0:00:04 You hear about these companies that are going from zero to a hundred million in like two years or three years or whatever.
0:00:07 Like the equation is very simple from a company perspective.
0:00:19 What’s up? We got my buddy Ahmad here.
0:00:27 He’s the founder of Mercury, an awesome company that I use and love and is you’ve created a billion dollar company, dude.
0:00:34 You did it. You did the thing that all of us, when we were living in San Francisco and in our 20s trying to build these companies, you finally did it.
0:00:34 How does that feel?
0:00:37 It’s funny you say that.
0:00:48 We raised our Series B in 2021, which is actually like four months after we did our last podcast together at My First Million in January 2021.
0:00:54 And then we’re just announcing our Series C, which is a 3.5 billion valuation with Sequoia leading.
0:00:59 But in 2021, when I raised my round, I was at a 1.6 billion valuation.
0:01:07 And it was so weirdly anticlimactic because it’s like I’d started as an entrepreneur in 2006.
0:01:10 So 2021, what is that, like 15 years?
0:01:13 So I’ve been working towards this objective of like building a unicorn company, right?
0:01:17 Like that’s, as you say, like I moved here when I was like 22.
0:01:20 And like that’s all it was about for me for a long time.
0:01:22 It was like getting this like really successful company.
0:01:27 And then you hit this objective, like becoming a unicorn and like nothing changes.
0:01:32 So I have this like, I have this helmet behind me because that’s like, this is from Joe Montana.
0:01:37 He was, he’s an investor and he’s a footballer.
0:01:41 So he sent me the helmet and that’s literally the only thing I got when I became a unicorn.
0:01:47 I mean, obviously I had a successful company, but I keep it there to show like, you know, like these objectives don’t really matter.
0:01:51 It’s like you have to enjoy the journey because you hit the objective and then you’re like, okay, now what?
0:01:55 Dude, Joe Montana should make that his thing.
0:01:58 He’s just, he should send a helmet to every founder who becomes a unicorn.
0:02:03 Well, I mean, at least he sends it to the ones he funds because it says like billion dollar club on air.
0:02:04 It’s kind of cool.
0:02:05 All right.
0:02:08 I told you, I said, love to brainstorm with you ideas.
0:02:16 I thought you would come with a bunch of fintech ideas because you’re the bank guy, but you came with a bunch of, you sent me a list of bullet points, none of which sound like fintech.
0:02:17 So I’m excited.
0:02:25 Give me some of these ideas, things that you think founders today could be going and doing, or if you weren’t doing Mercury that you would be interested in doing.
0:02:26 Yeah.
0:02:29 So I had three trends that I think are interesting.
0:02:31 Trend number one is space and space tech.
0:02:34 There’s a few reasons I like the trend.
0:02:37 Number one, you know, I’m, I’m just a sci-fi nerd.
0:02:38 Like I love space.
0:02:41 So I think it’s really exciting as a space.
0:02:46 And it’s finally hit this point where like there’s all of these kind of enablement factors.
0:02:52 So number one, like just a few years ago, getting anything to space was like a hundred million endeavor, right?
0:02:55 Like we’re talking about like literally a hundred million dollars to get something in space that works.
0:03:04 Because, you know, there was no SpaceX and all of the space satellite stuff was like these hardened, like, you know, radiation proof, like satellites.
0:03:09 Now the other week, like SpaceX did like eight flights or something in one week.
0:03:10 Like it’s insane.
0:03:16 So, you know, this, there’s this repeatable kind of channel to get things in space.
0:03:16 It’s much, much cheaper.
0:03:19 And it’s going to, it’s getting cheaper every, every month, basically.
0:03:24 And nowadays people have these kind of micro platforms where it’s basically a computer in space.
0:03:28 Like it’s not going to cost you a million dollars to get, like, just to build the satellite.
0:03:31 Like you can do it for like a hundred thousand dollars or something.
0:03:33 So this is like huge enablement thing.
0:03:34 And I’ve invested in a bunch of companies.
0:03:36 I did this company called Albedo.
0:03:40 That’s doing, that’s doing kind of very low earth orbit pictures of things.
0:03:44 So you can get like 10 centimeter kind of resolution pictures from space.
0:03:44 Yeah.
0:03:50 Everyone’s kind of excited about AI, which I’m also excited about that, but that’s a heavily, you know, everyone’s doing it.
0:03:51 Super competitive, yeah.
0:03:53 Whereas I think actually space is still like super open.
0:03:56 There’s not that many people kind of attempting things in space.
0:04:03 So the crazy idea I sent to you, which I don’t love this idea in terms of like, we need to come up with like why we should do this.
0:04:05 But I think a nuclear power plant in space would be really cool.
0:04:12 Like potentially we put this thing on the moon and then we mine, mine water from the moon.
0:04:21 And, you know, one of the cool things about water is if you can split water, you get hydrogen and oxygen and oxygen and hydrogen together make rocket fuel.
0:04:24 But it’s also like you get breathable oxygen, which is useful.
0:04:27 So having power in space is pretty useful.
0:04:29 And there’s lots of interesting things on the moon.
0:04:36 And, you know, if you have a nuclear power plant there, you could probably like, there’s this other cool company that does this thing.
0:04:38 I don’t know if you’ve seen it.
0:04:42 I can’t remember the name, but like it spins things super fast and then like basically fires them out.
0:04:49 I think it’s very hard to get something from Earth’s surface into space by like spinning around and around and flicking it.
0:04:50 But I think on the moon, it’s much easier.
0:04:52 The gravity is lower and there’s no air resistance.
0:04:53 Right.
0:04:56 So, yeah, if you had a nuclear power plant, you could power there.
0:04:58 So I thought that was cool.
0:04:59 Let’s see what else.
0:05:04 I’ll talk about my second theme because it ties into space as well.
0:05:07 So the second theme is defense tech in general.
0:05:09 Obviously, we’ve seen Anderil.
0:05:16 But, you know, there’s kind of two trends, well, actually three trends in defense tech that I think are interesting.
0:05:19 Number one, yeah, there’s a lot of geopolitical disturbance.
0:05:28 Everyone is basically, yeah, we’re living in like or moving into a multipolar world, which means like, you know, there’s India, there’s China, there’s America.
0:05:32 And America is no longer kind of the policeman, right?
0:05:39 Like the only way America since the 1990s has been able to be a policeman is there hasn’t been any other power to really challenge that.
0:05:43 So it’s not just the U.S. needs to rearm.
0:05:45 It’s all of Europe, India, whatever.
0:05:47 Like everyone is like arming.
0:05:51 So you have like all of these people that are in the market now that weren’t.
0:05:55 And then number two, autonomous vehicles have changed the game, right?
0:05:58 These drones, AI in general can be applied to all of this stuff.
0:06:01 And then number three, yeah, you’re going to get a ton of drones.
0:06:06 Like it’s not just like big billion dollar fighter planes, right?
0:06:11 It’s going to be actually like a thousand or million like tiny drones that are like easy to manufacture.
0:06:17 So all of these things kind of make it so startups can now compete again in a way that like wasn’t possible before.
0:06:23 Hey, quick message from our sponsor, HubSpot.
0:06:25 You know, marketing in 2025 is wild.
0:06:27 Customers can spot fake messages instantly.
0:06:31 Privacy changes are making ad targeting a nightmare and everybody needs more content than ever.
0:06:33 That’s why HubSpot has a new marketing trends report.
0:06:35 It doesn’t just show you what’s changing.
0:06:37 It shows you exactly how to deal with it.
0:06:40 Everything is backed by research and it’s about marketing plays that you can use tomorrow.
0:06:46 So if you’re ready to turn your marketing challenges into results, go to HubSpot.com slash marketing to download the report for free.
0:06:52 So I think there’s like two types of ideas that I think are interesting.
0:06:54 Number one, like how do you make more things autonomous?
0:07:01 So people are doing autonomous drones, but you could do autonomous subs, autonomous boats, autonomous tanks, right?
0:07:03 Like I think a lot of these things are not being hit on.
0:07:07 And when you make them autonomous, you can change the form factor as well.
0:07:09 Like you can make them smaller, you can make thousands of them.
0:07:11 So that’s one aspect.
0:07:16 And then the second aspect is like a lot of these autonomous things kind of favor defense.
0:07:21 So I was reading about this and the Ukraine-Russia war is like actually like trench warfare, which is kind of crazy.
0:07:25 Like we haven’t had it since World War I, but they’re literally digging trenches.
0:07:30 And like that’s why the lines are like hardly changing because it’s like neither of them has air superiority.
0:07:36 The drones actually make it hard to get air superiority because you can have like a tiny drone knockout of like a million dollar plane.
0:07:42 So in that world, like, you know, so we’ve got one side is autonomous side.
0:07:47 Second side is like the kind of how do we build more defensive autonomous things as well?
0:07:50 So like, you know, maybe we automatically have these machines that are building trenches.
0:07:57 You could have autonomous mines that are like smart and they don’t, I mean, I guess that sounds like bad to people, but you could have it.
0:07:59 So like if it’s a civilian, it doesn’t blow up.
0:08:01 If it’s a tank, it does blow up, right?
0:08:05 Like you can make these like safer mines that move around.
