Insight
Akhund: If you get a massive valuation, raise big but don't spend
“I think the mistake is to not raise enough money. Like every now and then someone gets like a, you know, like a million dollar valuation, they raised like fifty million. I think that's a mistake. Like you want to raise enough money at that high valuation. And …”
Disclosure
Akhund: I passed on Scale AI because the founders were too young
“I saw scale AI and I was like, okay, you know, like good idea, but these people are so young. I think they were like 19 and 20 at the time or something. I was like, yeah, this is like, I was like, I think I could run this company better if I was doing it and I…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Akhund: AI labor-replacement software margins will collapse under market competition
“So yeah, the sell that like VCs get and entrepreneurs are making is, oh, we're replacing your labor costs. Therefore, we should charge a third of that. But the reality is, once you have a competitive market dynamic, like, the actual margins are going to compre…”
Opinion
Akhund: Avoiding AI Investments as the Sector Is Overhyped and Overvalued
“And, you know, I've ended up especially recently avoiding AI. I think AI is overhyped and overvalued.”
Disclosure
Akhund: Mercury raised Series B at irrational 120x multiple, would do again
“You know, we did our series B at a 120 X, which was not rational. This is 20, 21, but we did it and I would do it again.”
Insight
Akhund: At current seed valuations, investors must hunt for decacorns, not unicorns
“What we're really doing as seed investors is unicorn hunting, or I would say even, like, at these current evaluations, like, you're hunting for decacorns, and that doesn't, yeah, even if you're great at picking and you have a great network, et cetera you're no…”
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2040
Akhund: Airtable can reach a $50 billion valuation within 15 years
“I'm in it for the game as it was, and I do think, you know, these kind of compounders like Airtable you know, like there's companies I'm in where I'm like, okay, I can see this being a fifty billion dollar company, and if I just stick with it for, you know, ma…”
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2030
Akhund: Mercury will employ more software engineers in five years despite AI
“I think we'll have more. Like, I think the maybe I'm contrarian about it a little bit, but to me, if my engineers get more productive, I'm gonna come up with more things to do. Like, I'm gonna have, like, so much stuff that I want to do.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Akhund claims most seed-stage AI startups lack real traction
“The vast majority of AI at seed out there does not have traction.”
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2035
Akhund: Multi-stage venture capital funds will inevitably go public
“It seems inevitable that a few of these multi-stage funds will IPO and be public companies, right? Like we had some stuff about GC doing it. Yeah. I think that's just going to happen.”
Insight
Akhund: Founders should reject 'always be raising' because it distracts from building
“I'm like, so out on that statement. I just think it's partly because I don't like fundraising at all. And it's partly because, you know, fundraising is not the objective. It's distracting. There's so much to do at a startup.”
Disclosure
Akhund: Dedicated fintech funds refused to invest in Mercury's seed round
“Even after Andreessen had come in with a lead check, it was so hard to get any fintech fund to invest alongside them because all fintech funds saw was like all the problems. They were like, this doesn't work for this reason and that reason. And I was like, I r…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Akhund: Seed investments in unicorns can return as low as 8x
“If your entry price is like, 20, 25 mil you know, after you get that dilution you know, unicorn, like, sometimes it's like, I've seen as low as, like, eight X return from, like, a seed stage investment to unicorn”
Assertion Supported
Mercury Credit Card Outpaces Competitors Among Own Customer Base
“Now Mercury for Mercury customers, Mercury credit card is bigger than all the other kind of corporate credit cards on the platform”
Assertion Supported
Akhund: 30% to 40% of all startups use Mercury
“30 to 40% of, like, all startups use Mercury.”
Assertion Partly supported
Akhund: Space tech currently has only three functional markets
“There's, like, basically three existing markets in space tech. There's rockets, right? Like, getting things up and down, which obviously SpaceX dominates. There's taking pictures from space and That's actually, like, pretty big market, like, forty billion doll…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Akhund: Founders still allocate me $150k after hotshot VCs close the round
“I've done rounds recently where the round is fully done with, like, some hotshot VC, and then I still get my one 50 K, and after the round is fully done so winning is, like, Easy right now.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Akhund: 100% of Mercury's first 30 alpha customers were my angel investments
“You know, actually like the, from the first 30 kind of alpha customers in Mercury, I think a hundred percent of them were like companies I'd invested in.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Akhund: Mid-sized venture funds will struggle while small and mega funds thrive
“The people like me that are investing kind of smaller checks, like we'll do fine and the multistage ones will do fine. I don't know what happens in the middle. I think the middle will have more of an issue.”
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2030
Akhund: Mercury will eventually go public, but delay for five to seven years
“I want Mercury to be like a legacy long-term company. So being public is inevitable, but yeah, why do it today and not five years from now on, six years from now, seven years from now”
Opinion
Immad Akhund: Thesis-driven funds are inferior to broad investing strategies
“I tend to, for deals I receive, I actually think thesis driven funds are not that great. Like I think it's better to have like a broad, broad investing strategy, but for deals that I receive, I kind of like thesis driven funds because I'm like, okay, they know…”
Disclosure
Akhund: Mercury raised too much in its seed round, causing high dilution
“It's like we raised too much money in our seed round. Like we raised six million at like a twenty three million valuation. And like, this was because I was like, okay, fintech is hard. Like I want to have so much money that like I can go on for three years wit…”
Opinion
Akhund: Traditional banks offer bad products and do not care about customers
“And I just really hate using bad products and they never improve. It never feels like the people at the bank really care about you as a customer.”
Insight
Akhund: High-performing employees who lack cultural fit are almost impossible to fire
“I find it very hard to fire people, and most people do, and especially people that are good at what they're doing, but they don't fit the culture. Those people are actually, like, almost impossible to fire.”
