00:00:47 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Immad Akhund
[00:00:47] S1: Welcome to Grit. I'm Joubin, partner at Kleiner Perkins, a show where we go beyond the highlight reel and explore the personal and professional challenges of building history making companies. Today on Grit, I'm talking with Immad Akhund, co founder and CEO of Mercury, the financial platform behind one in three US startups. Immad grew up in a family on welfare, spent ten years as a founder before his first real exit, and then decided to take on banking itself. We get into all sorts of things about Immad, including his hot takes on company building, the intersection of what that means between his personal and professional life and everything in between. Enjoy. Can I tell you one of the specific reasons why I wanted to do this with you? Yeah. The way you talk publicly and like your LinkedIn posts and your tweets very much aligns to how I think, which is like the intersection of the personal and professional of company building. Yep. And there are tweets that you have about Mercury as your product. By the way, Roadrunner is now switching to Mercury. Nice. You made a mistake of starting on What'd you start on? SVB? [00:01:56] S0: Oh, no. [00:01:57] S1: It was a mistake. Yeah. We're rectifying it now. Good. Good. So you were about to be a proud a proud customer. Apparently, I couldn't... The APIs in SVB, I couldn't get a dashboard to work to, see how I [00:02:09] S0: even have APIs. [00:02:10] S1: I was like, is this a joke? So anyway, that's why you're valued at 7 plus billion dollars, I guess. [00:02:16] S0: Anyway Sadly, 5.2 is the fuck.
00:02:16 · Immad Akhund, Joubin Mirzadegan
[00:02:16] S0: Anyway Sadly, 5.2 is the fuck. [00:02:18] S1: 5.2. 5.2? Yeah. That was the last race? [00:02:21] S0: Yeah. Was [00:02:21] S1: Winters when? In March. In March. [00:02:24] S0: So You could say seven now, probably, but [00:02:26] S1: In March. And anyway, I just like the way that you think about the world. Like, think it's interesting, like, you do talk about Mercury stuff, but then you talk a lot about like the company culture, like CEO ing. Mhmm. Like, you have some, I think, pretty unique takes on, like having kids while you're running the company, and these are things that I think a lot about. I've always talked about the intersection of the personal and professional on this show, because I think that stuff's like not that much talked about. Yeah. Weirdly. Like, I don't... [00:02:58] S0: I think it ties to grit as well. [00:03:01] S1: Why is that? [00:03:01] S0: I think, like, I talk to people, and they're not running their company in a way that like is gonna lead to more grit. Like if you're burning out, you're not gonna be like the highest grit person. You know what I mean? Like you have to really have your personal... You have to have your personality, your personal life, and your business life kind of in sync to make... To maximize your grit. Because grit is about how long you can last through adverse situations. Right? Mhmm. So like, I don't know, if you're super burned out, when you get hit by something, like a customer says no or whatever, you can't raise money. Like, you gonna have the perseverance to kinda go through that?
00:03:01 · Immad Akhund, Joubin Mirzadegan
[00:03:01] S0: I think, like, I talk to people, and they're not running their company in a way that like is gonna lead to more grit. Like if you're burning out, you're not gonna be like the highest grit person. You know what I mean? Like you have to really have your personal... You have to have your personality, your personal life, and your business life kind of in sync to make... To maximize your grit. Because grit is about how long you can last through adverse situations. Right? Mhmm. So like, I don't know, if you're super burned out, when you get hit by something, like a customer says no or whatever, you can't raise money. Like, you gonna have the perseverance to kinda go through that? [00:03:41] S1: Mhmm. And that's how you frame grit. [00:03:45] S0: That's one framing, I mean. Yeah. Like, grit is probably like a complex word. Yeah, to me, it's like... I think one element of grit is how long can you go through adverse situations. Right? So, like... And I think you don't get there without having all your ducks kinda lined up. And, yeah, I think there's different ways to frame it. I was just listening to [00:04:10] S1: an interview this morning with Ben Horowitz. Mhmm. I think what he was saying was like, where most companies fail in his view, is when the founder comes into adversity and, like, can't deal with it. Yep. And that's usually where these things kinda start and stop. Mhmm. [00:04:26] S0: And he...
00:04:26 · Immad Akhund, Joubin Mirzadegan
[00:04:26] S0: And he... [00:04:29] S1: Basically, his point was, like, the founder is the thing that matters. It's always the thing that matters. Like the the idea can't suck, but the founder is the thing that matters. Mhmm. The problem is in today's day and age with like venture capitalists and founders and how... Like the compression of time to get to know each other, you don't know how they're gonna respond Yeah. In moments of extreme pressure. [00:04:48] S0: Mhmm. [00:04:48] S1: And he, you know, his point was like, this is why Elon's maybe the greatest entrepreneur of our generation because like in moments of pressure Yeah. He's like rises up. Mhmm. And I thought that was like kind of an interesting framing. Yeah. That was like pretty succinctly phrased towards the moment in time of the companies where when you perform, when all of the cards are kind of... All the chips are on the table Mhmm. Is like what defines... Yeah. Yeah.
00:05:17 · Immad Akhund
[00:05:17] S0: Think one thing that's tricky, and I was actually talking to your founder about this just yesterday, is like, how do you respond to those situations? And you know, I have like two things that I do, which I don't think most people do. Number one, I think adversity is fun. Like, I I... If I have like a normal week and like, you know, nothing too tricky is happening and like, you know, we're all... It's all up into the right or whatever. Like, it's just kinda boring. Like, I kinda have fun when like, you know, I don't want things to go wrong, but, like, I want to be challenged. Like, I wanna do hard things. Right? Like, I think sports is really good with that. Like, you know, the mentality for, like, people who play sports is, you wanna do hard things. Like, you wanna lose. You don't wanna lose, but you wanna do things that might make you lose. Right? Like, it's boring just, like, if you're playing... I play tennis quite a bit. Like, it's boring if you're just playing tennis and you're always winning. Right? That wouldn't be actually a game. So I think, like, I think of that in the startup context. I I actually often think about, like, startups as like a game, and it makes... You know, I think it's a good way to think about startups. So, like, you kind of want hard things, and actually, like, every time Mercury solves something hard, like if we do something difficult, like, we're going through this bank charter process, which, you know, I think is quite difficult at normal. You know, my previous software companies don't have to deal with all of this kind of stuff. But because we're doing that, I know, assuming it's the right difficult thing to do, like, the end of it, we've created value to some extent. Right? Like, we've we've done something that our competitors might not do. We've done something that is hard, but, like, is valuable to our customers because, you know, we can build, like, the most kinda AI build bank or whatever it is we're accomplishing. But, like, doing hard things has, like, value, I think. And you have to, like, actually be... Put yourself in the mindset of, like, wanting to do hard things. And, like... I mean, Elon's like this. He's like, yeah, he just seems like... He's like CEO in five companies or something like that. Right? Like, he's doing... He's willing to do insanely hard things. Mhmm. But you...
00:07:17 · Immad Akhund, Joubin Mirzadegan
I think you have to enjoy doing those kind of things. Like, I don't think it's like a normal... I don't think most people think like, wow, I need to make my life like a little harder whenever it's Do you [00:07:27] S1: think that's trained?