0:08:14 And then to tie back to the space thing, you know, I think in the next kind of war, space warfare will be a big part of it, right?
0:08:22 Like if you can knock out satellites, you can like, you know, cut down on Starlink and all of this kind of communication.
0:08:26 You can remove the visual side of things, right?
0:08:27 Like these kind of satellites that are viewing things.
0:08:29 You can knock out GPS.
0:08:32 So some of that actually happened during the Ukraine war.
0:08:37 There was like some, you know, there’s some rumors about like some satellites being knocked out.
0:08:38 But I think that’s going to be a big thing.
0:08:42 So the counter to that is how do you create defense around satellites, right?
0:08:47 How do you, maybe you’ll have like stealth, equivalent of stealth satellites, right?
0:08:58 Like you kind of only move them when like the sun is kind of obscuring the viewpoint and you move them to a place and then obscure them completely so they’re not reflective.
0:09:00 Yeah, I know.
0:09:03 There’s a ton of ideas around like defensive kind of stuff in space as well.
0:09:10 So what I like about what you just said is that there’s probably three core things I think about when it comes to great ideas.
0:09:13 And I will differentiate a great idea from a good idea.
0:09:15 So on this podcast, a lot of times we’ll talk about good ideas.
0:09:19 A good idea means a business where there is demand.
0:09:21 There might even be competition.
0:09:22 It might even be established.
0:09:24 But that gives you a bit of a playbook.
0:09:26 And it’s not going to be winner take all.
0:09:27 There’s room for everybody to eat.
0:09:39 And a good idea, what it profiles out to is that you make millions of dollars, maybe tens of million dollars, maybe a couple hundred million dollars with a higher likelihood of success.
0:09:46 But you’ll pretty much never get to the billion dollar or sort of groundbreaking new category creation type of companies doing that.
0:09:50 And what you’re talking about is a different criteria for great ideas.
0:09:53 And a great idea, I would say there’s three tests.
0:09:54 The first is the Peter Thiel test.
0:09:59 So famously, Thiel went to YC and he was asked to give a talk.
0:10:02 And he went and he drew two circles on the whiteboard, like a Venn diagram.
0:10:08 And he basically said, he colored in the middle and he labeled one circle sounds like a bad idea.
0:10:11 And the other circle was, is actually a good idea.
0:10:18 And he’s like, you’re looking for the overlap because the best ideas sound initially like a bad idea, but actually are a good idea.
0:10:22 And so now that’s hard to do because you don’t know what’s actually a good idea.
0:10:24 You have to sort of think for yourself there.
0:10:36 But what it is good at is it sort of reminds you not to run away if your initial idea sounds a little crazy, sounds a little out there or, or, you know, eight out of 10 people who first hear it say, nah, no way.
0:10:36 Right.
0:10:42 And so you, so that’s the first thing is like a great idea typically comes disguised as a bad idea.
0:10:45 The second thing is some inflection point.
0:10:51 So you talked about how for space, suddenly if SpaceX is doing eight trips in a week, right?
0:10:58 It’s like going to space went from somewhat impossible to possible now a regular thing.
0:11:03 It’s like, oh, I could just hitch a ride on one of these trips and the trips are getting cheaper and cheaper every year.
0:11:10 Or somebody is already taking a payload up and I can just add something to it or I can build on top of their satellite platform that’s already, already going to be up there.
0:11:13 So I think that’s a huge inflection like you’re talking about.
0:11:16 The other one you talked about with defense is autonomy.
0:11:24 So just the ability to make things self-driving, self-flying, self, you know, self-swimming, you know, just basically give a thing eyes.
0:11:30 And now it has a brain because of AI and suddenly you can take humans out of the equation for, for that job.
0:11:35 And when it comes to like warfare or defense, great, because that’s, you know, lives saved when you do that.
0:11:38 So, you know, you have these inflections.
0:11:40 So that’s thing number two.
0:11:44 And thing three, I would say is scares everybody off.
0:11:55 So like, you know, you were saying AI in general, like, you know, if I said I’m building an AI agent startup, that’s probably like the biggest bloodbath competition right now.
0:12:00 But you’re kind of right that smart, capable teams that are doing interesting things in space.
0:12:05 There’s still like way more opportunity and way less versus the number of teams pursuing them.
0:12:14 And same thing in defense that, you know, still the average smart, capable team is not not going after that right now.
0:12:17 And so there’s just like a lot of room and, you know, these are huge TAMs, right?
0:12:22 So obviously, like, you know, space and satellites, that’s a that’s a huge market.
0:12:26 And then defense is obviously huge, especially as you said, the whole world is rearming.
0:12:34 So it kind of hits all three, even though my first reaction, when you say nuclear power plant in space, I’m like, I don’t even that breaks my brain a little bit.
0:12:35 I don’t even know what that means.
0:12:36 It’s not even possible.
0:12:45 I kind of like the underlying thought process you have going in, even though I don’t fully get the like, you know, the end product idea, because I just don’t know anything about the space.
0:12:52 Yeah, I mean, I have like some simple ideas that are maybe good, but not great, but like, you know, more achievable.
0:12:55 Here’s a fun one I thought about last night.
0:12:57 I thought it’d be fun to have a billboard in space.
0:13:00 The first ads in space.
0:13:06 So I had this, like a few years ago, I was like going camping, and I didn’t have internet.
0:13:10 And like, yeah, there was this like Starlink satellite launch.
0:13:14 I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but like, I think they fixed it so it doesn’t do this.
0:13:15 But they basically launched the satellite.
0:13:17 So they were like, they were kind of positioning them.
0:13:18 So they were all visible.
0:13:22 And there was like 20 in a string in space.
0:13:24 And you could see the naked eye.
0:13:24 Like with a telescope?
0:13:25 Oh, just naked eye.
0:13:26 No, just naked eye.
0:13:27 You just look up and there’s like a string.
0:13:29 And initially I was like, are those stars?
0:13:29 Are they UFOs?
0:13:34 Because they’re like, yeah, they’re like very bright, like they’re brighter than a star.
0:13:40 But they’re like, they’re like completely in a line and they’re moving quite fast because they’re in like LEO, right?
0:13:43 But I was like, oh, that’s kind of sick.
0:13:49 Like, you know, you can literally as a human, like launch this thing that changes like everyone’s view from Earth.
0:13:50 Right.
0:13:51 I thought that was like kind of insane.
0:13:58 But yeah, I think, I don’t think it’d be that hard to put a billboard in space and make it so you could view it from a telescope.
0:14:03 I don’t think you could do it like, I mean, you could probably do the natural eye thing, but like obviously people will complain.
0:14:07 But making it so you could view it with the telescope, I think would be actually kind of cool.
0:14:08 And then people would like buy that.
0:14:11 So this one’s more a good idea.
0:14:12 I mean, I don’t think that’s a billion dollar idea, but.
0:14:18 Well, do you remember, there was a whole service around buying and naming stars.
0:14:19 Do you remember this?
0:14:22 This was kind of like a big idea in the 90s, maybe early 2000s.
0:14:25 The free body problem, that’s like one of the ideas.
0:14:26 I haven’t actually read it.
0:14:28 No, it’s like on my kind of to-do to-read list.
0:14:32 But we, back in the day, we had this business called Birthday Alarm.
0:14:37 And Birthday Alarm was like to remind you of when it’s your friends and family’s birthday.
0:14:40 And then you could send an e-card, just like a greeting, you know, animated e-card.
0:14:50 But there was this company that had approached us that was like, hey, if you add the gift of naming a star after someone, you get a certificate, blah, blah, blah.
0:14:55 And it was like, whatever, 30 bucks to buy a star in someone’s name.
0:14:58 And that company was doing like 20 million a year, I remember.
0:15:00 And it was just like a couple of guys.
0:15:02 And they approached us to that.
0:15:03 We said no.
0:15:09 But when we had gotten to know them, I was stunned that they were doing, you know, that much revenue, at least at that time.
0:15:14 I do think it was a bit of a fad, but still, that was very impressive to me.
0:15:22 I thought the other one that would be kind of cool is like, you know, when I die, it would be cool to send, like, I actually don’t want to be cremated.
0:15:24 But if I was cremated, it would be cool to send some ash to space.
0:15:29 Having like some sort of memorabilia being sent to space, I think it’s kind of interesting as well.
0:15:30 And that would be easier.
0:15:36 And the more practical ideas, I do think intelligence as a service is kind of like an interesting idea.
0:15:38 So you mentioned AI agents.
0:15:41 So there’s tons of these companies going after these big categories, right?
0:15:44 Like this AI SDRs, AI customer support agents.
0:15:49 I haven’t seen too many companies kind of go after more niche ideas where people are willing to pay.
0:15:53 So AI SAT tutor, right?
0:16:01 Like imagine, like actually, like AI is great at education because A, like the content is like extremely easy for AI to do.
0:16:03 Structure, yeah.
0:16:03 Yeah.
0:16:05 B, it can be completely personalized.
0:16:07 C, it’s just extremely patient, right?
0:16:13 Like, I mean, when I try to teach my 13-year-old, I’m like pulling my hair out after like a few minutes.
0:16:21 So there’s a whole class of like, you know, you take any test and you could probably make an AI agent that’s like great at that and great at teaching that.
