"A BILLION dollars came in to Mercury in a few hours" Mercury CEO on Lessons from SVB's Failure & How To Lead Through a Crisis

0:00Immad Akhund:That doesn't mean you get to be emotional as a CEO. As a CEO, it's actually like you kind of have to be very like, hey, we're dealing with this, it'll be fine. No matter what you have to say, it's going to be fine. And we're on top of this. If you sound like you're panicking, worrying and stressing, that is infectious. Hello, and welcome to Giant Ideas with me, Cameron McLean. And me, Tommy Stadlin. We're co-founders of Giant Ventures, which builds and backs purpose-driven companies. At Giant, we're lucky to meet extraordinary people with Giant Ideas that are changing the world. This podcast brings you behind-the-scenes access to those ideas and the inspiring stories of the people behind them.

0:35We explore how one giant idea can kickstart a billion-dollar company, shape culture, and transform life as we know it. So this is the last episode of Giant Ideas before the holidays. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays, and we will see you back here in 2026 for more fantastic interviews about Giant Ideas.

0:57imad welcome back today we're going to dive into what it takes to survive a crisis namely the svb run on the bank but first we're going to do a small segment that we do with all our guests which is to ask them if you had to pick three photographs that define your life and what you've learned from it what would they be i don't know if i was prepared for that

1:16Immad Akhund:you know i guess an immediate one that strikes me is uh you know there's a there's a few photographs where there's like a photograph of me and my kind of YC, Y Combinator batch from 2007. That was a really defining moment for me, like coming out to San Francisco and being part of this community and like really learning to be an entrepreneur. I went to a lot of Y Combinator dinners. I actually did my batch dinners and then I almost did all of them until 2009 just because it was just like so amazing to talk to entrepreneurs and like learn all these stories. So yeah, I love talking to entrepreneurs.

1:51Immad Akhund:I actually have my own podcast that does that as well. But that was like a big defining picture and moment for me. Yeah, I'm trying to think of other kind of defining pictures. I'm not like a very nostalgic kind of person. But there's a picture of me from when I was a baby and I'm like on my dad's chest. And I just think of that picture just because I also have a baby right now who's eight months old. And that picture, I was around that age. And I feel like when you become a parent, you kind of realize all the things that your parents did for you. Because before you're a parent, you just kind of take them for granted.

2:30Immad Akhund:And so I guess that's the second picture. I'm trying to think of a third defining picture. I mean, there is a picture actually when we were at Mercury, when we were like a nine person company and Joe Montana came to this like Joe Montana runs this like VC fund. And he's a big former football player, American football player. Yeah, he was huge. But anyway, he came into this, like, we were working in like a live workspace. So it was basically an apartment. And he came into the apartment to speak to us. And we have a picture of like the team of nine and him. And it's kind of like a fun picture from the early days.

3:04Does he tower over everyone on the team? Is he noticeably?

3:08Immad Akhund:Well, you know, he's not played sports for a while. He's definitely taller than everyone, but he's not like that muscular. He was also a quarterback. So I think they tend to be kind of nimble. And YC back then was just totally different to what it is now. I remember going out there in 2014, tending a couple of demo days, but you were there even earlier. It was a really small, informal community, right? No, I mean, it was tiny. More than half the companies would literally stop the day after demo day. They wouldn't raise money, and that was the end. Because they only gave us$15 ,000. I want to take you back to March 2023.

3:44Silicon Valley Bank has failed after a massive bank run, making it the third largest bank failure in United States history. What was going through your mind and what was happening at the Mercury headquarters that weekend?

3:57Immad Akhund:Yeah. It's definitely like a microcosm of like a startup rollercoaster because it started on like a Thursday. And on Thursday, it was, you know, it was all kind of from Mercury's perspective. So Mercury was, at least for early stage startups, a main competitor to SVB at that point. You know, we'd done pretty well. We're already kind of a unicorn at that point. But they were definitely the 800 pound gorilla that we were like, kind of, you know, up against. So the first day, you know, there's some of these rumors. Yeah, I guess like, I was just like, okay, whatever, you know, there's these rumors, like, I think it's probably silly but the you know a number of signups and number of deposits is like going crazy because all these people are trying to like move money out of svb and we tried to be like very respectful about it we didn't kind of promote ourselves so so you were seeing in real time as the rumors were spreading more and more deposits come into mercury so you were kind of seeing this correlation i mean not just a small amount like a billion dollars of deposits came in to just mercury in like few hours uh so this is like what like the biggest growth you know you You can imagine as a start, like we have like, you know, Sequoia-backed companies that would be like hard to like, you know, get on a call going like, hey, give me an account in like five minutes.

