We Tested Our Grit (And Were Humbled Immediately)

25:02Everything about these guys are beautiful. The Magnificent 10, should we call them? Yes, the Magnificent 10. Everything about this company is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. So check this out. It's 10 employees. They've raised$21 million. Amongst the 10 employees, they have 10 gold medals that they've won from top coding competitions. and many of the people on twitter when they when they came out with this they go i remembered scott scott was the guy who was winning all of the math competitions that i used to go to as i sat in the crowd wondering how on earth this guy did this and this one guy named by by fan his name he tweeted out this thing he goes i want to show you all some tiger mom porn and it's basically and it's basically this young guy i get judging off his name i guess scott woo i guess he's chinese he there's this video of him when he's like 12 or 13 years old and he's at a math competition.

25:56Sam, we got to do this test. I have the thing. Here's the question. The question says, if the pattern continues, what is the letter in the 2010th position? And it just says mathlete, mathlete, mathlete, mathlete, and it says dot, dot, dot. What letter will be the 2010th letter in this sequence? And he goes, A. you know how like in jeopardy by the way he looks like he's like 12 years old in this video by the way yes he's a kid and then you know how in jeopardy they show you the question uh as they're reading it so you could read along with it he answers one of the questions where it's like what's like uh 352 to the fourth power times like this other 384 to the eighth power he answered the question before the announcer finished reading it.

26:46He literally hit the beat. The digits 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 can be arranged to form many five-digit positive integers with five distinct digits. In how many such integers is the digit 1 to the left of the digit 2? Two such integers include 14 ,352 and 51 ,234. Go ahead. Walk me through your thought process here. I feel like an integer is like an appetizer I ordered last night with a little bit of Parmesan cheese on top. Sounds like an influencer mom on Instagram, like coming up with a cool name for their baby. We have Bronx and integer. They're going to math today. It sounds like an amazing roller coaster ride at Six Flags.

27:24I don't know what an integer is. I can't even answer this question. But these guys were crushing it at these questions. And there's three of them. And so listen to the third, listen to the segment from the article. So this guy named Ashley Vance, he's the one, I think he wrote, the biography of Elon Musk. He wrote this article and he goes, the third co-founder, he's currently the CPO, he asked me that I not explicitly say what his current status is, his enrollment status at Harvard is because he doesn't want his parents to fully understand what he's done. Basically, the CPO, the co-founder of this company that now is worth hundreds of millions of dollars has yet to tell his mother that he's dropped out of Harvard, even though he's now worth tens of millions of dollars because he's too afraid to break her heart.

28:11And in the article, the author goes, I just want to let you know you've raised a wonderful son and this can work out wonderfully. It's okay if he's me or may not be enrolled in Harvard anymore. And this article, it's the greatest thing I've seen. I just Googled the guy's name, Scott Wu. And the top hit is a Reddit post from 18 hours ago in the subreddit r slash next fucking level, which is an amazing subreddit, by the way. I go there all the time. It's just next level shit. And he goes, here's Scott Wu, the CEO of Cognition Labs, in a math quiz 14 years ago. It's a clip. This thing has 5 ,000 upvotes.

28:45And the first reply is, if anyone's wondering, here's the tricks that they used here for question three, the standard permutations of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blah, blah, blah. And then the top comment of that is, it took me longer to read your explanation than it took him to actually do it and answer the question. It's ridiculous. Parentheses. I just said read, not even understand what you just said. so anyway these guys are ridiculous uh and what's it's just amazing that a there's young people that are like self-gathering into like this is like to me like truly like that facebook shit like that movie of facebook when they're just in the dorm room doing it these guys are doing it right now they range between ages 20 and 27 it was so inspiring to read about these guys and i'm so happy that freaks like these guys exist uh it was a it was an awesome article about this company The company, I'm sure it's great.

29:35The story behind these guys is even better. This is like the American dream to me. Yeah, I don't know if it's the American dream or like the robot dream or like the math wet dream. I don't know what dream this is, but it's someone's dream. It's the Chinese mother dream. Yeah, it's the Chinese tiger mom dream, for sure. Except for the dropping out part. Yeah, they go, you know, it's not too late, son. You can still go back. That's what they'll say after this article. Harvard should launch a tiger extension school, which is you get to remain a student or you get to graduate or is dropping out by graduating early because we're like, you're done here.

