Ignoring Silicon Valley advice to build a $3B fintech unicorn | Immad Akhund (Co-founder and CEO of Mercury)

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Aug 6, 2025

Immad Akhund, CEO and co-founder of Mercury, a digital banking platform for startups, shares insights from his two-decade journey in entrepreneurship. He discusses the importance of strong product-market fit and the pitfalls of weak iterations. Immad also reveals Mercury's unique culture playbook that encourages intentional hiring and how trust was built during the Silicon Valley Bank crisis with the launch of Mercury Vault. His experiences highlight the need for endurance and transparency in navigating the fintech landscape.

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INSIGHT

Culture Reflects Founder Personality

Company culture is essentially its personality, reflecting the founder's traits.
Aligning the company's culture with founder personality avoids internal conflicts.

ADVICE

Be Intentional About Culture

Write down your company culture and hire people aligned with those traits.
Celebrate behaviors that reinforce your culture to embed it deeply.

ADVICE

Hire for Cultural Fit Effectively

Dedicate a focused interview on one cultural attribute to measure fit effectively.
Use unique exercises like personal passion presentations to gauge curiosity and communication.

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Immad Akhund is the CEO and co-founder of Mercury, a digital banking platform that’s become the go-to financial infrastructure for startups. Before Mercury, Immad spent nearly two decades founding companies, learning the hard way what separates a good idea from a great business.

In this episode, Immad shares the hard-earned lessons from launching Mercury as his third startup. He unpacks how he recognized this was the right idea to pursue, what strong product-market fit feels like, and why trying to "iterate" your way to success often leads founders astray.

In this episode, we discuss:

Mercury’s unusual culture playbook – and why it works
How to hire with intention
The trap of weak product-market fit
Shipping under intense pressure during the SVB crisis
And much more…

References:

Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com/
Andreessen Horowitz: https://a16z.com/
Apple: https://www.apple.com/
Block: https://block.xyz/
Brex: https://www.brex.com/
Chime: https://www.chime.com/
Gusto: https://gusto.com/
Mercury: https://mercury.com/
Paul Graham: https://x.com/paulg
Plaid: https://plaid.com/
Stripe: https://stripe.com/
SVB (Silicon Valley Bank): https://www.svb.com/
True Link Financial: https://www.truelinkfinancial.com/
Varo: https://www.varomoney.com/
Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/

Where to find Immad:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iakhund/

Where to find Brett:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson

Where to find First Round Capital:

Website: https://firstround.com/
First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast

Timestamps:

(1:07) Hard-won lessons from serial entrepreneurship
(2:02) You shouldn’t copy-paste advice
(6:57) Why personality trumps culture playbooks
(8:48) How do you hire for cultural fit?
(12:38) The values that shaped Mercury’s DNA
(14:08) The drivers underpinning Mercury’s success
(15:50) The significance of product-market fit
(20:41) Don’t fall into the weak product-market fit trap
(25:49) How to evaluate startup ideas that scale
(30:14) Mercury’s unlikely origin story
(33:51) Breaking into the fintech space
(37:31) Mindset shift: From “This is hard” to long-term gains
(39:43) Building Mercury’s MVP
(44:25) Overcoming early obstacles to reach launch
(47:36) Navigating Mercury’s rapid growth phase
(51:18) Competition isn’t the reason you’re failing
(55:58) Crisis management during the SVB collapse