5:14Immad Akhund:And I'm like, okay, we'll give you an account in five minutes. And yeah, these are like established companies and they were relatively easy to verify and like do KYB and KYC. My approach with all these things is to try to build product because that's what it's about. So we made this process where we moved something to the top that said like, hey, if you're an SVB customer, connect your SVB account and we'll prioritize based on that. So we were basically like, if you're not an SVB customer, you don't need a bank account in these next three days or five days. So we would just put you at the bottom of the queue and all the SVB customers we put at the top of the queue.

5:54Immad Akhund:So we built a little bit of product and it was mostly like, you know, mostly at that point, I thought it was kind of overblown and we would grow a lot because of this like kind of unfortunate situation for them. And then, you know, halfway through Thursday, all the wires stop, but, you know, we still don't know what's going on. And then it's Friday when, you know, the FDIC walks in and shuts down the bank. and at that point kind of the emotion kind of flips the other way because it's like hey you know if if svb which is like a 40 x 40 something year old bank that's like you know public company worth 20 billion plus can like basically fail you know why is why is mercury safe which is like a startup and you know this is the kind of questions our customers are asking us and you know all day I'm on calls with customers saying like, hey, you know, we don't have the same FDIC insurance situation.

6:45Immad Akhund:We're sweeping money to other banks and you can also use a US government T-bill product and your money is safe, et cetera. But obviously like, yeah, the SVB CEO was also saying your money is safe just before this happened. So people were, and there was just like this like crazy sense of like fear on that Friday. And then, you know, so the whole team was working really hard. We were still on, even though no money could move out of SVB, we had like this big backlog of like customers that wanted to sign up. So the whole team was working kind of through the weekend, kind of signing customers up. And, you know, on Saturday morning, I was like, hey, I keep having the same conversation with people where I'm trying to explain like the money's safe.

7:29Immad Akhund:And, you know, why don't we make a way to visualize where the money is exactly. and also extend our FDIC insurance. So we ended up doing two things. Number one, I worked with our partner banks to, at that point we had 1 million in FDIC insurance. We extended it to 3 million and then 5 million by the end of the week. Before this point, people just hadn't asked that much. They didn't think or worry about whether their bank deposits were safe. So we worked with our partner banks to distribute the funds more broadly to their sweep networks and extend the FDIC insurance. So the basic FDIC insurance is$250K in the US, and we extended it to$5 million.

8:10Immad Akhund:And then the second thing we did is we built this product, which we called Mercury Vault, which helped you see, you know, how much more money do you have than FDIC insurance? Have I got the US government T-bill mutual fund set up? If you don't have it set up, like helped you get it set up and then showed you, you know, like is your money like kind of covered between these two products? and that really like people really like that like instead of you know us talking about it we were like showing them an actual product and transparency but it also showed how we were different from an svb because like we weren't lending against these deposits our partner banks were sweeping these deposits to a broad set of banks so it was a very different proposition so yeah there was a ton of fear even afterwards actually you know first republic failed and then was acquired basically a week afterwards.

9:02Immad Akhund:So this kind of fear around like uninsured deposits kind of continued for a while. But, you know, we really flipped the script on that story thanks to that product and the work that the team did. And the whole team went, you know, at that point, I don't know exactly how big we were, probably like 350 or something. But, you know, most of the time when you have a bigger company, everyone's not working towards like one very specific thing. You know, we're all doing different things. But it was kind of a fun moment for the company where we were all working on this one objective, like getting customers signed up and answering the questions and building Mercury Vault.

9:37Immad Akhund:So even now, if you ask employees at Mercury who were here back then, a lot of them would say that was the best weekend they had at Mercury, even though it was intense work and stress. Are there any leadership lessons that you take forward or you think it's such a specific moment in time? No, I think there's like two things. Number one, you know, I believe a lot of kind of transparency and openness, but I think you do have to couch your, like, that doesn't mean you get to be emotional as a CEO. Like, I think as a CEO, it's actually like you kind of have to be very like, hey, we're dealing with this, it'll be fine.

10:13Immad Akhund:And normally it's fine, but like, no matter what, you have to say it's going to be fine. And we're on top of this. If you sound like you're panicking or worrying and stressing, that is infectious. so I think that's one thing I've tried through these any difficult times to like I'm very open with like here's all the problems here's all the things that could go wrong but I try to be like optimistic and very like calm as a person and that's how I project project things number two I do think I don't know if this is a leadership lesson but it's definitely like a lesson for Mercury is that we try to answer with product like that's our strength like words are cheap i think it's better to make something and like have that be your answer to your problem uh i don't know if every crisis has like a product solution uh but i think there is like something to it like i think uh doing something and like doing something just feels better than like talking like as a builder like giving the team like something to build and like talk about the thing we build and like uh it also like speaks to our customers to say like hey you know these people aren't like sitting down over the weekend like sending emails these people like building something that's going to like actually help improve my experience in mercury uh and that's like so different from like what any uh like large financial institution would do right like the you can't imagine a bank like building a product over over a weekend to try to like uh solve a customer problem so it was a it was a crazy time i remember it i think it's the whole the whole of the technology ecosystem silicon valley and beyond was just holding their breath right it was like Sunday at like 4 p.m.

