Ignoring Silicon Valley advice to build a $3B fintech unicorn | Immad Akhund (Co-founder and CEO of Mercury)
Update: 2025-08-06
Description
Immad Akhund is the CEO and co-founder of Mercury, a digital banking platform that’s become the go-to financial infrastructure for startups. Before Mercury, Immad spent nearly two decades founding companies, learning the hard way what separates a good idea from a great business.
In this episode, Immad shares the hard-earned lessons from launching Mercury as his third startup. He unpacks how he recognized this was the right idea to pursue, what strong product-market fit feels like, and why trying to "iterate" your way to success often leads founders astray.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Mercury’s unusual culture playbook – and why it works
- How to hire with intention
- The trap of weak product-market fit
- Shipping under intense pressure during the SVB crisis
- And much more…
References:
- Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com/
- Andreessen Horowitz: https://a16z.com/
- Apple: https://www.apple.com/
- Block: https://block.xyz/
- Brex: https://www.brex.com/
- Chime: https://www.chime.com/
- Gusto: https://gusto.com/
- Mercury: https://mercury.com/
- Paul Graham: https://x.com/paulg
- Plaid: https://plaid.com/
- Stripe: https://stripe.com/
- SVB (Silicon Valley Bank): https://www.svb.com/
- True Link Financial: https://www.truelinkfinancial.com/
- Varo: https://www.varomoney.com/
- Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/
Where to find Immad:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iakhund/
Where to find Brett:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson
Where to find First Round Capital:
- Website: https://firstround.com/
- First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
- This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast
Timestamps:
- (1:07 ) Hard-won lessons from serial entrepreneurship
- (2:02 ) You shouldn’t copy-paste advice
- (6:57 ) Why personality trumps culture playbooks
- (8:48 ) How do you hire for cultural fit?
- (12:38 ) The values that shaped Mercury’s DNA
- (14:08 ) The drivers underpinning Mercury’s success
- (15:50 ) The significance of product-market fit
- (20:41 ) Don’t fall into the weak product-market fit trap
- (25:49 ) How to evaluate startup ideas that scale
- (30:14 ) Mercury’s unlikely origin story
- (33:51 ) Breaking into the fintech space
- (37:31 ) Mindset shift: From “This is hard” to long-term gains
- (39:43 ) Building Mercury’s MVP
- (44:25 ) Overcoming early obstacles to reach launch
- (47:36 ) Navigating Mercury’s rapid growth phase
- (51:18 ) Competition isn’t the reason you’re failing
- (55:58 ) Crisis management during the SVB collapse
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