Akhund: Founders cannot copy-paste frameworks like Founder Mode or MVP
Imad Akhund · Ignoring Silicon Valley advice to build a $3B fintech unicorn (Mercury) · Aug 6, 2025 · at 1:56
Imad Akhund, co-founder and CEO of Mercury, discusses the danger of uncritically adopting trending startup philosophies.
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“This is like a meta lesson, which, you know, really took a while to truly learn, but it's quite an important lesson for me, which is you can't take other people's lessons and make them your own. So, you know, like what's the cool thing nowadays, like founder mode or something like that. I think it's very easy to take something that Brian Chesky says, or, you know, back in the day used to be all about MVP, like minimum viable product. And you're like, oh yeah, this is a great philosophy. Like it makes sense. And then you try to copy paste it and apply it to your situation. And you're like, this is now like a prescription for how I will run this business or come up with ideas. And I just think that never works. Like the lessons work in their particular way for that particular situation. And you have to adapt them to your situation. Like what's your kind of customer segment? What's your, I mean, even what's your personality, like all of these like things. So there is still things to learn there, but the answer isn't to take a framework and copy it and apply it to yourself. The answer is to understand the framework, understand what were the, what was the specific situation that led to that working there, and then try to like blend it into, you know, how you would compare it to your own situation.”
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