Insight certainty 5/5 debate potential 3/5

Akhund: Founders should reject 'always be raising' because it distracts from building

Immad Akhund · 20VC: Mercury Founder Immad Akhund on Why Angel Investing Makes Founders Better Operators, The Right Way For Founders To Discuss and Present Competition To Investors & How To Think About Your Initial Wedge Into The Market and How It Expands Over Time · Sep 20, 2019 · at 24:18

Mercury CEO Immad Akhund responds to host Harry Stebbings asking whether startup founders should maintain a constant fundraising mindset.

0:00 / 0:10exact quote · 10.4s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“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.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Immad Akhund

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 …”
Immad Akhund May 12, 2025 ▶ 11:07 20VC Exclusive: Mercury Founder Launches First $26M Fund with Immad Akhund · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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…”
Immad Akhund May 12, 2025 ▶ 17:47 20VC Exclusive: Mercury Founder Launches First $26M Fund with Immad Akhund · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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…”
Immad Akhund May 12, 2025 ▶ 24:35 20VC Exclusive: Mercury Founder Launches First $26M Fund with Immad Akhund · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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.”
Immad Akhund May 12, 2025 ▶ 38:44 20VC Exclusive: Mercury Founder Launches First $26M Fund with Immad Akhund · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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.”
Immad Akhund May 12, 2025 ▶ 10:42 20VC Exclusive: Mercury Founder Launches First $26M Fund with Immad Akhund · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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…”
Immad Akhund May 12, 2025 ▶ 19:15 20VC Exclusive: Mercury Founder Launches First $26M Fund with Immad Akhund · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.