury as their first in a bank account. Did you have previous experience in fintech before Mercury? No, this is my first fintech company. So I guess, did you have to overcome any skepticism? You had entrepreneurial experience, so clearly people saw you could build, but was that a leap having to convince an investor or even someone to join your company as far as like, no, I'm actually, I can do fintech.

7:28Immad Akhund: So I spent a long time, so I mentioned earlier, I started in January kind of exploring this and I didn't raise money until August. And I spent all the time between January and August to get to a level, because I was also an active investor, I knew what would be convincing to myself about a non-fintech person doing a fintech idea. So I spent a long time. I took to lawyers, I took to VCs, I took to other fintech entrepreneurs, I took to partner banks. By the time it came to August when I was raising money, I had gone way further than was necessary to convince people that I could do this. You know, I had a few partner banks that had given me term sheets.

8:06Immad Akhund: I had like a bunch of lawyers lined up. I had like, I basically spent all that time de-risking the FinTech part, like the regulatory part, like how would I actually do this? Because that was the bit that was the highest risk. Actually it was very, like we got a term sheet from in recent Horowitz within a week. So the actual fund raise when I did it was very late. But I actually think this is like, in Mercury at least, this has been my general strategy. like don't fundraise until it's inevitable. Like it's much, much harder to fundraise when like the story doesn't add up, like you haven't de-risked enough of it.

8:41Immad Akhund: It's much easier to fundraise when it's like, hey, this is a sure thing. And then you're like mostly optimizing for the VC or valuation and other things, you know, optimizing for like, is this even fundable? Which I would, and I think generally, I guess maybe it's experience that's saying this, but like I think generally you know what is fundable or not and like what is the bar and like how to go away about it. Definitely. I mean and also you've lived this problem over and over again so yeah. How long have you actually been doing like backing early stage founders? So yeah after I sold my company in 2016 I started investing so I guess it's been 10 years now.

9:18What's, as far as the mix actually as far as immigrant founders versus like you know people from America what's your what's the ratio?

9:25Immad Akhund: That's a great question. Honestly, I don't track it. I mostly speak to people. What would be the mix? It's at least 30 % immigrant. It goes through phases. In 2021, people were doing a lot more international or global startups. I feel like nowadays it's very AI focused and to some extent it feels less immigrant, but I haven't got good metrics on it. I think being a founder is just weird, right? I don't know if you're in Austin or New York. If you've never done a company before, it doesn't matter where you've been before, you're going to have to learn everything from scratch. I think the benefits that immigrants have is they don't take anything for granted.

10:08Immad Akhund: I think part of the reason I built Mercury is because I could see that there was way more innovation in banking and fintech in Europe, and the experience was better. I came here, I was like, why is this experience so bad? But without that outsider perspective, I would have taken what I got for granted. So I think that's often true that immigrants are forced to learn things from scratch and have an outsider experience. And I think that's actually, those two things are a very valuable perspective when it comes to building startups. I think one thing that is important and I do value is people who actually move here.

10:47Immad Akhund: I think if you even take London, right, like it's like somewhat innovative, but if you come from London, come here, like raise money and then go back to London, I haven't seen, like I think that mindset is like in Silicon Valley to some extent. And I think the people, I pick on London just because I grew up there. Like people are just not that ambitious there. The ecosystem doesn't support ambition. I just think it ends up with like a less optimal outcome. I think people actually move completely, are forced to kind of blend into this perspective in a strong way. It's almost like a, I'm thinking of almost like a metaphor, like a language immersion school you go to, and then for two years you come back and - Cultural immersion school.

11:31Immad Akhund: But again, it's the best of both, right? Like with language immersion, you're trying to blend the language. I think the idea here is Silicon Valley is this continuous kind of reinvention, and every lesson from the past has to be rethought through. but you have to have a cultural thinking like that. I'm curious, do you think there are things like Silicon Valley tropes or basic best practices or just beliefs that maybe don't travel so well? I mean, I think this mindset of like, you know, believing in the future and being optimistic, I think is like, I think a lot of people outside Silicon Valley don't believe in that as strongly.

12:09Immad Akhund: I mean, there's good people and good thinking everywhere. just like this is generalizations of course but I do think like you know there's always like what if in Silicon Valley and it's like a very broad what ifs like you know like even two years ago everyone was saying like what if everyone's like just using agents to do everything in their life and it was kind of ridiculous two years ago like this shit didn't work but like now we're here and like muse and instinct and all these things out so like there's just this element of like believing that something is coming and what if some series of things happen.