11:46Immad Akhund:The FTSE was like all deposits are insured. And everyone was like, thank God. And in a way, bailed everyone out, if we're honest. I think it was the right decision. It definitely bailed everyone out. But I remember thinking like you on Wednesday, no, this is like, this seems far-fetched. And then Gary Tan's email to YC got forward to me by one of my friends in the YC batch. And then I saw the email from Peter Thiel, a founder's fund. And then I was like, oh, this is going going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. This is happening. And you did what you could, right? But it was hard to do too much at that moment in time.

12:23And how did you take that moment in that crisis and have you solidified it then? I mean, it seems like it was a pretty important moment in Mercury's success trajectory. You got 2 billion deposits in just four months, 26 ,000 customers. How did you kind of drive the organization forward after that huge influx? How did you ensure that the customer stayed around?

12:43Immad Akhund:Yeah, I mean, there was two aspects that we wanted to do well. Number one, obviously, that set of customers we wanted to do a great job of. And in general, banking is very sticky, but this was like a weird moment where people had to deal with this. So we really wanted to spend time with them, right? Like make them feel like, hey, this is what features. I mean, I would say our product was far better. So like, you know, most people who experience it don't want to leave. But we also had to like speak to like, you know, this is really safe. And like, this is how the FTS is. So like, you know, a lot more around like that transparency and like where your money is and what it's doing.

13:25Immad Akhund:And we ended up, I haven't seen the recent stats or anything, but I think six months later, 96 % had like stuck around. It seems like product's your superpower, Ahmad. You've come back to it a few times. Yeah. Is that it? Yeah. I mean, I would hope so. I think probably Mercury superpower is like a combination of product and like real customer centricity. You know, it's not, the product doesn't stop at like the design and feature experience. It's also like, what's the customer support product? What's the compliance product? We try to think about that end-to-end experiences like that product experience.

13:58Immad Akhund:So I was going to say the second thing that was really important is like keeping the momentum and like becoming the market leader. I don't know if we did one thing to like make that happen uh but we did end up like up like the month before march 2023 and two months after that were like 80 difference in like sign up right so and that stuck right our growth basically like almost doubled and it was an inflection point in that way sounds like the definition of never let a good crisis go to waste yeah i mean i feel bad for the folks at svb i mean i don't you know i think there's good there was good people working there And it was definitely like a set of situations where it wasn't a bad bank.

14:43Immad Akhund:It was just like a crazy kind of situation, both in terms of the interest rates changing, the commitment they did, and obviously the bank run. So I feel bad for them. But yeah, it was definitely like when your biggest competitor gets taken out, that's definitely an opportunity to spend time in doubling down. Kind of reminds me recently of this, like, you know, there was this like scale AI thing where like, that's like a$15 billion company where the, you know, Meta did this weird thing where they, you know, bought out the CEO and some of the team. And there was like a ton of activity around like all of their competitors kind of taking as many customers as possible.

15:24The last question, Ahmad, which we often ask many of our guests, what do you think it is about you that has enabled you to be so successful having come from London to Silicon Valley and do what you've done?

15:35Immad Akhund:I do think like being an engineer was quite a powerful step like I did you know when I did computer science in 2002 I definitely did not know this is why I was doing it it was just like something that I was good at but but having that skill and being able to build things uh is such a powerful uh part of like the early stage of entrepreneurship you can you know you don't need to like rely on other people you can just do things you know there's always like this anti-computer science sentiment people now are like oh AI is going to replace computer scientists or whatever but I think that's BS. I remember when I was doing my degree, everyone was like, oh, why are you doing this?

16:10Immad Akhund:All the Indians are going to do the coding. I was like, well, I'm just doing it because I like it. I didn't have a good answer at the time. So anyway, that was definitely useful. I think coming to Silicon Valley was powerful for me, just being surrounded and immersed in this ecosystem. And that's been fun. I don't know if I would have been quite as ambitious and wanted to do big things if it wasn't for being here. And then I guess probably the third thing is like, I just have a weird, like I don't think about risk in the way that most people think about it. Like I think it's more of a risk to not do things and have a boring life than to do things and fail.

16:48Immad Akhund:But I don't know why I have that mentality. I don't know if anyone ever told me, but I've just like always had this like weird relationship with risk. Seems like a healthy mentality. On that note, Imada, we're gonna wrap it up. But thank you so much for sharing your lessons. Hope to see more British entrepreneurs making the jump to Silicon Valley and building huge businesses like yourself. Yeah, thanks for having me.