0:16:25 So like you could do the bar exam, you could do MCAT or whatever the doctors do.
0:16:26 That’s such a no-brainer.
0:16:27 Is that somebody doing that?
0:16:28 Somebody has to be doing that, right?
0:16:29 Because-
0:16:31 I haven’t heard of anyone doing a great job of it.
0:16:33 Yeah, nobody’s won yet, which is amazing.
0:16:42 But like, you know, you look at Kaplan and you look at the big test prep companies, they were built like decade, like many decades ago, right?
0:16:52 And they were built in the, I mean, I used to buy like those giant books with, you know, the practice tests and them from Princeton, I think Princeton Review or whoever, when I was studying for the SATs.
0:16:55 And then sure, it moved to like video and online after that.
0:16:57 But now you’re right.
0:17:04 Like if you just did AI, a personal one-on-one tutor, I think that’s, you know, obviously, that’s obviously the best.
0:17:12 I don’t know if you’ve seen the studies of like, or if you write about the like the two-saving thing when it comes to tutoring, it’s basically like nothing has shown as measurable.
0:17:15 Of an effect as one-on-one tutoring and education yet.
0:17:21 And it’s basically, the problem for a long time was, I think, I think you basically would get something like two standard deviations above the mean.
0:17:26 And by the way, this is kind of debated and people say, no, that was, it was measured wrong and it’s not true.
0:17:28 I think intuitively it’s like feels right.
0:17:31 Like when I’m learning something, if I talk to someone, like-
0:17:36 If I had a gun to my head and it was get the best grade possible on this test, right?
0:17:40 If my life depended on it, would I choose just showing up cold?
0:17:41 No.
0:17:44 Would I choose just a book where I self-paced and self-study?
0:17:44 No.
0:17:46 Would I choose a library of videos?
0:17:47 No.
0:17:53 If it was like a tutor comes to my house and sits with me for six hours a day and that’s how I study for this, I’d be like, that’s my best shot.
0:18:05 And if it was the smartest, most patient tutor with infinite knowledge and knew exactly where my level was and was ready to work with me the moment I was ready to do it, all times of the day, right?
0:18:06 That’s an AI tutor.
0:18:20 So I think that’s kind of great because it’s so scoped to, you know, one specific test, which people are not doing because they voluntarily want to, you know, educate themselves.
0:18:24 But like, I need to pay X dollars to get Y grade to get into Z college.
0:18:25 Yeah, you’re willing to pay.
0:18:35 Yeah, I think like the good ideas right now in these kind of AI agent, whatever things are like these like kind of more nichey ideas that you can expand from later, right?
0:18:38 Rather than trying to do like all tutoring, right?
0:18:40 I think that’s actually like quite a hard problem and AI is not quite there yet.
0:18:46 Like if you pick just one thing and you just like completely nail it, then you can always expand from there as well.
0:18:47 Right, right, right.
0:18:48 I like that.
0:18:51 What are some of the most interesting companies you’ve invested in recently?
0:18:59 So is there any company that’s like taking off or doing well that you feel like more people should know about, but they don’t know about it yet?
0:19:04 You know, this is like what I put as like intelligence as a service company.
0:19:08 So I’m an investor in 11X, which does kind of AI SDRs.
0:19:12 And I’m also an investor in Decagon that does kind of AI customer support agents.
0:19:17 You know, they just have like these insane numbers.
0:19:24 I don’t think they’re public, but, you know, you hear about these companies that are going from like zero to a hundred million in like, you know, two years or three years or whatever.
0:19:31 Like all of these ones that hit where they’re like, you know, like the equation is very simple from a company perspective.
0:19:35 It’s like, hey, I’m paying a ton of money for customer support or SDR.
0:19:42 Like if you can do the same task with some sort of like fallback to humans at half the price, sure, let’s do it.
0:19:42 Right.
0:19:54 So there’s definitely across a bunch of these spaces and the big ones are like, you know, sales, customer support, legal, accounting, a bunch of these.
0:19:56 And I’m an investor in like many of these companies.
0:19:59 There’s definitely like a moment where like they’re really winning.
0:20:05 And obviously it’s still early, but it seems obvious to me that like a bunch of these things will be delivered by AI.
0:20:16 So on the other side, every company that has sales or SCS or whatever, the CEO, the board is saying like, hey, how do you make yourself more efficient through AI?
0:20:29 Right. So the buyers are like really looking for solutions and anyone, there’s not that many actual, in each of these spaces, there are a lot of companies, but like it’s normally it’s really hard to do enterprise sales, right?
0:20:31 Like this is like a nine month, 12 month cycle.
0:20:38 But when you have like buyers that are just like, hey, I need to deploy something to show something that I’m like, I’m doing stuff in AI.
0:20:45 It creates this like moment where you can actually like have this explosive enterprise sales growth, which is actually very rare.
0:20:47 It only happens like in these kind of rare trends.
0:20:54 All right, my friends, I have exciting news for that business idea that’s been sitting in your notes app.
0:21:01 The Hustle, which is my old company, has partnered with IndieHackers, one of my favorite websites, to launch a pitch competition.
0:21:03 It’s called The Hustle’s Big Break.
0:21:06 And it’s a pitch competition with a simple premise.
0:21:12 You tell us your business idea in 60 seconds or less, and the winner gets $5,000 to turn it into a reality.
0:21:13 Here’s how it works.
0:21:16 Record a 60 second video pitch of your business idea.
0:21:19 Include your business name, description, revenue model, and tagline.
0:21:24 And finally, submit it at the hustle.co slash big break.
0:21:26 And it all has to be done by April 4th.
0:21:30 The winner gets $5,000 in cash to kickstart their business journey.
0:21:35 Plus, we’re going to feature them in The Hustle’s daily newsletter, which is read by around a million and a half people.
0:21:38 And these are the smartest business and tech folks out there.
0:21:41 The winner will be announced on April 11th.
0:21:46 So again, if you have a business idea, go to the hustle.co slash big break.
0:21:48 All right, back to the pod.
0:21:52 Would you, let’s say you weren’t doing Mercury right now.
0:21:55 You had all your free time and you know everything you know today.
0:21:59 And you wanted to find an AI idea, a winning AI idea.
0:22:01 What would be your process?
0:22:09 Like, explain to me how Imad finds, like, kind of comes up with the ideas and vets them and sort of figures out what idea to do versus what idea not to do.
0:22:13 I approach things like both top-down and bottom-up.
0:22:18 So top-down, and I actually did this as part of, like, your podcast prep stuff.
0:22:25 You know, I went to ChatGPT and said, like, hey, tell me every human worker in the U.S. that, like, does knowledge work.
0:22:31 Give me a list of all of them and tell me how much labor costs across each of them, right?
0:22:32 So that’s very top-down.
0:22:37 And you’re like, okay, you know, there’s education, there’s medical, there’s lawyer, there’s accounting, there’s, yeah, whatever.
0:22:41 Like, all these, like, knowledge worker type things, like design, coding, et cetera.
0:22:42 So that’s, like, a top-down approach.
0:22:44 And you can say, okay, you know, here’s the most interesting.
0:22:46 And you could do, like, a matrix kind of thing.
0:22:48 It’s like, okay, here’s all the interesting ones.
0:22:48 Here’s the TAM.
0:22:50 Here’s all the companies that are in those spaces.
0:22:52 Here’s all the bits that are not done.
0:22:57 You know, here’s, yeah, maybe you want to avoid regulated spaces.
0:22:58 Or maybe you want to go all in on regulated spaces.
0:23:02 Maybe you’re like, hey, no one’s touching doctors because everyone’s scared of doctors.
0:23:07 Like, why don’t we just make an amazing doctor for, like, I don’t know, Africa or something?
0:23:10 Because, like, you know, there’s less regulation there and you can prove it out, et cetera.
0:23:14 So that’s one kind of top-down approach.
0:23:18 And then I’d also go bottoms-up and I’ll go, okay, you know, what gets me excited, right?
0:23:19 I love serving entrepreneurs.
0:23:22 So, like, because I’m an entrepreneur, all my friends are entrepreneurs.
0:23:24 I love the idea of, like, people making things.
0:23:27 So maybe I’d say, okay, you know, what are things entrepreneurs struggle with?
0:23:31 And, you know, one thing that I still don’t have a great solution for is, like, you know,
0:23:34 as a CEO, there’s so much knowledge across the company.
0:23:36 I’d love something that, you know, there’s a few companies doing this.
0:23:47 But I would love to have, like, an AI twin of Imad that, like, is, like, continuously absorbing all the knowledge across, like, the company and maybe across the internet and telling me stuff.
0:23:50 And it’s like, I think Imad should really pay attention to this.
0:23:59 And, like, even, like, I actually thought it would be kind of fun to make it so, like, on the Slack, like, there could be an Imad twin and someone could ask you questions.
0:24:01 Say, like, oh, what would Imad think of this idea?
0:24:07 Yeah, actually, like, a funny thing that just came up the other day, and I was like, I’m pretty sure my AI twin could answer this.
0:24:13 It’s like, someone was like, oh, you know, our boardroom is, like, kind of small, and we just added two people to the board.
0:24:16 Like, hey, should we do the board meeting at our law firm?
0:24:19 And I was like, no, fuck, no, I’m never going to do a board meeting at a law firm.
