Podcast 271: Immad Akhund of Mercury
There has been a great deal of innovation in digital banking for consumers with dozens of fintech companies providing digital bank (or bank-like) accounts that are so much better than what was available five or ten years ago. But the same cannot be said for small business bank accounts where there are very few offerings.
Our next guest on the Lend Academy Podcast recognized this problem several years ago and is addressing it head on. Immad Akhund is the CEO and founder of Mercury, a bank that has been created to serve startup businesses. The Mercury app has a user experience reminiscent of some of the best consumer banking apps but it is a full service bank account built on modern rails for startups.
This episode of the Lend Academy Podcast is sponsored by LendIt Fintech Digital, the new online community for financial services innovators.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION SESSION NO. 271-IMMAD AKHUND
Welcome to the Lend Academy Podcast, Episode No. 271. This is your host, Peter Renton, Founder of Lend Academy and Co-Founder of LendIt Fintech.
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Today’s episode is sponsored by LendIt Fintech Digital, the new online community for financial services innovators. Today’s challenges are extraordinary with the upheaval affecting all areas of finance. More than ever before, we need to come together as an industry to learn from each other and make sense of this new world. Join LendIt Fintech Digital to connect and learn all year long from your peers and from the fintech experts. Sign up today at digital.lendit.com
Peter Renton: Today on the show, I am delighted to welcome Immad Akhund, he is the CEO and Founder of Mercury. Now, Mercury is a super interesting company, they are basically a bank built for startups. You know, Immad saw this from personal experience that…..whereas the banking industry has made considerable strides on the consumer front, there is a lot of neo banks out there that got really great user experiences, compelling offerings, but the same hasn’t happened on the business side, particularly when it comes to startups.
There’s really not many digital first offerings when it comes to banking so Mercury, you know, is building that and we get into that in some depth. We talk about the banking landscape, the new offerings from Kabbage and Intuit and obviously you have Silicon Valley Bank in here that are also doing things, we talk about why Mercury is different. We also talk about a new initiative with Mercury Raise and what it’s doing there and then where he sees…..what is the vision for Mercury going forward. It was a fascinating interview, hope you enjoy the show.
Welcome to the podcast, Immad!
Immad Akhund: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Peter: My pleasure. So, I’d like to get this thing started by giving the listeners a little bit of background about yourself. I know you’ve had an interesting career, this is not your first rodeo, so why don’t you give the listeners some highlights before you started Mercury.
Immad: Sure. I’ve been doing startups, starting startups since 2006 so Mercury is actually my fourth company. The first one was in London, I grew up in London, then I moved to San Francisco to the YC Company back in 2007, that went okay, we did have an acquisition and then I did my third company which I spent most of my time from end of 2008 to 2016 when we sold it. It was a development tool around app tech and as for the idea for Mercury, I had….about 2013, when I was going halfway through that startup and I was just kind of very frustrated with the banking options we had as a startup and it just turned out like no one did it (laughs) from 2013 to when I started in 2017 which is good.
Peter: Right, right. So then, what was the it specifically that you were, you know, trying to solve there where you said that, obviously, large banks, actually most banks don’t really cater to startups, they cater to businesses, but what was it specifically that you were looking for?
Immad: Yeah. I…
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