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My guest today is Immad Akhund, CEO and Founder of Mercury, a US-based neobank built for the next generation of startups. Founded almost five years ago, Mercury now enjoys unicorn status and has raised equity from great investors including CRV, Coatue, a16z, and Clocktower.
In this episode, we discuss:
Why he’s short-term pessimistic and how startups should prepare for winter and some tough times
“[I’m] fairly short-term pessimistic. I think people have a lot of like wishful thinking, but, yeah, winter is coming… But I do think it will work itself out after 12 months. What we mostly need is stability… it's hard to plan for the future when you just don't know what the future is.”
Founders: focus on your customers and stop wasting time thinking about your competitors
"It's very tempting as an entrepreneur to think a lot about what our competitors doing… most of the time, it doesn't matter. I've been doing startups for 15-16 years, and there's always some boogeyman competitor... But yeah, normally, it doesn't matter, right? I think the main thing is actually to focus on customers."
The power of cold outreach and how entrepreneurs should perfect and embrace networking
“When doing sales, it's important to not get too stuck on an individual person and think about it in terms of probabilities. Okay, ‘if I'm gonna do cold outreach, my response rate to will be 5% or 10%’... if you do that math, and say ‘I want five responses, I need to email, X number of people’, right?”
Startup trends across Mercury’s client base… and a lot more!
“[Over the summer] crypto investors were still pretty active. And I think that's because the crypto industry is more used to these crypto winters and these cycles, in a way that most of the startup funding ecosystem is not… So I think there will definitely be a slowdown in crypto, but even in this downturn, I actually think crypto will do better.”
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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.
Immad Akhund, CEO/Founder of Mercury – Focus on Your Clients and Forget About Competitors, Planning for Startup Winter, & The Power of Networking