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?
00:07:28 · Immad Akhund
[00:07:28] S0: Like, is that nature or nurture? I really don't know. Like, I have three kids, and a lot of their personality seems like it's genetic. Like, I don't, I raise them relatively similarly, and they're all three so different. So there's definitely an element that you just get. But I do think, like, you know, things like sports, things like being an immigrant, because you don't take anything for granted as an immigrant. I'm like a double immigrant. My family moved from Pakistan to England, and then I moved from England to her. Like, that kinda trains you, because you just have to kinda... Yeah. Maybe it's like self justification. You're like, I've I've faced so many hard things that, like, you have to try to, like, enjoy them. So... Yeah. So I was gonna say, I think wanting and enjoying hard things is important. And I think the other one that is quite a tricky one also is, like, how... Like, what is your emotional kind of response to the events? Which I think is... I don't... Again, I don't know if you can train it, but like, you know, if if if when good things happen, you like spike up, and you're like, oh my god. I'm amazing. Blah blah blah. And if, like, you know, something bad happens and you spike all the way down to say, like, I give up. Like, my life's too hard. You know? Like, why my hair? All this stuff. Right? I think it's really hard if your emotional responses to events are, like, too positive or too negative. So I think you have to like try to be like a fairly steady hand. I think that's good for yourself. Like, I think, you know, my wife is actually doing a startup right now. And you know, I see her like, you know, something great happens, and she's like, oh my god, we made so many sales, etcetera. And then I'm like, you know, don't enjoy this. Like, something bad's gonna happen. And then, you know, the next week she's like... And I think like when you were like very volatile in your emotional response to this situation, I think it's actually just hard to manage life. And like, I think you have to... Like, startups are just like a roller coaster. It's very... Especially if you're doing hard things. It's very... You know, sometimes you'll feel great. And the next, like, literally the next hour, you might feel really shitty. And if you're just continuously, like, being volatile emotionally, it's...
00:09:39 · Immad Akhund, Joubin Mirzadegan
I think it's, like, really hard to have that kind of long term grit. This, like, foreshadowing that like something bad is gonna happen. [00:09:47] S1: Mhmm. Like, why is that? Like, why is something bad always gonna happen? Like like, why is it that you
00:09:52 · Immad Akhund
[00:09:52] S0: Well, because you're doing hard things. Part of doing hard things is like some percentage of them don't work out. Right? Like, actually, one of the funny things at Mercury is we've never really had like a super easy fundraise. Is that true? I mean, okay. I should I should caveat this. We've always had a term sheet within three weeks. Maybe you would consider that not not that bad. But it's always been like... It's never been like 10 term sheets within three weeks. It's always been like two or something like that. And partly, it's because I always push for, like, the best firms and the highest valuations, like some combo of, like, all the best terms. But either way, at any one round, I could make it very easy for myself by just saying, I don't care about the VC, or I don't care about the terms, and it would be easy. But because I deliberately make it the right way to do a fundraise is to get most people to say no, in my opinion. Otherwise, you haven't priced it right to some extent. Right? I'm sure there's some exceptions in the AI world. But I think this is like... My general view on things is like, if you're pushing the envelope, if you're launching products that might fail, if you're, you know, don't know, trying to hire someone that's like kind of a reach for you to hire, you're gonna get no's. So there's gonna be things that get you... You know, and most of these things, like, you're putting so much heart into it, right? Like when you're launching a new product, or when you're fundraising, or when you're hiring. All of these things, you need to put a lot of energy into it as an entrepreneur. So, there's always gonna be hard things. I don't think there's a... I mean, maybe there's a way to do startups without having hard things, but at least if you're like going for it. Right? Like, I think, yeah, if you're going... Try to be like 10x next year and all of this kinda, you know, pushing forward all the time, which I think you kinda have to have that energy to really succeed in the startup world, you're gonna get a lot of like, disappointment along the way.