Insight
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…”
Opinion
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…”
Insight
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…”
Opinion
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.”
Assertion Partly supported
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.”
Insight
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?”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Akhund: Mercury has been profitable for 10 consecutive quarters
“We've been profitable for 1010 quarters”
Assertion Supported
Akhund: Mercury increased valuation from $1.6B to $3.5B
“Our last round was at 1.6 billion valuation. This is 3.5.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Insight
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…”
Opinion
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.”
Insight
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…”
Insight
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…”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Disclosure
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Akhund has angel invested in approximately 300 startups
“I've done about 300 altogether.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