0:24:20 Like, that sounds awful.
0:24:24 I’d rather stuff, like, 16 people in a tiny room than do that.
0:24:28 So I feel like in my AI twin could have answered that question.
0:24:30 So that would be, like, my bottoms-up approach.
0:24:35 And I, yeah, I do think, like, you should really work on things that get you really excited.
0:24:38 Like, you know, an AISDR, like, I’m happy for those guys.
0:24:40 I personally would not get excited about that.
0:24:43 Like, I hate receiving sales emails and calls.
0:24:50 So I think doing things that you would, like, wake up in the morning and say, like, I’m excited to solve this problem.
0:24:52 Because, like, these things take such a long time, right?
0:24:54 Like, I’ve been doing Mercury now for, like, eight years.
0:25:01 And if I, you know, if I was doing something boring, I would, like, probably wake up in the morning or, like, why do I have to do this again?
0:25:05 So I think that’s, like, the bottoms-up approach where you try to think of, like, what do I care about?
0:25:07 What do I want to see in the future?
0:25:08 And try to come up with that.
0:25:11 And then, you know, you kind of merge those two kind of concepts together.
0:25:15 And, you know, often you do something and you find out, actually, it’s a bad idea as well.
0:25:22 So, you know, Mercury actually had, like, a very smooth ramp where it was, like, I was, like, okay, I like this idea.
0:25:24 And then I executed on the idea and we never had to pivot.
0:25:28 But, you know, often you do, like, as you learn something, you’re, like, oh, actually, this doesn’t make sense.
0:25:29 But this makes sense.
0:25:33 So, you know, that’s part of, like, ideation is to, like, actually go build things.
0:25:35 Do you, so let’s take an idea.
0:25:36 We’ll roleplay it real quick.
0:25:38 So pick one of the ideas.
0:25:41 Like, plausibly, you’d be, like, oh, yeah, that kind of checks the boxes.
0:25:44 It kind of top-down makes sense, bottoms up.
0:25:45 It resonates with me.
0:25:46 Like, what would be an example of that?
0:25:47 Is it the digital twin thing or is it?
0:25:49 Let’s do the, yeah, let’s do the digital twin.
0:25:50 I think that’s, like, kind of the most fun.
0:25:57 So you have a, you know, your digital twin CEO who’s basically reading all the slacks, the documents in Google Drive.
0:26:00 He knows everything about the contracts that are all there.
0:26:05 He looked at the, he has access to the CRM so he can see anything in the dashboards, et cetera.
0:26:07 All right.
0:26:09 So now, first few weeks, what are you doing?
0:26:12 Is it, like, I trust these five people.
0:26:13 I’m going to bounce the idea off them.
0:26:14 Do you make a deck?
0:26:15 Because that clarifies your thinking.
0:26:16 Do you just go build a prototype?
0:26:17 Do you go look at competition?
0:26:18 That’s a great question.
0:26:19 Where do you go next?
0:26:23 You know, with Mercury, I had this moment where, so, you know, we’d raise the money.
0:26:24 We were doing the thing.
0:26:30 And I was like, okay, you know, let me go talk to a bunch of, like, potential companies that could use this.
0:26:32 Like, you know, create, like, you know, create, like, a big pipeline.
0:26:34 And also just learn what it’s about.
0:26:36 And I talked to basically 100.
0:26:39 And I remember, like, getting kind of depressed after I talked to them.
0:26:40 Because I talked to 100.
0:26:42 Most of them were like, oh, yeah, that sounds kind of cool.
0:26:44 But, like, there was, it’s very lukewarm.
0:26:48 And it was only two of the 100 companies that were like, oh, yeah, like, I would fucking use this.
0:26:50 Like, give it to me right now kind of thing.
0:26:55 And at that point, like, you know, it was like, it took us a year and a half to build this.
0:26:56 So this was, like, one year in.
0:27:01 So, you know, you’re, like, you’re kind of running out of momentum anyway, because it’s taking so long to build something.
0:27:03 And then you go talk to 100 people, and everyone’s kind of lukewarm.
0:27:04 I was like, what am I doing?
0:27:08 But, you know, I was like, I would really want this.
0:27:10 So I just, like, powered through it.
0:27:17 And it turned out, you know, A, if 2% of people want something and the market’s big enough, that’s, like, probably big enough for, like, an early adopter base.
0:27:17 Right.
0:27:25 But if you think about it, like, you know, talking to 100 people and having only two people get excited about something is, like, actually, like, kind of, like, tricky.
0:27:30 And, you know, maybe I wouldn’t have talked to those two people, because, like, if I talked to 50 people, I might have missed out on it completely.
0:27:35 So I think it’s actually, like, surprisingly hard to vet an idea against humans.
0:27:38 Like, people just don’t know.
0:27:40 And it’s hard to imagine an idea as well.
0:27:47 So I, what I think I would do is, you know, I would do that talk, and I would go talk to some VCs as well.
0:27:52 Like, I’d talk to a bunch of users, I’d talk to some VCs, just get an idea of, like, what is the reception like?
0:27:55 But then I would, like, try to spend a lot of time.
0:28:04 And, you know, firstly, for me, like, one of the things that gets me excited about Mercury is that, you know, after, like, last year, we launched a bunch of new things.
0:28:08 Like, we launched invoicing and bill pay and reimbursements and personal banking.
0:28:12 And some ideas are, like, hit a dead end over time, right?
0:28:18 Like, you kind of do the idea, and then you end up, like, five years later, you’re just, like, making, like, small features and just selling it more, etc.
0:28:21 And then some ideas, like, turn out to, like, fork, like, a thousand ways.
0:28:28 And Mercury is one of those things because, A, there’s just so few people in banking that, like, a lot of these spaces are unexplored.
0:28:34 And, B, banking is, like, this kind of platform where it has all your money, it has all your finance team, so you can build a lot of things on top of it.
0:28:39 So I’d want to think about, like, okay, you know, if I did the digital twin idea, like, what are the forks?
0:28:42 Like, why does this become even more interesting the more users, like, you get on it?
0:28:47 And maybe the interesting thing is, like, okay, it’s not just a CEO twin, everyone at the company has a twin.
0:28:50 And maybe some of the people don’t even exist at the company.
0:28:56 Maybe these are, like, the, you know, maybe you have, like, a comms person at the company that’s just literally just AI.
0:28:58 I’m just, like, riffing off this.
0:29:02 Maybe your AI twin shows up at the Zoom calls.
0:29:07 Yeah, maybe it’s, like, becomes your coach and it’s, like, helping you through difficult times, right?
0:29:15 Like, I think there is, that is an idea that could probably fork a lot of ways because, like, it has all the knowledge, it learns a lot about you, it’s in your communication channels.
0:29:21 Like, it’s got these core ideas that, like, yeah, it sounds like a pretty good idea that we’re riffing on it.
0:29:22 Yeah, I’m getting excited.
0:29:23 Yeah.
0:29:32 Well, you also, with Mercury, you, it seems like, this may be too simple, but, like, it seems like you had been a founder for 10 plus years.
0:29:38 And you were, like, I don’t personally, like, have a banking product I love, but every startup needs a banking product.
0:29:39 So, I want to build for startups.
0:29:41 There’s nothing that anybody loves.
0:29:45 Maybe they don’t hate their thing or they don’t spend too much time thinking about it, but they don’t have one that they love.
0:29:48 And you basically built the one you would want.
0:29:52 And then the bet was that there’s going to be a lot of other founders that think like me, that like what I like.
0:29:55 Is that fair or is that oversimplifying it?
0:29:57 No, no.
0:29:58 That’s 100% fair.
0:30:01 I think, generally speaking, I’m a little unusual.
0:30:05 I get, like, if I have to call someone to do something, I get so annoyed about it.
0:30:10 Like, if I can, like, press a button, yeah, I will delay for weeks for sure.
0:30:11 But, like, if I have to do it.
0:30:15 And, like, that’s the way banks are after, you know, except for Mercury.
0:30:17 Like, you have to call to, like, get a wire done.
0:30:21 Like, you know, I don’t want to, like, I guess they’re kind of gone, so I can probably bitch about them a little bit.
0:30:26 But, like, First Republic, like, if you wanted to send a wire, like, you know, firstly, you tried to do it and you’d hit a limit.
0:30:27 So you call them, raise the limit.
0:30:31 And then you do it and, yeah, then it would go to the next phase.
0:30:33 And then they would call you and you’d have to authorize it.
0:30:35 Then someone else would have to call them.
0:30:39 It was like a multi-week process just to figure out how to send wires.
0:30:42 So I was like, this is what, so you guys started sponsoring me.
0:30:43 And I was like, all right, cool.
0:30:46 I have an idea for the ad read because I got six Mercury accounts myself.
0:30:47 So I was like, trust me, I already know.
0:30:49 You don’t need to give me the talking points.
0:30:50 I know why I use it.
0:30:52 And I was like, I know you have all these fancy features.
0:30:57 But, like, for me, as a founder, I move at a certain pace.
0:30:59 And as a founder, it’s one of the only advantages you have, right?
0:31:01 You don’t have the biggest team.
0:31:02 You don’t have the most money.
0:31:03 You don’t have a lot of things.
