Founders in Arms
00:15:31 · Rajat Suri, Jean-Denis Greze, Immad Akhund
[00:15:31] S1: to me and then. Right? [00:15:32] S2: Yeah. Totally. I mean, you're, like, it's the eye of the storm. Look. In life, you're either irrelevant or irrelevant. Obviously, it's great to be relevant and alone. I don't have that luxury. Yeah. [00:15:41] S1: That would [00:15:42] S2: say I have the luxury. [00:15:42] S0: I feel like Plaid had that for a really long time. Plaid was [00:15:45] S2: almost alone. There was a lot of competition for Plaid, [00:15:47] S0: but I think They all sucked. [00:15:51] S2: You. Yeah. They would... But there's also... You know, Plaid has, like, a consortium of banks as a competing product with some place place dark. So [00:15:59] S0: That's true.
00:16:00 · Jean-Denis Greze
[00:16:00] S2: It was tough. Like, Plaid was tough, but, eventually, we got to network effects, and that's why... Honestly, like, Plaid that the network effects was winning because we were better, but it felt like we had to keep winning. I think as soon as we got network effects around people connecting the the app and the friction we could remove out of the flow, like, then the business really starting to roll because the conversion improvement was high and couldn't be replicated either by the bank's network or by third parties because we had most of the demand. But to answer your question, the way I look at it is it is extremely competitive, for sure. Everyone knows that. Why is it competitive? Because it's a huge market. It might be the largest market ever. Right? There will be other larger markets, but there's billions of people that will use assistants for work. And as the assistants can do more and more, they're not really assistants. Not even really chief of staff. They're like coworkers that can automate more and more work so people will spend more and more tokens for work to be done by them. So it's a huge opportunity. I never woke up. Like, when we decided to go all into this, we knew that Microsoft and Google and OpenAI and Anthropic and whoever else you want to put on the list is gonna be a competitor. That's the truth. You have to ask the question, how do you build something that is different from a marketing, a feel, a product perspective so that in this giant world of users, there's set of people that are gonna prefer your ice cream. And my ice cream flavor may not be vanilla. Everyone loves vanilla. You know, it might be like, you know, mint with, like, cherry on it or something.
00:17:36 · Rajat Suri, Jean-Denis Greze
[00:17:36] S1: Red leaves and cream. [00:17:38] S2: Well, that would be good. People people like that. Yeah. Exactly. But it... And so I think the the way we think is, like, we have to we have to zigging while these are. It has to... We have to end somewhere different. And then the final part, which... So what I would say about you and Mercury is, look, we are... There's some things in our product, like email and calendaring, that I guarantee you we're spending more time than everyone else. And we're very focused on email and countering, and it comes out of the box, and it is very good, and it will only get better. And I think there's people who really want an assistant that day one is really good at email and countering, and I will pay... Like, our experience on that will always be better. We will think about the details, and I think people notice. Right? And over time, you can't do all the things, but you can pick some things that you're great at. And if there are people in the market that really want what you're great at, you you can win. Right. Right? You can win at that. And if you just
00:18:31 · Rajat Suri, Jean-Denis Greze, Immad Akhund
[00:18:31] S1: pay attention more to those... What those people want, right, you listen to them more closely, you're better at support for those customers. You know, you're better at services. Would they, you know, build stuff around the edges, what they need, and that that makes a huge difference at the end of the day. And people also will look at different industries as to what their their competitors are using and their analogs are using. Right? And that makes a big difference too. So you can corner certain industries, certain markets by being the default player in that space as well. So, yeah, there are lots of ways. I mean, in SaaS, how many CRM companies are there? I mean, there's tons of CRM companies. Right? And they've all found different niches, right, in the market and supports multiple, like, you know, players, I guess, ultimately. Curious. Some people have used Town here. [00:19:15] S2: It's good. About 20%. So I'll take 20% [00:19:20] S0: of [00:19:21] S1: the world market. Yeah. Yeah. I'll do that. Scare how many people are founders here? I mean, how founders do you have? Almost everyone. Okay. So it's 20% of good founder market here. What do you guys use for your email calendar today? Maybe we should do a little bit of survey. [00:19:38] S0: I mean, I think that's you. But who doesn't use Google? [00:19:42] S1: No. No. I'm in the system... AI system. [00:19:44] S0: Oh, on the assistant side. Yeah. This is what?
00:19:44 · Immad Akhund, Rajat Suri, Jean-Denis Greze
[00:19:44] S0: Oh, on the assistant side. Yeah. This is what? [00:19:47] S1: Does anyone now use AI for email calendar today? One person does not use AI. Two people. Because that... That's, like, six months ago, everyone... And that's, like, a this year thing. Right? You... AI assistant for email calendar. For sure. [00:20:00] S0: Yeah. I have a complete four things. Go ahead. So, obviously, you were a engineer and a CTO for a really long time. Yeah. What's been the most surprising thing about kinda starting a startup? Like, how are you building things and how how does that mean, like, kinda... Like, do you do you read the code that you deploy nowadays? [00:20:26] S2: No. Actually, I read the code that I deploy because I should probably not be writing code that often, and I do. And I don't write code all the time, and so I no longer know what the code base is doing. [00:20:38] S1: So I
00:20:39 · Jean-Denis Greze
[00:20:39] S2: think I have to be a little bit more careful. What is most surprising? Well, I think one of the things you don't... When you're an exec somewhere, there's someone called the CEO, and, like, the CEO kind of always has your back. Even if you're gonna make a decision that you feel is just yours, at the end of the day, if it's a really dumb decision, the CEO will probably tap you on the shoulder and be like, bro, or bro et, let's talk. And and you have those conversations, and, you know, then there's a hard call to be made. And even though the CEO says it's your call, you know he only says that or she only says that to you when it's a call that could be yours because it's not company ending if it's in the other direction. So the weirdest thing about being a founder and a CEO is there's nobody behind me. And it it just really means, like, anything that happens, anything at any level that's not, I think, the way it should be, I do wake up and stress out about whether it should have been the other way. And there's no excuses. And and, obviously, you have to then decide, do I bother people and... By imposing my will or by convincing them, which takes time and effort. Not always worth it. But, like, I didn't internalize how much pressure just accumulates in a CEO role at all times. And you asked me about being stressed. I'm relaxed, but I do wake up at about 4AM, I would say, like, six out of seven nights just thinking about How do you sleep? Like, eleven. So, you know It's that stress. Yeah. No. No. Exactly. And I wake up, and I I look at the ceiling, and I'm like, I think about the things. Yeah. You know? And I think before that, I slept a little bit better because of of Zach, who was, you know, Pod's great CEO.