30:09Your mom will be fine. We just get 0.1 % equity in your company. Thank you. And all they have to do and we get 0.1 % and what you get, son, is you get a photo of you wearing that gown and we're going to go get one of our teachers to shake your hand on. We have this guy, Charles. He'll shake your hand. He looks like the dean. And we have a green screen here. It'll look like you graduated and your mom, it'll make your parents proud. This is the Harvard version of a fake idea of some guy running a scam. Anyway, I wanted to bring that up. I thought these guys are amazing. What do you got? You have a thrill of a shill right now, don't you?

30:47Oh, I have something cool I'm doing. Okay, so this is not really a shill. It's just a thrill, to be honest with you. This is actually costing me a lot of money. It is not making me any money. So I have an idea, which is, wouldn't it be amazing if you like this podcast, you like listening to us, maybe you, Sam, you were at a meetup last night. That's cool. People got to meet you. Would anybody like to text with me? Because I got a number that you could text. And if you text me, I'll text you back. And so what I'm going to do is I create a number. So all you got to do is just text me. you just go 650-334-0790.

31:28I think we got to work on that number. But if we do that, 650-334-0790, I'm just going to send out texts of stuff that we're doing that's cool. I'm going to share stuff that's on my whiteboard throughout the day, just random stuff that I think is interesting. Or let's say the main thing I wanted to do, the reason we had this idea was after every podcast, you don't know this, after every podcast, Ben Levy is usually not listening on the recordings, but he was usually like really curious like oh oh yeah you guys had gary v on like what did he say but he's he doesn't want the full hour-long podcast he's like can you send me like a voice note of like the two or three most interesting bits and so i do that and i've been doing that for like three months now where after every episode i'm like oh yeah me and sam talked about that uh that a company uh uh that's doing the ai software engineer and how that dude the founder actually is like this mass genius and i also shared like myers-briggs does 20 million a year and how it's kind of bullshit.

32:21We did that. And I'll just give him a two-minute voice note of the thing. And so he loves it. He's like, dude, he's been telling me for months, this needs to be like a thing. But we didn't know how to do it. And so everything we looked into was like, you could try to create a giant Telegram group, but not everybody uses Telegram. I was like, dude, I just want to, like just the way I get it, where you just text me this as a voice note or as a photo. That's what I want. What did you use? So we're using this app that will let you do it. It's really expensive. And so I kind of just want to limit this.

32:50And so maybe I don't know exactly what the limit is. I'm thinking just like the first thousand people, I'm going to cut it off because like, this is going to cost me tens of thousands of dollars a month to do this, but I think it's going to be great. So the number is 650-334-0790. That's right. I'll put it in the show in the description. So you can just tap it into send a text. You just have to say hi. You just have to say hi to the thing that'll ask you your name. And then I, then it, then it shows me. So when you reply to me, I can see, oh, it's Jeff from Cincinnati or whatever it is. I can see who it is and I can reply back.

33:21And so I'm going to try this out. I want to try it with a thousand fans. I'm looking for, don't do it if you're just like super casual with it. Like if this is your first time listening to this, don't bother. But like if you're like all about MFM and you've been listening to this for years and you're cool, do this. That's so funny. This cost me a lot of money. So please only do it if you really care. I only like a thousand people do this. I don't really want more than that to do this because it's quite expensive, but you know, whatever, leave it to me to cut it off at a certain point. Well, guys, when it comes to banking, the only time I feel truly happy is when I'm using Mercury and that's today's sponsor for the show.

33:58That is the banking product I use for not one, not two, but actually eight of my businesses. I have eight Mercury accounts. I just went and counted. I use it for every one of my companies. It's an absolute no brainer. over 200 ,000 other fast-growing, ambitious companies use Mercury. It's one place you can go where not only you can, of course, have your money there, but you can send invoices, you can pay bills, you can create reimbursements for your team. Pretty much all of your financial needs can be housed under Mercury. And the product is beautiful to use. And the reason why is because it's a product that was not made by finance people.