0:31:04 You don’t have the most experience.
0:31:07 You don’t have a brand in the market that everybody knows.
0:31:11 But, like, your pace is the one thing that you have that all the big companies don’t have.
0:31:17 The problem is if you just start hitting walls because you can’t move fast, that becomes very problematic.
0:31:19 So, like, I like to have an idea.
0:31:22 I like to buy a domain on GoDaddy in two seconds, right?
0:31:25 I like to file my – if I have a trademark, I like to just be able to file it online.
0:31:28 I want to talk to a lawyer and schedule a call if I want to start a bank.
0:31:32 And those little things, they sound like one-offs, but they add up and they create momentum.
0:31:34 And momentum begets momentum.
0:31:39 And so I just will always default to using any tool that can operate at founder speed.
0:31:41 So with Mercury, it was like, oh, cool.
0:31:42 I can just type.
0:31:43 Don’t have to talk to any human being.
0:31:44 Don’t have to call anybody.
0:31:46 Don’t have to drive and park somewhere.
0:31:48 And I can get my bank account open.
0:31:49 I can get money in.
0:31:54 And I can wire money because I used to wire for my e-com business out of Wells Fargo.
0:32:01 And I would have to – every single month, just to pay our suppliers, I’d have to drive to a Wells Fargo bank, make an appointment, which I always forget to do, go inside.
0:32:02 They gave me this freaking T-fob.
0:32:04 It takes like a freaking hour to do it, yeah.
0:32:07 They gave me this thing like it’s the nuclear codes and I had to have that.
0:32:12 And then it’s like – and then I had to sit there in an hour and then she would ask me questions and I’d have to make sure that the number is right.
0:32:15 And I’m like, dude, I wish I could just copy, paste, push a button and be done with this.
0:32:17 And then I had to get my limits raised.
0:32:21 Then they had to call another lady to raise the limits because they would only let me do 50K or 100K at a time.
0:32:23 It was super annoying.
0:32:32 And so it’s amazing that literally just feeling like, okay, these people get me and they’ll build a product that moves at my speed, how important that was.
0:32:33 And I also then took that to hiring.
0:32:40 I was like, oh, my best hiring heuristic is basically did this person speed up the pace, keep pace, or slow down pace?
0:32:49 And anybody who slows down pace for me, even if they have other strengths, I found that it rarely works out to work with somebody who operates at a slower speed.
0:32:54 Like, if we have a discussion or an idea, and you’re like, cool, I’ll get to you next week.
0:32:56 It’s like, wait, wait, wait, we said this was important.
0:32:58 Yeah, yeah, let’s just get it done.
0:32:59 There’s still eight hours left in the day.
0:33:00 What are you talking about?
0:33:02 Like, how long could that possibly take you?
0:33:05 And it’s not that they won’t do it.
0:33:09 It’s just if their default expectation, if their default clock speed is slow, it’s just not going to work.
0:33:12 I want my software fast and my employees fast.
0:33:12 Yeah.
0:33:18 So actually, you know, like, once you describe that process, like, it sounds awful.
0:33:23 So I think, like, there’s, like, people just get used to being abused by the current products, right?
0:33:30 Like, I think it’s, in some ways, like, because I came from the UK, I didn’t, I didn’t, I had a slightly better expectation of banking.
0:33:34 Like, you know, in the UK, you can move money instantly.
0:33:36 And, like, the software was better for various reasons.
0:33:42 So I think there’s, like, some element of the fact that, like, I had this outsider perspective as an immigrant.
0:33:52 And I do think that’s, like, part of it, that, like, people in America were, like, okay with once a month having to, like, drive to Wells Fargo to do something basic and, like, having this, like, painful process.
0:33:54 And, like, beg them to let me do something with my own money.
0:33:55 Yeah, exactly.
0:33:56 Like, convince them.
0:33:57 And sometimes they say no.
0:33:58 Yeah.
0:34:01 Dude, the term abuse is so good.
0:34:03 It’s, like, that’s going to be a new filter for me on ideas.
0:34:07 Is, can I describe the current abuse that the product is doing?
0:34:12 Like, I was in this conversation the other day and it was, like, super, it was, I went to that dialogue conference.
0:34:13 I don’t know if you’ve ever been, but, like.
0:34:13 Oh, yeah.
0:34:14 And look at this.
0:34:16 This is the dialogue cup I have.
0:34:16 Oh, perfect, perfect.
0:34:19 So I went there last, like, two days ago or whatever.
0:34:24 And in the room was, like, the CEO of Renaissance Technology, like, the Renaissance, like, the best investors in the world.
0:34:27 The CEO of Bridgewater, like, it was basically, like, the who’s who.
0:34:31 And in the money conversation, it’s, like, a group of 10 people.
0:34:34 In the money conversation, the topic of crypto came up.
0:34:43 And somebody who was a dean of a very famous university was basically, like, arguing that, you know, crypto, I don’t know.
0:34:44 I’m not convinced.
0:34:47 And I just sort of, it was the abuse thing.
0:34:52 So I was, like, so you, he’s, like, you want to park your money in something like the dollar, right?
0:34:52 Cool.
0:34:53 Got it.
0:34:54 I understand a bunch of reasons why.
0:35:05 But the abuse that was normalized was, so the dollar, which has a whole arm, the Fed, whose job is to have a 2% to 3% target inflation.
0:35:06 Oh, oops.
0:35:07 Sometimes we go way above that.
0:35:09 But we’ll try to get back to 2% to 3%.
0:35:14 And I was, like, so your default expectation is that in 30 years, your purchasing power is cut in half.
0:35:23 That’s, like, the accepted financial abuse of saving all your money in U.S. dollars is that every 30 years, your purchasing power gets cut in half.
0:35:26 It’s a lot worse than that because of, like, asset appreciation, right?
0:35:32 Like, people don’t think about it, but, like, you know, like, houses and a lot of other things are, like, way above inflation.
0:35:38 Inflation even measured where it doesn’t include your house or your rent, like, you know, like the kind of screwed up version of inflation.
0:35:47 Even that, even that, like, the adjusted EBITDA of inflation, right, where it’s, like, this specific basket, even that’s supposed to be 3%.
0:35:53 So it’s, like, that’s a system where that abuse of, like, what, of savers getting penalized, right?
0:35:56 Anybody who saves gets penalized in the dollar system.
0:35:58 But it’s a blind spot.
0:36:01 People really don’t, they’ve accepted that abuse.
0:36:05 They’re so used to that abuse that it’s just taken as fine.
0:36:06 You know, it’s not even a problem.
0:36:08 It’s not even, like, a known problem for them.
0:36:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:36:16 I mean, I think part of the reason it’s not a problem for, like, richer people is because they get the asset appreciation, right?
0:36:18 So, like, you know, people aren’t sitting on cash.
0:36:31 It’s, unfortunately, a lot of the abuse actually happens to, like, poorer businesses and, like, poorer people where they have to sit in cash because, you know, they don’t have, they’re living paycheck to paycheck and, like, most of their money is not in assets.
0:36:32 Right.
0:36:34 So I think that part is, like, particularly sad.
0:36:38 I don’t necessarily think crypto is the only answer there, right?
0:36:39 Like, you could buy gold, you could buy stocks.
0:36:43 Bitcoin has obviously done particularly well in the last 10 years.
0:36:49 But, yeah, it’s definitely, like, something where, like, there’s something a bit weird about the system for sure.
0:36:50 Yeah, exactly.
0:36:55 You can debate the solutions, but the problem seems, like, not debatable, but it’s just accepted.
0:36:56 It’s an accepted abuse.
0:37:02 Tell me, you guys had this crazy situation where Silicon Valley Bank goes through this crisis.
0:37:10 Tell me where you were when that happened and then what the next, I don’t know, 24, 48 hours, what did that look like and what happened to Mercury during that time?
0:37:18 Because it seems like you were the big, you were a big beneficiary of that situation in terms of customers coming to you guys or adoption.
0:37:19 Yeah.
0:37:24 I mean, to set the scene, right, like, SVB has been around one year longer than I was alive.
0:37:26 So it was, like, started in 1983.
0:37:27 So I always remember that.
0:37:33 And when, you know, when I was working on Mercury, right, like, SVB is part of the seed deck, right?
0:37:36 It’s like, hey, this is the 800-pound gorilla.
0:37:38 Like, this is what everyone in the Silicon Valley uses.
0:37:41 At that point, they were, like, worth $16 billion.
0:37:43 And I think at peak COVID, they were worth $40 billion.
0:37:45 So this is a big company.
0:37:52 So, you know, when this started happening, you know, I wasn’t, we had obviously been competing against each other.
0:37:58 But, you know, it was, like, kind of a weirdly indirect competition in the sense that, like, SVB just offers something very different, right?
0:38:03 Like, this is, like, the stolid Silicon Valley Bank that’s been around forever.
0:38:06 And then Mercury is, you know, this upstart fintech, right?
0:38:09 Like, so, and, like, you know, we used SVB in my previous company.
0:38:10 I like those guys.
0:38:12 Like, they were, like, they were friendly.
0:38:14 They, like, cared about startups.
0:38:16 I mean, their software wasn’t great, but none of the banks had great software.