12:44Immad Akhund: Because I think the whole startup journey is kind of ridiculous. You have a couple of kids doing something insane that they're going to somehow turn into a billion dollars of revenue in 10 years time. The concept is kind of insane. So you have to have this series of beliefs that are kind of self-sustaining here, where everyone around you is just as crazy. And also somewhat reality distorting as well. kind of just a... Yeah, but like you see it, right? Like it's not like, it's one thing just like believing this, but then every now and then you meet someone somewhere and then like six years later, they're like running a huge company and you're like, wow, that's like crazy.

13:20So if you're talking today to an immigrant founder, someone here who got here recently, didn't have a Silicon Valley network, what would be your first bit of advice then as far as where to start or where to go to start building that?

13:33Immad Akhund: I first think of networking as kind of weird. I think it's better to just say build relationships. You know what I mean? It's like, how do you get from, I met someone once to, I met them a few times and we have acquaintances to, I'm friends with these people. I think that's the path. I'm not saying it's easy to make friends, but there's so many events in Silicon Valley. I mean, we have people here, I'm sure tons of founders. When I first moved here, I was part of Y Combinator, which definitely helped, but Y Combinator was tiny. It was 2007, there was 18 companies in the back. But I went to a ton of events, and there's so many events happening and there's so many good people, and you just keep going, and every now and then you see people, and then eventually you're like, hey, let's go to coffee, let's go to dinner, and you help people, they help you, and I think that's how real relationships are built.

14:30Immad Akhund: So I'd focus on that and yeah, there's people out there trying to network and being very transactional about it, I don't think it works that well. It looks uncomfortable and awkward what people are doing. You can see it across the room, kind of like people scanning their head on a swivel looking for someone to talk to. Yeah, exactly. If you're talking to someone, be engaged and have a conversation and move on. I'm not even good at this, by the way. There's probably people with better advice than ever. I'd say a lot of it's act as if. And also, just do it. Just spend a lot of time. I think if you're sitting at home going, I wish I was great at networking, it's not going to happen.

15:05If you were talking to someone who was here on a H1B visa today, and they got a layoff notice while they're at this conference, what would you suggest to them as far as, what should their first move be? Because there's a ticking time clock, obviously.

15:18Immad Akhund: I mean, most of the time, it's like, unfortunately, especially with an H1B ticking, it depends on what country they're going back to, but many countries have very big queues for any other type of visa. I think the best course of action is to get another job. H-1B transfers at least are much simpler than new H-1Bs, so I think you can persuade someone to do that. It's not a very entrepreneurial answer, but I think that's the thing. Ideally, when you are in these visa situations, if you are going to set up a new company, you need time. You need to prepare. You need to probably have some funding before you start the company.

15:53Immad Akhund: there's definitely like the barrier to doing a new company when you're on like weird visas is annoying it's a little easier depend if you're in countries where you can go back and forth I mean I was on four different visas before before I finally got a green card so I really empathize I do think as an entrepreneur there's there are more options right there's like the O1 visa the E2 visa the L1 I mean you should really understand all of this and talk to lawyers about it but But yeah, it's much better than it used to be when I first moved here in 2007. Everyone was going like, what are you supposed to do?

16:27Immad Akhund: Whereas now there's dedicated lawyers that work with entrepreneurs, and they're out there and available. If you still had a job today, you had an idea for something that hadn't had the nerve to kind of make the leap yet. What's one experiment you'd run the next 30 days to kind of validate your idea before you tell your boss, it's my two weeks? Okay, I have probably a controversial view, is I would just quit my job. Like I just think there's no way to learn without doing and especially at the start, like whatever idea you have will probably suck. And it's the doing that like, I remember when I first did my first startup, I had so many ideas for like, oh this is broken, oh I could do this or like, you know when you go do something and like you use something and try to build things, you get so many ideas and it's very hard when you're sitting in a job and like doing your thing to like just be struck by like you know yeah obviously happens but I think it's much harder when you're not in the game to be like coming up with the best ideas so I think the best way to learn is to do it and the quicker you do it the faster you learn obviously depends on people's life situations the financial situation extra forever you know I think part of being an entrepreneur is like you take these risks, right?

17:45Immad Akhund: Like no one's going to give you the answer without like you kind of willing to put everything on the line for it. I think we'll leave it there. Ahmad, thank you so much for the conversation. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. The Fund Build Scale theme was written by Michael Tritter and performed by Michael and Carlos Chárez. Michael also composed Ocean, the track he heard at the top. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and leave a rating. It helps more people find the show. You can get the Fund Build Scale newsletter on Beehive, follow along on Instagram, and if you have a guest suggestion or a question, reach me at fundbuildscale at gmail.com.

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