34:29It was made by a founder, Imad. He's been on this podcast before. And he used tons of products as a startup founder. And this is the one that he wished he had. And I actually reached out to them to become a sponsor for this show because I'm such a big fan of it. So if you need a banking product for your startup, use Mercury. You will not regret it. It's amazing. For more information, check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. Tell me about your friend walking back. You have on here walking backwards and speed running. Isn't speed running just sprinting?

35:00No.

35:04so uh we did a pod with gary v yesterday and it's not going to come out for a couple of months two months i think it's going to come out when his book comes out or whatever but he said something very interesting i don't know if this stood out to you but you had asked him a great question you go gary you started with like a like family business mom and pop or actually before that you were just flipping you know baseball cards as a teen then you joined your family business and it's like a family shop. And then as you started to grow your brand, now like you have all these business owners who listen to you, but also your brand has grown so much, you now get to rub shoulders, is it rub shoulders, elbows?

35:39I don't know what people rub. You rub against. You're rubbing chest to chest with a bunch of billionaires. And you were like, what I want to know is, have you observed any difference between the guys and gals who end up making it to the highest tier of winning in business, the billion dollar club, let's say, versus the small business owner, the convenience store owner versus the solopreneur, whatever. What do you notice is the biggest difference? He instantly answered something that I thought was not what I would have expected. He goes, the willingness to walk backwards. We're like, what? What do you mean?

36:15And he said it. He didn't fully explain it, but he explained two things. He goes, number one, the great ones always reinvent themselves. You can look at Elon Musk. Elon Musk starts out doing Zip 2 and then he creates PayPal and he's like, he's like this internet entrepreneur. And then after that, he was willing to walk backwards and go back to zero. And he was basically like, cool, I'm going to now try hardware, which is a completely different game. It would have been easier for him to just stay with PayPal, keep growing that or do another software company, internet company, but he was willing to walk backwards.

36:47And so he started a rocket company, something he didn't know anything about at the time, but he's like, I'm going to start from zero. Today, I can't tell you how to build a rocket. And then fast forward to today, he's got self-landing rockets that can go up and come back and land on themselves. It's kind of amazing. He was also willing to walk backwards financially. So he invested everything that he made from Zip2 and PayPal into Tesla and SpaceX to the point where it would have gone to zero if those companies had failed, which they almost did. So the willingness to walk backwards, both in terms of where you're at in the mountain, can you go back to being a beginner?

37:20And the second thing is, are you willing to risk it? Gary told us that he has a safety net. You were like, I have a safety net, some amount of money that I just don't touch. If everything else goes to zero, I always got that. He's like, me too. And you're like, how much is it? And he, what did you expect that he would say? And what did he say? I expected, I mean, he seems pretty wealthy. I expected 10 or 20. He said 1 million. So he said 1 million dollars. He said a safety net was$1 million, which if I had to guess, that would cover his life expenses for like less than six months. Right. His current lifestyle.

37:57Yeah, exactly. I was like, safety net, that's a safety floss, my friend. That's a thin thread you're going to land on there. Obviously, it's a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but like relative to his level of success and wealth, that's a lot less than I would have expected. But he's like, that's all I need. And he's like, that's all I need is safety. I'm willing to roll everything else. And I thought that was very fascinating. Then I've seen, so I thought that was cool. And Naval has said a very similar thing. He goes, one of the hardest things to do is you start to climb the mountain.

38:26And when you're in your 20s, you don't know anything. So you just start going up whatever the trail that you see is. And you start going up. The problem is, let's say your ambition, your dream is to get to the top of the mountain. But halfway up, you learn that the trail you're on is not the path that gets you there. And so what do you do? He's like, the reality is that most people, you're now 33 years old. You've realized that the path you're currently on is not the lifestyle or the path that you want. But it is very hard to say, I'm going to walk back to the bottom of the mountain and pick a different path.

