The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 31 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Lemkin: Mercury's underlying banking relationships are worth zero dollars
“I don't think Mercury's bank relationships are worth anything, Harry. I think they're worth zero.”
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.”
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.”
Stebbings: Mercury generates $500 million in revenue at a $3.5B valuation
“Brex is like 10, 11. And Mercury's at three and a half, with 500 in revenue”
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”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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”
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.”
Akhund: The startup banking niche alone can support a $10B company
“We're targeting startups, and that is a niche, but the good thing about the startup niche in banking is that it's by itself a ten billion dollar company.”
Akhund: Startup sustainability requires productivity and leverage, not weekend work
“It's not about working 10% more hours or working the weekends. It's much more about having a sustainable level where everyone's productive, everyone's leveraged.”
Akhund: Andreessen Horowitz invested in Mercury's seed round based solely on a deck
“Andreessen Horowitz was our seed investor. So they invested like basically on a deck for Mercury”
Akhund launches first $26M institutional fund with partner Yash Doshi
“Yeah, I finally closed on my first institutional fund. We raised twenty six million dollars. I'm partnering with kind of a friend of mine. Actually he invested in Mercury seven years ago. His name's Yash Doshi. He was at EQ two ventures, EQT ventures.”
Akhund: Sequoia Performed the Most Diligence Out of 20+ Series C Pitchers
“I pitched more than 20 funds as part of the CBC. Sequoia did the most work. Right. So like they did the most diligence with customers. They did the most work in the data room.”
Immad Akhund predicts full integration of banking and financial software in 10 years
“I think in 10 years time, it'll be obvious that like, oh yeah, your bank is really powerful, and it can do all of these things, and it's all fully integrated. So yeah, that's just a freaking huge opportunity”
Scaling user acquisition before fixing conversion and retention is a mistake
“Growth is a system. And often when I get asked to come in and grow something, what most people are actually, you know, think they're asking about is growing acquisition, but I actually think that's where it's totally wrong because often if you look at the kind…”
Managers are always happier after firing underperformers than they expect
“But, you know, the thing I found about letting people go is that you're always happier When we do, then you ever would expect.”
Mercury's self-serve product demo generated over 1,000 sign-ups and major deposits
“I mean, over a thousand accounts have signed up. We've had some huge deposits, basically sales size deposits have come in without talking to anyone.”
The worst growth hires rely on generic playbooks instead of product curiosity
“In the worst cases, the thing that I see is, you know, someone that is just kind of, Running a playbook. Someone that is, you know, just doing the thing that either their company would do or, you know, we could find on a blog or things like that. Like to me, y…”
Maples: Startups should split cash across three non-correlated accounts with transfer rails
“Have money in an account that's not correlated to Brex and Mercury in two other places, and have the rails set up between those pools of capital, those deposit accounts, so that you can immediately move from one to the other very quickly. It's the discipline o…”
Akhund: Mercury grew over 40% month-over-month for its first four months
“And we've in the last four months grown like more than 40% each month, which is really exciting for us.”
Akhund: Using Haskell gives Mercury a competitive advantage in hiring strong engineers
“We use Haskell and there's not an interesting programming language with a lot of good engineers that are interested in the programming language with, you know, surprisingly a lack of companies that use it. So we end up, you know, having that kind of edge or ni…”
Akhund: Mercury is the only startup-focused challenger bank in the U.S.
“If you take what we're doing at Mercury, there's no one else really doing a startup focused challenger bank. I would say the zero, which is really good. The only people we're competing against is Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic and Chase.”
Rampell was the first investor in SMB bank Mercury
“Like, I was the first investor in Mercury the, you know, SMB bank, and like, until SVB failed, I don't think they never stole a customer from SVB.”
Immad Akhund: Mercury had only 40 employees when raising $120M Series B
“When I raised a hundred twenty million, I was like, I don't know how I'm going to spend a hundred twenty million. Like we had like a 40 person company”
Akhund: Sequoia Partner Reached 95% Conviction on Mercury in First Meeting
“Sonia is, is our kind of partner at Sequoia, and she said, actually, like, You know, she had conviction in that first meeting. She said, 95% she was in after, like, that initial meeting”