0:38:20 So, like, to be clear, I didn’t feel anything bad about them.
0:38:23 And I felt really bad for the people there.
0:38:26 And, you know, I thought they’d be fine, right?
0:38:29 Like, when Thursday rolled along, I was like, hey, everyone’s freaking out.
0:38:31 Like, people, like, panicking about things on the internet.
0:38:35 Did you find out about it at the same time as all the rest of us?
0:38:38 Or did you have some inkling or some foresight that that might happen?
0:38:46 In the December, like, so most of the bank run happened to SVB in March 2023.
0:38:56 In December 2022, there was, like, this article about, like, the fact that the MSPs, the mortgage-backed security, MBS, the mortgage-backed securities were, like, massively underwater.
0:39:01 There even been some VCs that had freaked out and, like, pulled their portfolio companies out.
0:39:04 So, I had seen some of those rumors in that December 2022.
0:39:12 But, again, like, yeah, people was calling some crisis and, you know, like, if you want to, like, right now, there’s someone freaking out about something.
0:39:14 So, like, my default is to ignore that stuff.
0:39:19 But, yeah, I mean, on Wednesday, it kind of kicked off.
0:39:22 And, like, you know, we started seeing, like, just people were freaking out.
0:39:25 And they were like, hey, how quickly can I get a Mercury Bank again, right?
0:39:29 And it went from, like, you know, normally, like, banking.
0:39:31 Like, people don’t want to switch banking services, right?
0:39:34 Like, this is a lot of the customers that Mercury wins are, like, a day zero.
0:39:36 Like, you just start a new business.
0:39:37 You don’t have a bank account.
0:39:37 You need something.
0:39:38 And we’re there for you.
0:39:40 It’s much harder for us to switch people.
0:39:46 So, yeah, we obviously, like, hitting up every startup in Silicon Valley with, like, our sales team and other marketing stuff.
0:39:49 Did you have, like, a kind of emergency meeting?
0:39:51 Like, hey, here’s the game plan?
0:39:54 Or how did you organize that to, like, sprint?
0:39:58 Yeah, my initial thing was, like, hey, you know, I was, like, we do not say a word of this publicly.
0:40:01 Like, we don’t want to, like, jump on the misfortune.
0:40:05 But anyone that comes to Mercury, let’s, like, support them.
0:40:07 And we did a bunch of things.
0:40:08 So, we changed the product.
0:40:14 So, you know, we’re, like, hey, if you’re a non-SVB customer, we can always onboard you next week, right?
0:40:14 Right.
0:40:18 But if you’re coming from SVB, let’s make it in just two and a half an hour.
0:40:26 So, we, you know, we had this Plaid connection thing, and we put that right at the top, and we said above it, SVB customer, connect your SVB, and we’ll, like, prioritize you.
0:40:31 And, like, SVB customers were really easy to prioritize because they’re, like, you know, they tended to have more money.
0:40:34 They’re already vetted by a bank.
0:40:35 They’re not new customers.
0:40:41 You know, we basically, like, tried to think of all the ways we could speed up the process for them.
0:40:43 And we really focused on just providing that process.
0:40:46 Was it, like, 2x, 5x, 10x normal?
0:40:47 Like, what did you see?
0:40:50 So, right now, Mercury has, like, 200,000 customers.
0:40:53 And we had, like, maybe 100,000 back then.
0:40:58 But, yeah, SVB had a lot of money, but not, like, an insane number of customers.
0:41:03 So, I want to say they had, like, 30,000 or 40,000 kind of total customers.
0:41:08 So, the volume was big in terms of dollars, but not necessarily in terms of, like, numbers.
0:41:09 It was significant.
0:41:15 I think what we published is, like, around 8,000 customers moved over to us, like, in a two-week time period.
0:41:20 Yeah, which is, like, big, but not, like, crazy compared to, like, the normal kind of monthly growth we get.
0:41:21 Right.
0:41:27 So, the other thing we did is, you know, everyone was saying to us, like, hey, SVB failed.
0:41:29 Like, why won’t Mercury fail?
0:41:35 And, you know, I would say to people, like, verbally, it’s like, hey, you know, we’re not a bank ourselves.
0:41:36 We work with partner banks.
0:41:40 And your money is, like, has extra FDIC insurance.
0:41:43 So, at that time, we had 1 million in FDIC insurance.
0:41:52 And then I would say, okay, you know, after, if you have more than a million, put the rest of it in U.S. government, T-bill, mutual funds, which we have as part of the platform.
0:41:55 So, I would say this over and over again to people.
0:42:01 But, obviously, like, you know, if MR says, like, hey, your money’s safe, like, that’s not very fulfilling, right?
0:42:04 Like, the SVB CEO was also saying your money’s safe.
0:42:06 So, what we did over that.
0:42:06 So, did Sam Bankman free.
0:42:07 Yeah, exactly.
0:42:10 So, I was like, that’s the one thing I don’t want to say online.
0:42:12 So, what we did over that weekend is we built this product.
0:42:13 It was called Mercury Vault.
0:42:16 And it would basically visualize where your money is.
0:42:21 We’d say, okay, you know, this much of it is in FDIC insured account up to this much.
0:42:25 So, if you had, you know, and we also actually worked with our partner banks to extend the FDIC insurance.
0:42:27 So, we went from 1 million to 5 million over that week.
0:42:33 So, it’s, you know, if you had 6 million in your Mercury checking account, we’d say, okay, 1 million of that is no FDIC insured, 5 million is.
0:42:37 And then, you know, we’d help you set up your treasury system.
0:42:39 So, you’d put in U.S. government T-bills.
0:42:42 So, we built this product and that really worked.
0:42:45 Like, it’s so powerful.
0:42:49 So, you used product to build trust instead of words.
0:42:50 Yes.
0:42:52 And it’s also spoke to the moment.
0:42:58 It’s like, okay, you know, instead of us, like, hiding away from it, we weren’t saying, like, you know, let’s not talk about whether your money is safe or not.
0:43:00 We were like, okay, let’s show you, right?
0:43:05 Like, you know, you don’t have to, like, trust, like, Imad’s word or, like, some marketing.
0:43:07 Like, we were like, here’s a product that shows you.
0:43:10 And it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t, like, something completely new.
0:43:15 Like, this basically, like, my general view on things is, like, if you’re saying something over and over,
0:43:20 if customer support is doing something over and over, like, how do you make that in the product so, like, people don’t have to ask you.
0:43:21 And it’s just so much more powerful.
0:43:23 Like, it feels tangible to people.
0:43:30 It also just felt to people, like, okay, you know, instead of us going to another bank that could also get a run,
0:43:35 we’re going to something where, like, you get this extra FDIC insurance and Mercury’s a fintech.
0:43:38 It’s not, you know, at that point, like, you know, like, we are not holding your money.
0:43:40 The money never touches Mercury’s bank account.
0:43:41 And it never does.
0:43:45 Like, it goes to our partner banks and they have an FDIC sweep network.
0:43:48 So, that was really important to people that, like, we were speaking with product.
0:43:51 And, like, it’s also, you know, I think entrepreneurs appreciate that, right?
0:43:58 Like, the one, like, the fact that, like, we spend the weekend building a product for them that, like, actually answered their biggest question,
0:44:01 like, made people go, like, oh, shit, like, Mercury gets it, right?
0:44:03 Like, I think that was, like, a really powerful moment for us.
0:44:05 Yeah, that’s dope.
0:44:06 You have this…
0:44:13 Also, I actually felt good as an entrepreneur because, like, I think sometimes, you know, when there’s a crisis moment,
0:44:17 you can feel a little bit, like, it’s like, oh, man, what am I supposed to do here?
0:44:19 Like, obviously, you can talk to customers and things like that.
0:44:21 But building product is, like, what we are about.
0:44:24 So, as an entrepreneur, I was like, okay, you know, let’s spend the weekend.
0:44:26 Everyone, like, let’s go do this.
0:44:28 Like, you know, it gave you, like, something really tangible to do.
0:44:37 So, actually, the whole team, like, thinks, like, even, I guess, two years later, like, we, yeah, the whole team is, like, hey, we worked that whole weekend.
0:44:38 We built this product together.
0:44:45 Like, everyone’s, like, still, like, excited about that moment because, like, it, like, it did the thing that we were good at doing to solve that problem.
0:44:46 Yeah, yeah.
0:44:49 You got the adrenaline rush, but you stayed in character.
0:44:52 You didn’t go out of character and try to do something that you don’t normally do.
0:44:56 You have these philosophies that you sent over.
0:44:59 One of them maybe is related to what we just talked about.
0:45:02 It’s go all in on asymmetric upside bets.
0:45:03 Yeah.
0:45:04 Can you unpack that?
0:45:11 I feel like a lot of people kind of try entrepreneurship or do things, but they don’t go all in on them.
0:45:22 And, you know, when I did my first startup for seven months in the UK, and I was like, you know, it was really a moment for me where, like, I was like, okay, this is what life is about for me.
0:45:28 Like, I was very, you know, I did college, I did computer science, but I was never, like, that excited about it.
0:45:30 I just did it because I was good at it.
0:45:31 And it was kind of fun.
0:45:33 And then I worked at a job and I hated it.
0:45:36 I worked at Bloomberg for a year and I was like, wow.