38:56And what most people do is they just settle. They say, I guess I don't need to get to the top. I'll just, this is high enough. And they're not saying it because they actually want that. They're saying it because the thought of starting over is so hard mentally. But the great musicians, the great actors, the great entrepreneurs, the great scientists, they reinvent themselves. They go into new fields, new studies, new beginnings, and they start again. And so I find that pretty inspiring. And I've seen that so many times in the people in my life that people who aren't willing to walk backwards aren't willing to go back to being a beginner again.

39:32It's really tough. I've met multiple people who have started something and sold it and then went back to college. Darmesh being one of them. He started HubSpot in college after he had already made. Say the name. Say the name you want to say. Say the name you're dying to say. Brett Adcock did the same thing. Our friend Siva did the same thing. That's right. And it was hard at the time. When your whole friend group is doing one thing, when your own success does one. I've even felt it in the smallest ways. This podcast does pretty well. I know that if I come on here, we're going to put out some content.

40:03A lot of people are going to consume it. The thought of doing TikTok, which A, I didn't even know how to edit a TikTok. B, I'm not good at that style of content. C, I got zero followers over there. But I was like, all right. Well, I need to be somebody who can go back to the beginning. So TikTok is like your Tesla. Exactly. Now you get it. And I'm just like Elon. So what about these guys? Then there's the opposite. Speedrunner. I saw this story and I want to tell you about three friends. So the story I saw was that the founder of RX Bar... Dude, speedrunning is such a better term for sprinting.

40:43For running? Yeah. So speedrunning. What is speedrunning? Speedrunning is the opposite. Speedrunning is where you don't go back to that beginner's mind. You don't go back to the bottom of the mountain. You literally hike the same trail again. And now you know that trail so well, you can do it so much faster. They do it faster, faster. It's a video gaming term. I don't know if you've seen it, but like there's people that they don't play the new video game. They don't buy the new, the new, the new, you know, the next, the next edition of whatever Fortnite or whatever they play Mario that was released in whatever 1985.

41:13They play the first level and they play it over and over and over again to where they can flawlessly sprint through the level, hopping on all the Goomba's heads and they could finish the level perfectly in like 32 seconds. And that is like the actual fastest that a human being could do this. And they do it. They're called speedrunners, and people love to watch them because you're watching absolute mastery over something that has been around for a while that they can just keep replaying until they absolutely master it. Like that Jiro guy who just packed sushi for 50 years and didn't change, right?

41:45Right. Exactly. He's not trying to make the new shit. He's like, spicy tuna roll. This is what we're going to do. And so I've noticed that I have friends that are the beginners and I have friends that are the speedrunners. So let me tell you about the speedrunners. So first I noticed that the RX bar founder who built RX bar ended up selling it for$600 million, came out with a new bar and it's called the David bar. Did you see this? No, but that, that must mean that it's not compete ended like right then. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He sold his company in 2017. And so now it's, um, you know, whatever.

42:20Yeah. I don't know how, how many years, I don't know what year it is. It's been eight years or something like that. It's, uh, he could start a new bar. So he started this thing called the David Bar. It's this epic protein bar that he's doing. Davidprotein.com. Looks sick, by the way. It looks awesome. Looks sick. Sick name. And the macros are also pretty insane. Just look at the macros. Do you see it on there? No. 160 calories, 28 grams of protein, sugar-free. That's amazing. Pretty impressive. I'm in. Yeah. I'm in. So I want to tell you a couple things about this before we finish. Actually, I'll finish the speed running point, and then I want to tell you some RX Bar story.

42:51So anyways, speed running. We have three friends. I think you know at least two of the three people. I can't say their names, but let's just call them e-commerce friend number one, two, and three. E-commerce friend number one sold their first e-commerce company. So the company, let's say one, the first time they played the level for hundreds of millions of dollars, almost$500 million. And then they decide they're going to start a new company. Do they go into AI? Do they create a space company, a satellite company? No. They're like, I'm going to start another e-commerce company in almost the same niche.

43:27And I'm going to do it again. I'm going to speed run the same level. Because the first time I was an idiot. I didn't know what I was doing. I figured it out along the way. Now I figured all this knowledge out. Why not just do it again? And so they say they're going to start a new company. They are talking to somebody. And they go, yeah, I think if I... They go, I think if... Actually, they weren't even planning to do it. They go, I think if I started one today, I could hit a million dollars a month in revenue in three months. and the other person goes, no way. No chance, dude. Bullshit. You think that, but that's not true.

