The Ledger
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Akhund: Startups competing with incumbents must catch up and be 10x better
“We were very deliberately serving a set of people that had alternatives. So and then the bar is just much higher. You have to catch up with everything that exists, and you have to be 10 X better than that.”
Akhund: Differentiating fintech startups through thin pricing margins is a mistake
“I think it's one of the mistakes that fintechs make is they become, like, differentiated through pricing power. Like, they're like, we're going to give away the most margin possible.”
Akhund: Fintech startups cannot secure bank partnerships without significant upfront funding
“Basically with Mercury, I was like, okay, I can't build this without raising money because you can't get a bank partnership without raising significant money. So you know, it was like straight into, I did build some like screens and things like that, but it wa…”
Yang: OpenClaw Integrations Drastically Reduced His Utility App Usage
“Ever since I set up all these apps, like Mercury, MCP, and all this kind of crap on my open call, like, I don't actually open those apps much anymore, you know.”
Rampell: Mercury never won SVB customers before SVB collapsed
“Mercury never stole an existing customer from Silicon Valley Bank until the weekend that Silicon Valley Bank failed.”
Akhund: No neobank offered domestic and international wires in 2017
“I felt we needed both domestic and international wires where, you know, now there are other new banks that have done that, but back in 2017, no one had done that.”
Akhund: Customer feedback before having a live product is ineffective
“I think there's a ton to learn from customers when you put a product in front of them and they use it and you see how they use it and you ask them like, oh, what more you want. It's much harder to learn from customers when you imagine a product and you haven't…”
Akhund: New B2B startups should focus on early-stage customers first
“In the startup space, if you want a new product, you want to initially focus on the earlier startups just because they're the easiest to win.”
Akhund: Mercury's international wire transfers failed silently for six weeks post-launch
“For example, for the first six weeks, we thought sending international wires was working, but it wasn't working.”
Haber: High interest rates drive deposit revenue for Robinhood and Mercury
“Robinhood, Mercury, many of these companies are generating very significant percentages of their revenue and profits today from deposit flows as rates have gone up.”
Akhund had invested in roughly 90 startups prior to Mercury's beta
“I'd invested in, I guess by that point about 90 startups and, you know, Just by the fact that done done fairly recently, I only started investing in 2060, 16.”