0:45:39 Like, you know, I was worried that that’s what life is, right?
0:45:45 Like having this, like, grind and like, and then, and then, you know, one of my friends was like, hey, let’s do this, like, startup thing.
0:45:47 And I was like, okay, you know, let’s try it out.
0:45:52 And I, and that was like the first time I did something where I was like, oh shit, like, this is so much fun.
0:45:54 And that startup did nothing, right?
0:46:02 Like it went nowhere, had no users, but just the idea of like working 9am to like midnight, building something myself and launching it.
0:46:07 Like, I just, I don’t know, there’s just something about it that like, so speaks to like my core.
0:46:11 So I was like, okay, if I want to do this, you know, what is, where can I do this the greatest?
0:46:18 And at the time was San Francisco, I would still say San Francisco, but at that time it was like a hundred percent, like I had to be here to do it.
0:46:21 So I was just like, you know, had basically no money.
0:46:22 I backed up my stuff.
0:46:27 I did get into Y Combinator with my second startup and moved to San Francisco.
0:46:31 And I just spent, you know, even in that seven months when I was in London, I was all in.
0:46:34 Like I was, I would like code and build this thing all day.
0:46:37 And then I would go to every single event that was possible to go to.
0:46:41 And like, honestly, half of them, or maybe all of them were a waste of time, but just, you know,
0:46:47 you just, if you work really, really hard and you do all the things, you’ll eventually like build up a network, right?
0:46:54 That’s how, actually, like the way I came to San Francisco is I met someone through this, like just extreme networking I did.
0:46:57 And they’d already got into Y Combinator and they needed a technical co-founder.
0:47:00 And I was like, okay, you know, I want to go to San Francisco, so I’ll join you guys.
0:47:07 So I think like, I just feel like a lot of people that do things just kind of half do them.
0:47:11 They’re like, oh, you know, it’s my side gig and I’m doing this thing.
0:47:12 And I’m like, you know, whatever.
0:47:15 I’d had no money when I quit my job to like do my first startup.
0:47:22 But like that kind of like forceful, like grind, like, where you’re just like all in on things,
0:47:28 that just pays dividends in a way that’s like half doing things just, I don’t think really does.
0:47:36 And I feel like, you know, over time, like going all in on things, like, you know, another part of my things is like going all in on family.
0:47:42 Like basically like I, you know, I married, like I met my wife three weeks before I moved to the U.S.
0:47:45 and I had a long distance relationship and then I married her.
0:47:49 And then we had a kid like two years later, which like I was the one, like the startup grind.
0:47:52 But I was just like, okay, you know, I’m all in on like having this family.
0:47:54 I don’t know.
0:48:00 So I just feel like going all in on things has just like this like big upside that like half doing things just doesn’t.
0:48:07 And I think the asymmetric side of it is like, you know, the worst thing that could happen to me is if my startup didn’t work,
0:48:08 I’d have to go and get another job.
0:48:14 So like basically like I was always like, okay, you know, at that point I was getting paid like 40,000 pounds a year or something.
0:48:19 So I was like, okay, you know, I’m losing 40,000 pounds a year in salary, maybe 50,000 if I get a raise or something.
0:48:23 But the asymmetric bet is like, you know, I could make a million or whatever.
0:48:25 But, you know, it’s also asymmetric life bet.
0:48:32 It’s like I could either like my downside was like, you know, I’m going to have a shitty time and not enjoy my life.
0:48:36 And my upside was like, I’ll have a great life that I’m extremely motivated and excited about.
0:48:42 So that to me is like extremely asymmetric, like doing things where you’re like extremely excited and like having fun.
0:48:44 Like that’s a rare gift, right?
0:48:48 Like I think a lot of people don’t do things that they enjoy every day.
0:48:50 And like, you know, I have some friends that are like that.
0:48:52 And like, it’s just kind of depressing talking to them.
0:49:02 Like having like the ability to do things that you really enjoy in life is such a such an important thing that like I think if you find something that is like that, you should go all in on that.
0:49:06 Hey, Sean here.
0:49:08 I want to tell you a little story about Winston Churchill.
0:49:13 So Churchill once said, first, we shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us.
0:49:19 And I think this is true, not just for the buildings we see in cities, but also for the building blocks you choose in your company.
0:49:22 For any company that I start, I use Mercury for all of my banking needs.
0:49:23 Why?
0:49:24 Well, it was built by a YC founder.
0:49:28 And you could tell this is built by a founder who understands the needs of other founders.
0:49:29 Second thing is, is modern.
0:49:31 It’s clean, easy to use.
0:49:32 The design is really nice.
0:49:37 You’d never have to drive somewhere, park, put coins in the meter, get out just to do one simple task.
0:49:39 You could do everything in just a couple of clicks.
0:49:43 They got bill pay, checking account, savings account, wire transfers, everything you need.
0:49:43 They got it.
0:49:46 I use it for not one, but actually six of my companies right now.
0:49:48 And I actually even have a personal account with them.
0:49:49 It’s kind of amazing.
0:49:53 So if you’re ready to operate in the future, head over to mercury.com, apply in minutes.
0:49:56 Disclaimer, Mercury is a financial technology company out of bank.
0:50:00 Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC.
0:50:03 Thank you to Winston Churchill for that little ad segment.
0:50:04 All right, back to this episode.
0:50:11 I love what you just said because I wrote going all in, right?
0:50:14 As a reminder, I have these note cards, which are usually just reminders.
0:50:18 Like the best information is not brand new information.
0:50:23 It’s just true information that I needed to hear again, needed to bring to the front of
0:50:25 mind, or I needed to remember in my current context.
0:50:32 And I think that the way you described it actually made it click for me in a new way, which is
0:50:34 going all in is a skill.
0:50:35 And I did the same thing as you.
0:50:37 I had a startup straight out of school.
0:50:42 And I had this idea and I was having all this fun with my friends.
0:50:45 And I was either going to go to med school as I had planned, took the MCATs, all that, or
0:50:46 I was going to do this startup.
0:50:49 I decided I’m going to do the startup thing, right?
0:50:50 Then I start with that.
0:50:52 And then I got this gravitational pull.
0:50:53 I got this job offer.
0:50:55 Somebody was going to pay me $120,000.
0:50:58 I had to move to Indonesia where the opportunity was.
0:51:02 But it was like this guaranteed salary, blah, blah, blah.
0:51:07 And I remember my co-founders, my two buddies, I was like, yeah, we told ourselves this stupid
0:51:09 story, which, you know, we’re always telling ourselves stories.
0:51:12 And I was like, I’m going to go, dude, the lessons I’m going to learn there are going to
0:51:14 be so useful for us.
0:51:17 Like, I didn’t have the courage to just say, I’m going there because I really want this
0:51:19 guaranteed kind of safe salary thing.
0:51:24 And instead, we told ourselves this story that I needed to learn business over there
0:51:25 before I could go do business here.
0:51:29 And within two months when I was there, I was like, this was a mistake.
0:51:31 I need to be all in.
0:51:33 And I quit my job.
0:51:34 I told the owner, I was like, hey, I’m out of here.
0:51:35 He’s like, what?
0:51:36 Like, it’s only been two months.
0:51:39 And I just told him, I was like, I need to see this through.
0:51:41 Like, I’ll always wonder, right?
0:51:42 Like, I kind of know what this is.
0:51:43 Same thing.
0:51:44 Like, I’m not like lit up every day.
0:51:45 I had more fun over there.
0:51:47 Yeah, there’s no guarantees over there.
0:51:50 But like, I think the guarantee of feeling lit up every day is going to be like good
0:51:51 for me in the long run.
0:51:54 So I flew back and I was like, all right, I’m all in.
0:51:55 And we moved.
0:51:56 That was the first thing.
0:51:58 Because I was like, is this the best place to build this company?
0:52:00 And if not, why are we building it here?
0:52:01 Just because we’re already here?
0:52:03 Like, that seemed like a terrible reason to just do it.
0:52:07 So we immediately moved to like the hub of where that type of company was built.
0:52:08 It was a restaurant chain.
0:52:12 And all the top restaurant chains have been launched, or most of them have been launched
0:52:16 in Colorado, like Chipotle and Smashburger and Quiznos.
0:52:17 There’s like noodles and company.
0:52:21 There’s like eight of the big fast casual chains have started in that area.
0:52:25 It’s the Silicon Valley of like, you know, shitty fast food.
0:52:28 And so we go all in there.
0:52:31 And it was the same thing, which nothing really came of that startup.
0:52:32 You know, like I lost money.
0:52:36 I lost arguably a year of time working on something that didn’t work.
0:52:41 But I absolutely didn’t lose because not only did I set myself on a different trajectory,
0:52:47 but I more importantly learned the muscle of going all in, which once you fast forward five
0:52:51 years and you look back at your same smart friends, friends from school who have just
0:52:55 been in, you know, a bit of a corporate life that whole time, you see that that muscle has
0:52:56 atrophied.
0:52:57 They don’t have that muscle.
0:53:00 And that muscle is really important because whatever you’re going to do, the winning idea,
0:53:04 you’re going to need to be able to go all in in order to make that idea work.
0:53:05 Yeah, 100%.
0:53:05 All right.