44:00Challenge accepted. Only for that reason, this person starts a new company. And how big are they now? Month two hit a million dollars a month in revenue. They're a couple months in and they're going to do probably two to three million dollars this month in revenue. And it's less than six months old. can you can't can you even say the category nothing i can't say a word i might even i might get shot just for saying what i said already so all right that's the first who's who's person two person two e-commerce person two sold another company also for nine figures nine figures means 100 million dollars or more doing literally the same company again doing the same company in the same category obviously there's like a you know 10 twist but like back to e-commerce back to the same category, back to the same playbook.

44:46How big are they now? Doing phenomenal again, right off the bat. I don't have all their exact revenue numbers, but I know it's like tracking faster than it was the first time. Friend number three. Friend number three was friends with person one and two. Saw them run the levels, helped them a little bit along the way. And then friend number three had an experience that triggered them also. A little chip on the shoulder moment. So they were invited by a very successful company to come to their annual, like, come check out the office, come to our annual retreat. And they go, and they are watching, they go through the office, like, wow, this is really impressive.

45:22They go to the annual company conference or something like that, and they're like, wow, this is really impressive. But the problem was that the people who invited them, you know, there's like a good faith way to invite someone, which is like, hey, check this out. You'll really, like, you'll enjoy it. I'd love to show you what we're doing, blah, blah, blah. And then there's, hey, you want to see my car collection and that's what was going on. It was, can I brag to you real quick? And they were arrogant. They were incredibly arrogant the whole time. And my friend told me, they said, friend number three told me, they go, you know that scene in the big short where these bankers are talking about how they're giving loans and they don't have to do any they don't have to do much of a credit check.

46:02We're talking about giving strippers like five houses. Yeah, exactly. And the guy the main character's like, why are they confessing? And then his friend goes, they're not confessing. They're bragging. And he goes, he's like, short this. We need to short mortgage-backed security or whatever. My friend says, same feeling. Walked out. I was just like, why are they bragging about all this? And he just got turned off. He's like, okay, you showed me exactly how big this market is. You showed me exactly how lucrative this is. You showed me how arrogant you are. You show me how bloated your company is.

46:38I will come out with a lean, mean, fighting machine doing the same thing. That company gives him 10 million plus in profit a year, personally, just 10 million in profit in your bank account every year. And this is less than five years, raise no capital, raise no external capital, all that stuff, right? Amazing, amazing story. And when I was talking to this person, I was like, I was talking to one of the friends and I said, this is amazing, number one, but it's also kind of lame. They're like, what do you mean? And I was like, you're playing the same level of the game again. Like, yeah, you're so talented.

47:09You could do anything. And like, it's fun to win. And I get that, but it's also fun to grow. And like, I feel like you opted into fun to win with no growth, but you're so talented that you could get the growth and win. That was kind of my argument. But I might also just be that they're like, cool, my broker friend, thank you for the advice. you know like and so i wanted to get your take are you a walk backwards guy or are you a speed run guy and where do you land in the philosophy of this and i'm curious actually for all the listeners i really want to know because both ways can win but there's like a almost like a political opinion on this i have a political opinion and a belief that walking backwards is the is the way it's the right way to do it in your life not the speed run the same level again for years i thought you owe it if you have talent you owe it to the world to like almost be a steward of that talent like you you owe it to the rest of us because you're so special to exploit your ability to the max now that i'm a little bit older and i have a family i think fuck everyone do what makes you happy uh like make your kids proud of you and like just whatever you think is exciting and fun do that you don't owe anyone anything so not explore exploit basically like You're not, don't wander out, just harvest.

48:27What I think is, if you, so like, for example, I'll name drop him again, Brett Adcock. I was like, Brett, why are you doing all this complicated shit? You don't have to. And he's like, I just think this needs to get done and I should do it. I love that attitude. I also love the attitude of, well, I'm just gonna do the same thing over and over again because I get joy out of it. And this is awesome. And I just love it. I think that is also a total win. I think both are wins. And I don't think that you owe it to the world to do anything. unless you choose to owe it to the world. So let's say we're not telling other people what they should do.

