00:16:02 · Immad Akhund, Joubin Mirzadegan
It's like, if you're doing something because you really wanted to succeed because you think it'll be better for the world, I think that's like a motivation that can outlast. Whereas if the motivation is like, how do I make the most money? Then when you hit like a, you know, a hard patch, it's hard to like, kinda fight through it. You immigrated from where to England? Pakistan. And how old were you when you... That was my parents that immigrated. [00:16:26] S1: I was nine. You were nine. And then how old were [00:16:29] S0: you when you left England? 23, and now I'm 42. [00:16:34] S1: Wow. Yeah. And you came straight to The Bay?
00:16:36 · Immad Akhund
[00:16:36] S0: Yeah. I did one start up in London, and I decided I need to be in Silicon Valley to do start ups. Then I did my second, third, and now fourth here. Is this it? Is this the last one? I mean, as long as I have energy, I will probably still be doing startups. Yeah. I'm really enjoying Mercury. I mean, one of the fun things about Mercury, and why I started Mercury is, I feel like some companies get interesting at scale, and you can do more at scale. Whereas other companies kinda converge, if that makes sense. Yeah. It does. It's like, most companies tend to do one thing, and then, you know, they improve that for the rest of their life. Whereas, I think banking is this, like, really interesting thing where it's like, it's got all your money, it's the first thing you set up, it's a universal product, there's not that many universal products for businesses. It's like every single business needs a bank account. So it's just this platform where you can build a lot. Like, we just launched Mercury Books three weeks ago. But, you know, it's like, it just fits so well into banking. It's like, you know, You already sign up for a bank account before you sign up for an accounting system. The bank account has most of your data. It's such an easy expansion, and it's such an Azure expansion for our customers as well. But there's so many of those in banking that it's just kind of a fun thing that you can like keep building and building. Mhmm. I think if it was... If Mercury got to a stage where there was like not that much new stuff, and it was mostly like kinda incremental optimization, I would be kinda a bit more bored, and probably not the best leader for that. But I think Mercury has like almost infinite, you know, we just launched in Mercury personal, which is like our personal product. There's just so much like forms of expansion that it just makes it like a really fun startup to work on.
00:18:28 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Immad Akhund
[00:18:28] S1: I am so impressed that this is the fourth. Like, just... I don't know. Like, I'm obviously just far behind you. [00:18:39] S0: Mhmm. [00:18:40] S1: But... And I'm maybe like, let's just say a little over a year in, but I've never... And I would consider myself like a uniquely energetic person. Like I have a lot of energy. [00:18:50] S0: Sure. I have to work out every [00:18:52] S1: day to like release energy because there's like too much pent up, you know? And I've never, I've never given anything this much energy Yeah. In my life, like every day. Just like a consistent application of force every single day. And I was just talking to my co founders about this like, man, can you imagine like doing it again from zero to one? Like, cause that that's when it takes the most energy. It's like get off the ground. Yeah. All to say, like, I'm really impressed that you have that in you. Like that is unbelievably
00:19:29 · Immad Akhund
[00:19:29] S0: determined. So my third startup actually had like four full pivots, like literally starting from zero pivots. So even though it's my fourth startup, it's almost like my seventh or eighth, like, kinda major idea. I think you have to like... And I mean, this kinda ties to Grit as well. It's like, you kinda have to enjoy it a lot. Like, you have to enjoy the journey. Like, so I think about this quite a bit. It's just like... And like, actually ties to like why you shouldn't celebrate the ups and downs too much. Like, you just have to enjoy the day to day. So like, I mean, lot of that time period, that's like twenty years of like being an entrepreneur. I've been programming, and like, I've been like doing the code or whatever. Right? Like, you know, my last startup was still like '24 when it was acquired, and I was still doing some coding. I just enjoy it. Like, it's fun to code. Like, you know, I guess if I... In another world, if I hadn't been a c... CEO, I'd be I'd be a software engineer. And, like, it's fun. Yeah. I I think you have to do things that are fun. Like, it's fun for me to do product or talk to customers or think about like, what's a new thing we can do and all that kind of stuff. So I think if you're enjoying your day to day, it gives you energy. And it kinda goes, like, you know, if you don't get too attached to, like, I have to, you know, every negative thing is gonna, like, take me down, I have to, like, get really stressed about it, things like that, Then you can really just enjoy that journey as much as possible. I guess that's... That would be my response because I'm gonna be doing something. Right? Like, I have to live life. So if I'm really enjoying doing a start up, I'll just keep doing it. So that gives you, like, this kind of sticking power.