0:53:10 The last philosophy I want to hear from you, because I dig these, is there are no rules.
0:53:13 Just construct your work and your life the way you want.
0:53:14 What do you mean by that?
0:53:15 What makes you say that?
0:53:20 You know, I feel like when you’re in Silicon Valley, everyone’s got these like, you know,
0:53:25 there’s so many people who are trying to like be influencers, like VCs, like, you know,
0:53:30 everyone’s got these ideas that like, hey, you know, like I remember when, you know, in 2011,
0:53:34 when I had my first kid, like it was very unfashionable to have a kid and have a startup.
0:53:36 Like people were like, literally like, what are you doing?
0:53:38 Like you’re going to fail your startup or whatever.
0:53:44 But actually, one of the things that’s like a completely contradiction is like the only way
0:53:47 you succeed is by doing things that are unusual, right?
0:53:49 Because if you’re doing the normal things, how can you succeed?
0:53:51 Because like everyone’s doing those things.
0:53:57 So weirdly, like, you know, if you look at every single success, it’s a contradiction because
0:54:01 it had to be a really common thing in Silicon Valley is don’t do consumer startups.
0:54:04 But actually, the biggest startups like Amazon, Facebook, Google, they’re consumer startups,
0:54:05 right?
0:54:08 Like, so why are we telling everyone not to do consumer startups?
0:54:10 But like, those are the $3 trillion companies.
0:54:18 So I find like, you know, in general, like most knowledge is like, you have to understand where
0:54:20 it comes from and why it comes from and like why you’re the exception.
0:54:23 But like the only way you succeed is being an exception.
0:54:29 So like, you kind of have to like, just ignore the rules and like, just do the thing and be
0:54:31 the exception, because that’s the only way you succeed.
0:54:33 But I do think there’s like knowledge out there.
0:54:35 And like, there’s a reason people talk about these things.
0:54:38 And you should understand why it is that you are different.
0:54:41 And like, you know, what are the problems with consumer startups?
0:54:42 And there’s lots of them.
0:54:46 But I’ve just generally found in life that like, actually, the best things I’ve ever done
0:54:51 have been like ignoring the rules and just doing things that like, yeah, I just think
0:54:55 like most of the time, if you do the, not the opposite, but like, if you, if you pick
0:54:59 the set of rules that you’re ignoring, because you have like a strong reason to ignore them,
0:55:01 you’re going to be much more likely to be successful.
0:55:03 That’s a, that’s a great point.
0:55:06 You know, there’s that, I forgot what the phrase is, but it’s like experts know all the
0:55:08 rules and masters know when to break them.
0:55:12 So, so, you know, that’s the, that sort of the best signal of mastery is when you know
0:55:15 the rules and you intentionally choose which ones you’re going to break.
0:55:20 So like, if you, I’m learning the piano right now and my teacher will be like, oh yeah,
0:55:21 this is Bach or this is what Beethoven did.
0:55:26 And he’ll be like, he’ll specifically call out, he did this thing that, you know, normally
0:55:27 you wouldn’t do, right?
0:55:28 This doesn’t make sense.
0:55:32 These are two different keys or that doesn’t, it’s not part of the scale, but it works because
0:55:33 of this.
0:55:35 And it’s like, they make up the reason why it works.
0:55:35 Yeah.
0:55:38 They make up the reason, but it’s post post fact, right?
0:55:38 Exactly.
0:55:41 It’s, you know, now it becomes a new rule later.
0:55:43 It’s like, oh yeah, but if it resolves tension, then it works.
0:55:44 It’s like, okay, cool.
0:55:48 But at the time, this sort of breaks, breaks that rule.
0:55:49 And that’s what all the, all the best ones do.
0:55:54 What I like about what you just said is it made me think it’s worth writing down.
0:55:55 I’m going to try this after this podcast.
0:56:00 It’s worth writing down, like, not just how I want to win, how I want to live my life,
0:56:06 but specifically like what rules, what kind of common best, best practices or generally accepted
0:56:10 good practices that I am intentionally choosing to break.
0:56:11 You know, I’ll give you an example.
0:56:15 Um, the other day I was having a conversation with a guy who’s really smart and wise.
0:56:18 And he said, he said this great line and everybody nodded and took notes.
0:56:22 He was like, um, you know, when you get money, people come to you, they want to get, do business
0:56:22 with you.
0:56:23 They want you to invest in their thing.
0:56:24 They want a loan.
0:56:25 They want whatever.
0:56:26 And he goes, I have this rule.
0:56:32 Um, you know, either our friendship is sacred or the money is sacred, but you can’t have both.
0:56:35 And I said, so does that mean you just never do business with friends?
0:56:36 He goes, never.
0:56:37 And everyone’s like, yeah, that makes sense.
0:56:38 It could be really messy.
0:56:40 And I go, I don’t know.
0:56:42 I think that everything you said is true.
0:56:47 And yet I choose that mess because I think there’s a great upside in like finding the people
0:56:48 you love and doing life with them.
0:56:52 Like life is a lot more fun when I do projects with friends or invest in people’s companies.
0:56:56 And I, I, you know, I give people, I bet on people and yeah, sometimes it doesn’t work
0:56:56 out.
0:56:59 And sometimes it gets a little hairy, but like, I choose this mess.
0:57:04 It’s like, I choose that rule to break and I’m, I’m comfortable living with that, you
0:57:07 know, and I can always go back and change my approach, but for now that’s a rule I’d want
0:57:07 to break.
0:57:11 But that’s a good example where you, you want to understand how to break the rule as well,
0:57:12 right?
0:57:14 Like, it’s not just like, I’m going to break the rules, therefore I don’t care about it.
0:57:18 You want to go like, okay, you know, if I’m putting money in a startup, I’m going to
0:57:21 make sure there’s a contract and everyone understands like, here’s how we work together.
0:57:24 And like, yeah, I do think when you break the rule, you have to kind of go out of
0:57:28 the way to mitigate, uh, the potential downsides of like breaking that role.
0:57:31 Like, and the breaking the rule is doing the harder thing normally.
0:57:35 So you have to understand why and how, and how do you mitigate that risk?
0:57:40 The rule you broke was as a startup founder in SF with all the options to choose, you chose
0:57:45 the like highly regulated, highly compliance based, hard, have to build for a year and a
0:57:46 half before you launch.
0:57:51 You know, that’s not, that’s not the quick and dirty prototype vibe code.
0:57:53 Like you can’t do that playbook there.
0:57:56 So you’re like, all right, I’m going to choose to break that norm and go this way.
0:57:57 Cause that’s what I want.
0:57:58 Yeah.
0:57:58 Yeah.
0:58:03 But, but I spent a lot of time understanding what I was like in for, right.
0:58:08 I spent like three months just talking to people and like researching, you know, compliance and
0:58:10 rules and laws and like all this stuff.
0:58:11 And like, I wasn’t, I wasn’t doing it blindly.
0:58:12 Yeah.
0:58:13 All right.
0:58:16 So Ahmad, where should people find you and who should reach out to you?
0:58:19 Who do you, who do you want to reach out to you, uh, from things like this?
0:58:23 Cause when you’re out there, you know, you attract certain people, but I like to say, you know,
0:58:26 you want to have your API, you want to tell people who should connect with you and, and,
0:58:27 and, and on what basis.
0:58:29 So give me a sense of that.
0:58:30 Where, where should people find you and what should they reach you about?
0:58:34 The easiest way is on X or Twitter, uh, as it used to be.
0:58:36 Um, I’m just Ahmad, uh, yeah.
0:58:37 Who should reach out?
0:58:40 You know, I’m always willing to try to be helpful to entrepreneurs.
0:58:45 So, you know, if you have an idea, you want to, uh, pitch me something or whatever, you know,
0:58:50 reach out and yeah, I, I try to be like quick and say yes or no, if I’m interested or not.
0:58:55 Um, and obviously if you’re interested in Mercury, uh, you know, go to mercury.com and sign up.
0:58:56 All right.
0:58:56 Love it.
0:58:58 Thanks for coming on, dude.
0:58:58 Yeah.
0:58:59 Thanks for having me, Sean.
0:59:15 Hey, Sean here.
0:59:17 I want to take a minute to tell you a David Ogilvie story.
0:59:18 One of the great ad men.
0:59:20 He said, remember the consumer is not a moron.
0:59:21 She’s your wife.
0:59:23 You wouldn’t lie to your own wife.
0:59:25 So don’t lie to mine.
0:59:27 And I love that you guys, you’re my family.
0:59:29 You’re like my wife and I won’t lie to you either.
0:59:33 So I’ll tell you the truth for every company I own right now, six companies.
0:59:35 I use Mercury for all of them.
0:59:39 So I’m proud to partner with Mercury because I use it for all of my banking needs across my
0:59:41 personal account, my business accounts.
0:59:44 And anytime I start a new company, it’s my first move.
0:59:45 I go open up a Mercury account.
0:59:47 I’m very confident in recommending it because I actually use it.
0:59:48 I’ve used it for years.
0:59:50 It is the best product on the market.
0:59:55 So if you want to be like me and 200,000 other ambitious founders, go to mercury.com and
0:59:57 apply in minutes.
1:00:00 And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank.
1:00:04 Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC.
1:00:05 All right, back to the episode.