01:33:24 · Jordi Hays, Immad Akhund
[01:33:24] S1: Why why was this year the right time to get into payroll? [01:33:32] S5: You know, we've been expanding our services. So obviously, we're known best for banking, but we've had a corporate credit card for three years and that's growing really fast. We have a bill pay and invoicing solution. And, you know, over time, I really want Mercury to be the place that you do most of your business finances. Right? It's kind of annoying. Like, if if the money is here and your users are here and your finance team is here, you know, you want to have all of that kind of in in one place. So, yeah, we made an acquisition in payroll. We acquired a company called Central. They're running you know, we're continuing to run them, and we're gonna gonna over time make it more like a fully integrated Mercury payroll solution. But, yeah, payroll is like a big category. You know, it's kind of annoying right now when you're using a payroll provider. You have to send money. It's kind of sits around for four days before it shows up on your employees. And, you know, Central has done a really good job with kind of AI first. Like, they have this whole interface where you can do a ton of things in Slack and, you know, we're we're kind of taking some of that learning and and putting in our own kinda command launch.
01:34:32 · John Coogan
[01:34:32] S0: Yeah. Is is the AI boom helping you sort of rethink product road map expansion differently than a few years ago? Like, when I think about neo banks, fintech, modern technology enabled banks, I I think like you could eventually do auto loans, mortgages, consumer. You could do all sorts of the insurance. There's so many different products in the financial technology world. I know that there's incredible value to focus. At the same time, there's this foundational unlock in being able to move very quickly into new markets. How are you wrestling with that tension?
01:35:13 · Immad Akhund
[01:35:13] S5: I think, number one, we want to talk to our customers and see what they really want. I don't want to invent things that they might want kind of thing. It's definitely accelerating. I think the two vectors are like, a, it accelerates software development. It doesn't necessarily make like kind of the more financial like it doesn't make lending that much better, faster or whatever. Maybe you could underwrite a little better, but there's still kind of limitations. But you can build software, especially new software, much quicker. So definitely thinking about that and like we're already seeing an acceleration in kind of new software launches we're doing. I think the other thing that's kind of interesting is interfaces tend to get cluttered over time, but AI has a decluttering effect. Like you can kind of personalize it to someone's need. And like, I really think the future is people are not trying to do a specific thing, but they kind of just talk about a problem. They're like, hey, I just need to make payroll, like, you know, help me think it through kind of thing. So you can go like a level above, like solve the problem rather than like be like a feature Mhmm. Which I think like has a decluttering effect to interfaces.
01:36:17 · Jordi Hays, Immad Akhund
[01:36:17] S1: That's good. Yeah. It's so it's so amazing. I just think back to, you know, 10 ago at this point like starting to to build companies and just seeing how many things I expected to be intuitive. Like I expected my bank to be able to help me pay my employees because like the function of a bank is to like Yeah. Hold money and let you do things with it and yet, obviously, you know, it took took some time for you guys to enter payroll and then all these all these other things like just just the concept of getting getting an invoice, wanting to pay it, like you really should be this simple as like dragging it somewhere and then that's it. Yeah. Right? And so there's all these things that like right in this moment, there's gonna be an entire generation of entrepreneurs that like only knows this like completely frictionless business finance and I'm very happy for them. Yeah. And I'm happy for all of us that that had to go through do it the hard way for for so long. [01:37:14] S5: Yeah. When I started Mercury, that's actually got what got me excited that like after you build a bank account, there's so much more to do after that. You know, I really didn't wanna this is my fourth company, so I really didn't wanna do like this thing where you build a thing and then all you do is like incrementally improve it a little bit over like a decade. Like I really wanted to do something where like the start is just the start and it's kind of a platform to build a lot. So I'm exciting excited that we're like finally like getting to build build that kind of multi product strategy.
01:37:14 · Immad Akhund, John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[01:37:14] S5: Yeah. When I started Mercury, that's actually got what got me excited that like after you build a bank account, there's so much more to do after that. You know, I really didn't wanna this is my fourth company, so I really didn't wanna do like this thing where you build a thing and then all you do is like incrementally improve it a little bit over like a decade. Like I really wanted to do something where like the start is just the start and it's kind of a platform to build a lot. So I'm exciting excited that we're like finally like getting to build build that kind of multi product strategy. [01:37:40] S0: Last question. Deployment pace for angel investing. Are you accelerating it? Are you decelerating? What are you doing on the [01:37:48] S5: angel Maybe investing I'm a little old school, but like when I think when the valuations are the highest and the hype is the highest, you should like not accelerate. You should like, you know, we saw 2021. Like, I'm trying to keep like a continuous pace. Like, I think it's total Don't [01:38:02] S1: you know this time is different? Yeah. [01:38:05] S5: I you know, I think that that that like, there's a reason for the hype and there's really exciting companies being built. But I think it's gonna be even more fun when the valuations come down after the hype dies down and you can like then deploy, you know. It was crazy no one was deploying in 2022 and 2023 when like Yeah. It was the same companies at like a massive discount.
01:38:05 · Immad Akhund, John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[01:38:05] S5: I you know, I think that that that like, there's a reason for the hype and there's really exciting companies being built. But I think it's gonna be even more fun when the valuations come down after the hype dies down and you can like then deploy, you know. It was crazy no one was deploying in 2022 and 2023 when like Yeah. It was the same companies at like a massive discount. [01:38:23] S0: Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, the smart funds were and a lot of great companies made it through, grew even bigger and are bigger than they've ever been as you are. So congratulations on all the progress. Thank you for coming on the show. Will talk to you soon. Yeah. Have a good rest of your day. Goodbye. There have been a number of AI images hitting the timeline. One was of Peter Thiel eating ice cream in Buenos Aires. He has been spotted at a chess match. I think that image was not AI. This one is AI generated by Cat McGee, but it still sparked a bunch of funny reactions. One of them, the question you need to be asking is what delicious ice cream is almost nobody eating? Of course, the Is [01:39:11] S1: mint chip properly rated or underrated? [01:39:14] S0: Mint chip might be underrated. I think it gets thrown in with the chocolate category. It's sort of a second fiddle to the vanilla strawberry chocolate. [01:39:21] S1: Always I a mint chip