00:21:10 · Joubin Mirzadegan, Immad Akhund
[00:21:10] S1: How many of the same people have you been doing these startups with? Any? [00:21:14] S0: So actually five people, five of the eight original people at Mercury were people I'd worked with for five years at my previous company, and they all still work at Mercury. So I guess them specifically, I've worked with for fourteen years now. [00:21:29] S1: It's crazy. [00:21:30] S0: Yeah. It's cool. But, yeah, we all enjoy working together. They also have like a similar mindset. And the company's remote. Yes, so we have an office in SF, and New York, and Toronto, and Portland, but it's remote first, so people can be anywhere. [00:21:48] S1: Why do you live here? [00:21:51] S0: I love San Francisco, I mean, the weather's great, people great. I'm a very, like all my friends are entrepreneurs, or VCs, so like I'm a very one track kind of person. I'm also an active investor, invest in like 300 companies, so I love it. I don't... Like, I I mean, the only major downside here is it's very expensive. But if you can get over that, I think it's [00:22:12] S1: a great place to live. Can I read you some of my favorite tweets and posts? Sure. [00:22:19] S0: Let's go. [00:22:19] S1: And have you expand on them? Is that alright? Yeah. How about... We'll start with this. Founders should take the weekends plus vacations off. [00:22:31] S0: Mhmm. [00:22:33] S1: And then you outlined three reasons. The first is time to think high level outside the daily grind. The second is the last 10% of time is the least productive. And the third is avoiding burnout. Yeah. Always been this way?
00:22:46 · Immad Akhund
[00:22:46] S0: So when I first started, you know, I didn't have any kids. You know, was very much like, wake up, get on a computer, you know, work all the way till midnight, go to sleep, wake up, get on a computer, etcetera. And then I had this, you know, I got married and I was 25. And then even then I had this kind of mindset, and it wasn't until I had my first kid, was relatively early, but I had my first when I was 27, where I was like, oh, actually I do have prioritize kinda outside my work life. So I I guess I had like this realization where I was like, you know, I'm at work all the time, but I'm actually that productive. And then you realize, like, when you don't have like a split between like work and life, which is, I think a lot of like early entrepreneurs are like that, you're not like really sitting there working all the time. Right? It's just... It's not possible to like... I mean, at least a lot of that time I was coding, as I said. Yeah. I'm... I have like a lot of energy and and stamina, but like, you know, you just can't sit in front of a computer and code straight for twelve hours. Like, you can do it as like one sprint, but consistently every freaking day for twelve hours, like, I just don't think I can personally not do it. And I and I realized I was kind of pretending to myself. Like, I'm there, you know, I'm on hacker news. I'm on Twitter. I'm on... You know, I'm DM ing people. And, yeah, I'm also coding, but, like, I'm just, like, switching between things. And I'm not really as focused as like, you know, the sort actual productive hours I get is not that much. And then, anyway, so eventually, you know, ended up producing my hours to like some... Something reasonable. And I realized like, actually, I was just as productive. And maybe even more productive because I was like, all the time I was in front of a computer, I was doing one thing, and I was like working and focused rather than kinda splitting attention between a bunch of things. So so that's one realization that's like, I think you can do sprints, but like in general, if you're committed for multi year kinda time period, you just don't get that much extra hours out of like working evenings and weekends, and being like super extreme about it. I definitely think this is kind of...