48:59Where do you land on that? Let's say you could have started another newsletter right after the hustle. But it's not like I'm starting a huge world. I'm just starting things. Why are you doing new things? I'm doing new things because I have a chip on my shoulder to prove myself in multiple industries or multiple business models. But I don't want to risk everything. And I'm not willing to... Isn't that so funny? It's like prove yourself to who? Who cares? Is there anyone else? Sam's successful, but only in one industry. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not giving him respect until he lands industry two. Like nobody has ever even had that thought besides you.

49:33Isn't that crazy? Oh, you don't know anything about e-com, bro?

49:39So for me personally, I would say that I don't feel like I owe it to the world to explore. And I don't owe it to someone who's less talented. Not that I'm particularly, I mean, I think I'm mildly talented. But when I see someone who's really talented, I'm like, you owe it to me because you were gifted. Well, let me ask you this. Would you run it back? Let's say you were the RX bar guy. Would you run it back into another bar company? So I think when I run back newsletters, no, because that bores me. The RX bar, I think it's pretty dope. I think it was great for the world. I think that. So yeah, if I'm him, I would.

50:09And there was actually an article written about him, how he was retired and he was bored and he had nothing to do. and they had a picture of him but they made this photo the article of the of him really great where it was him by himself on a lawn chair like in front of his mansion and he was lonely and they talked about his like you know i'm talking about that famous article that was caption rock bottom yeah it was like a recliner in front of a mansion well and it was like in the middle of the day and he was just like by himself and the whole article was like he's looking for his next thing and so for someone like that i'm like just do it again man that was exciting that was cool i think that's awesome and i think ours so if i'm david uh would i redo it yeah i think i would but also i don't know if his name is david um the i think his name is peter so by the way the rx bar story so he's obsessed with crossfit do you know do you know the story or no no so he's obsessed with crossfit he's like they don't sell any snacks that are like paleo um at the time this is 2013 and he goes to his dad and this is the best part this is the whole reason i only wanted to tell the story just to drop this one line he goes to his dad he's like dad do you know any investors i want to start and he's like, bar company.

51:13And his dad literally says, you need to shut the fuck up and go sell some bars if you want to start a bar company. He told him, you need to shut the fuck up and go sell a thousand bars. And so he's like, okay. And so he's like, and he talks about like, you know, he was in school. He was not very good at school. And he's like, you know, so when I was failing with this business, I was comfortable. I was used to eating shit. I had been a failure. It was not foreign to me. I had been a failure already at school. So, oh, great. I'm bad at that. I'm bad at this. He's like, I just kept going. I didn't doubt myself.

51:44I didn't second guess it because I was so comfortable in the failure mode that every company starts with. His first business was in high school selling weed, by the way. All right, let's see the next one. So his next thing was like, he's like, I thought raising money would solve my problems, but actually it was such a blessing that they didn't raise any money. So they sold for 600 million. I don't think they raised any money. They bootstrapped the whole way. And he's like, it was so good because we were so forced on the one important thing, selling the bars. That was the only way to continue the business.

52:14And so he's like, we would just sell. I would email. I would call. I would give bars out on consignment. We would do anything to just try to sell more bars. So in the first nine months, they did 600K. Then in the first year, they did 2 million. Year two, 6 million. Year three, I think they did 36 million. Wow. And then year four, they did 161 million. And then they sold to Kellogg for 600 million at that point. Wow. And then there's an article. That's amazing. There's an article making fun of the article I've referenced. It says, Michigan company pays guys$600 million, but he's kind of bored now.

52:52This guy is awesome. The article was called, What Happens When You Become a Millionaire Overnight? Who wrote that second headline? That's amazing. It was just like a shitty radio, a local radio station. Because I guess David or whoever this guy is, he lives in Chicago. And so like a local radio station, like made fun of him. It's pretty funny. That's a good... Dude, this guy's awesome. We should get him on the pod, right? Yeah. Peter, come on the pod. Tell the story. All right. I got to run. That's the episode. Good one. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.

53:27On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

53:35Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And, you know, as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

54:05If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit Mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column 8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC.