Mar 28, 2025 · 18m · tbpn
Immad Akhund (Mercury) on Fintech, AI and What's Next
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this podcast interview, Mercury co-founder and CEO Immad Akhund discusses the company's $300 million Series C fundraise, disciplined scaling through macroeconomic volatility, and how artificial intelligence and organic distribution are reshaping modern commercial banking.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 4.2 Guest teaching 3.5 Guest disagreement 1.0 The hosts pushing back 0.8
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 9:15 Pushing back against pre-revenue venture debt and internet absolutism
Immad rejects extreme online narratives around venture debt, criticizing pre-revenue startups that use debt to extend runway and box themselves into fixed burn.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 10:52 Probing interest rate sensitivity and strategyThe host challenges whether interest rate shifts truly net out neutrally for Mercury or if the business has an explicit macroeconomic preference.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 7:36 Reframing risk from credit underwriting to KYC/KYB identityImmad corrects the host's assumption about underwriting credit risk, explaining that Mercury is doing identity verification (KYC/KYB) and risk tiering rather than issuing commercial loans.
The host holds their own ▶ 13:56 Articulating structural AI applications and developer agent workflowsThe host demonstrates deep technical awareness by distinguishing text-processing back-office automation from AI coding agents like Cursor and Cognition's Devin.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Mechanics and Psychology of Mega-Rounds | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | The hosts inquire about the psychology and logistics of raising hundreds of millions post-SVB crisis. Immad explains the operational shift with dedicated teams while framing banking as an under-competed two trillion dollar market compared to B2B SaaS. | |
| Organic Distribution and Product Virality Beyond Tech Bubbles | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | The co-host asks how Mercury acquires non-tech founders outside the X ecosystem. Immad details their organic word-of-mouth distribution, high NPS, and built-in product virality through features like bill pay and invoicing. | |
| Launching Personal Banking and Managing Compliance Risk | 4 | 5 | 2 | 1 | When the host asks about underwriting and credit risk for early-stage online startups, Immad clarifies that Mercury is not issuing credit loans, reframing the core problem as KYC and KYB verification using tiered risk modeling. | |
| Evaluating the Viability and Pitfalls of Venture Debt | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | The co-host asks about venture debt viability after high-profile failures. Immad demystifies the market size and outlines when debt is appropriate versus when pre-revenue startups misuse it as bridge funding. | |
| Interest Rate Fluctuations and Macroeconomic Strategy | 5 | 3 | 0 | 2 | The host articulates the dual macroeconomic tension for fintechs between deposit yields and company formation. Immad specifies his target rate of around three percent before discussing his personal angel investing strategy. | |
| Deploying AI in Back-Office Operations and Product Architecture | 6 | 4 | 1 | 0 | The host demonstrates domain familiarity by contrasting LLM document parsing with developer tools like Cursor and Devin. Immad provides operational details on automating compliance while noting Haskell limits their developer tooling gains. |
Statements from this episode (21)
Akhund: Mercury raises $300M round led by Sequoia Capital
“We just announcing our CVC Sequoia is leading the round with Park and Marathon coming in as new investors, and all of our previous kind of VCs are participating, so it's a three hundred million round with a combination of primary and secondary.”
Akhund: Sonya Huang led Sequoia's investment in Mercury
“Yeah, Sonya Huang. She's been doing a ton in AI, including Langchain and Glean and she knows a lot about FinTech as well, so excited to have her on board.”
Akhund: Late-Stage Mega-Rounds Still Require Pitching a 100x Vision
“It's like a surprisingly similar process to an earlier round, right? I did this in about four weeks and you know, at least as a founder you really still like pitching the big vision, like how can this be, you know, another hundred X, right?”
Akhund: Mercury has been profitable for 10 consecutive quarters
“We've been profitable for 1010 quarters”
Akhund: US banking is surprisingly uncompetitive compared to B2B SaaS
“I think actually this is surprisingly uncompetitive space for how big the opportunity is. Like banking in the US makes two trillion dollars. Like this is an insanely huge market. And I don't think it's like as competitive as like fricking B to B SaaS, right? L…”
Akhund: Mercury increased valuation from $1.6B to $3.5B
“Our last round was at 1.6 billion valuation. This is 3.5.”
Akhund: Mercury grew from 40k to 200k customers and 860 employees
“We had a 140 employees back then. I think we announced we had about 40,000 customers. Now we have 200,000 customers. We're almost 800 and 60 employees.”
Akhund: About 60% of Mercury customers come from organic word of mouth
“More than 50%, about 60% of our customers come through organic word of mouth distribution, and that's not just in the startup space, that's in all of these spaces.”
Akhund: Mercury launched personal banking with a five-person team
“So I think we had a five person team. We, one of the drivers was we found this amazing guy, Alexei who previously had his own kind of startup neobank in the consumer space. And then he helped Albert launch their consumer bank, and then did the same at Mercury.”
Akhund: Startups are easier to underwrite than consultancies
“Definitely startups are actually easier, right? Like, people have a pretty big digital presence they have better websites, they have a LinkedIn, they have X, et cetera and, you know, their descriptions, their VCs, like, if a, you know, if a Sequoia funded comp…”
Akhund: SVB held a $7B venture debt portfolio when it failed
“Even SVB, which, you know, by far was the biggest venture debt provider. I think they had like a seven billion dollar portfolio when they failed.”
Akhund: Venture debt is dangerous for pre-revenue startups seeking runway
“I think the cases where I don't love it is, you know, you're some AI company that's not making any money today, and you want to, like, go extend your extend your kind of fundraise and runway by, like, 20% or something. I think in those situations, like, when y…”
A $1M venture debt round saved Akhund's previous startup
“You know, my last company yeah, I raised a million dollar venture debt, and, like, it saved the company, and actually, like, got us to profitability.”
Akhund: A 3% interest rate is ideal for Mercury's business model
“I think the ideal interest rate for us is like something like three percent. I think there's lots of kind of VC funding and, ah, business formation at three percent, ah, but we also have the opportunity to make money on our deposits better at three percent.”
Akhund: Mercury struggled to grow in 2022 after zero-rate boom
“We grew a lot when interest rates were zero, especially during kind of the big, big bubble. And you know, there was definitely like a struggle in terms of growth during like some of that 20, 22 period, but you know, since then it's picked up and we've obviousl…”
Akhund: Angel investments must pass the 5 PM founder text test
“Like my rough criteria is if this person texts me at like five PM, am I going to be excited to like do a call with them? Or am I going to be annoyed that I have to talk to them? So like, I definitely want to do that 30 minutes to like have like a bar of saying…”
Akhund: AI coding tools struggle on large, interconnected codebases
“Engineering productivity. I haven't seen as much of a boost as I would like to see. I think it's really good for making an app from scratch. When you have a huge code base with, that's all interlinked, it's just not as good. And we also built in like a weird p…”
Akhund: Slapping chatbot interfaces onto software is bad product design
“I'm not a fan of just, like, shove a chatbot in front of it as an interface. Like, I think it's easier to, like, have structured data and be able to do things.”
Akhund: Mercury LLM-driven signups are growing exponentially from a small base
“We've got a graph of like how number of signups is going with LLMs. And it's like fully exponential, especially in the last two, three months still a small base.”
Akhund: Community engagement is the new SEO for influencing LLM recommendations
“You can change the sentiment and, like, improve your visibility by being active in communities, and I think that's, like, a big part of, like, how you influence LLMs. I think, like, you want to basically create, like, real content, right? Like, it's a new type…”