🎧 Exclusive Interview: Mercury CEO on why Fintech is more complex than software businesses

The bank account is the natural place to build a platform for running a business, but most of them are so poor people built additional tools to fix terrible software (like billing, accounts payable, and accounting).

Mercury fixes this. In the fourth interview from the B2B Fintech series, Immad Akhund, CEO of Mercury, covers:

• How the account becomes a platform you can build much more from

• How Fintech is much more complex than a software business

• Why learning all of the non-software stuff (like compliance) is critical to long-term viability

• The importance of owning UX

• Why customer support tickets should drive your UX roadmap

• The founder-led Go-To-Market

• What it will take for Mercury to win

👉 Find it here on Apple Podcasts

👉 Find it here on Spotify

Or click here to watch the web player

Here's how to subscribe:

1. Search for "Fintech Brainfood" in your podcast client or click here for Spotify or Apple.

2. Click subscribe.

3. Tell every Fintech Nerd you know to do the same.

4. Leave a review.

5. Reply to this email with your thoughts on the first episode when it drops next week on the 22nd May

Why should you listen to this episode?

Unlike Ramp or Brex, Mercury started with the account and built the ultimate dashboard for early-stage and growth companies.

Immad is the founder’s founder, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor, with over 300+ angel investments in his name (including Airtable, Substack, and Rappi).

If anyone got the challenges growth companies have trying to operate a business while relying on traditional banking solutions, Immad is that founder.

Where once startups could get an account, they had to pick between a specialist bank with a poor digital experience (like Silicon Valley Bank or First Republic) or a large one-size-fits-nobody larger bank. 

The choice was between the stability of a big bank or the expertise of a local specialist, and regardless of your choice, the digital user experience was horrendous.

Mercury flipped the model and pioneered an entirely different Go To Market. Taking the best of what SVB and FRB did - like access to debt capital markets, VCs, and partners and helping balance that with more FDIC coverage and a single dashboard to manage and automate everything.

Today Mercury is a BEAST. Recently announcing, 8 quarters of profitability with more money on the balance sheet than ever raised (>$163m), 200k customers and 640 staff.

Despite some challenges like the banking crisis and now the BaaS crisis, Mercury continues shipping new products like financial workflows powered by the bank account and personal accounts for founders.

So what makes Mercury special?

And what’s under the hood of one of Fintech’s fastest-growing companies?

Find out in this Fintech Brainfood Interview.

👉 Next Week - Brandon Arvanaghi from Meow.

The next episode drops on Wednesday, 19th June.

Subscribe now so you don't miss it! 

Coming this season…

Who wins, Ramp, Brex, or someone else? Since the banking crisis, B2B Fintech companies like these have been big winners, attracting deposits, funding, and CFOs to the all-in-one platform for growth companies.

But they're all doing it very differently. 

I asked the CEOs the same set of questions, and the answers varied wildly. This first series is an MBA in B2B Fintech in 6 hours. I learned so much.

The season is 5 interviews, with a 6th episode where Alex Johnson, Cokie Hastosis, and I nerd out about the interviews.