0:00
If you do the best thing for customers, people will gravitate towards us and I don't have like a fear around it.
Search this video
0:05
There's just so much to banking.
0:05
Like it's it's not like Cloud is going to go build a bank.
0:09
>> [music] >> Uh We're going to hold you to that, Immad. Yeah, you say that. Don't give them an idea.
0:13
This week on the show, Ellis and I chat about how South by Southwest isn't a tech conference anymore, Jensen Huang's nerd Super Bowl at Nvidia GTC, and Ellis's obsession with old-school Nvidia graphics card box art. Of course he is.
0:28
Then we're joined by Mercury CEO Immad Akhund.
0:30
We chat about his side hustle as a VC, whether AI will eat banking, if credit card points are a scam, and [music] Texan poker culture versus the gamification of everything. Welcome to Access.
0:46
I'm Alex Heath, here with my co-host Ellis Hamburger.
0:48
Ellis, how's it going, man? Good to see you. You too. Uh I'm good.
0:52
I am hopefully looking good cuz I resolved a very embarrassing camera problem that no podcast co-host should ever experience.
1:00
I could not figure out why I could not align my eyeline with uh the camera.
1:04
So, it looks more like I'm looking at you, and the problem is that no matter where I put my camera, it always seemed like it was too zoomed in.
1:13
And do you know what the problem was? You were zoomed in.
1:14
The camera was too zoomed in.
1:16
I was on the 50-mm focal length.
1:18
I did not realize that this camera Vox gave me zoomed.
1:21
And ever since the beginning, I have been fully zoomed, which also is not very flattering for the shape of my head, right?
1:28
Yeah, I mean, I I thought you were a camera guy.
1:30
Every time I see you, you've got a different camera, so I thought you understood that cameras zoomed.
1:35
That's why this is embarrassing.
1:38
I'm being revealed to be a a poser. Access is a safe space.
1:42
Um how's it going otherwise? Uh I've been traveling.
1:45
I haven't been in LA um the last several days. Uh everything good?
1:50
While you've been traveling, I've been enjoying my daily rewatch of Moana with my kids.
1:54
I think we're getting into the approaching triple digits, I would say.
1:59
I think what's interesting about it is that, you know, as much as we talk about screen time being a problem these days, it's like we all growing up grew up watching the same Disney movies like over and over and over again.
2:12
Why is that not part of the same conversation?
2:13
I think most of us who watched Aladdin 100 times turned out fine.
2:17
And it's not like every single second of that movie is some like ethical moral lesson, you know what I'm saying?
2:24
I think if that were to literally be on an iPad today, we'd be like, "Oh my god, my child is watching the same video 100 times in a row."
2:29
But because it's Disney, all of a sudden we give it a free pass.
2:34
So, yeah, long story short, I think my my firstborn may have learned a bit more from the Cocomelon songs about brushing your teeth, as maligned as they are, than our secondborn is from watching Moana for the 50th time. That's my soapbox today.
2:49
I've not seen Moana once, which I need to rectify. It's great. It's actually great. Yeah.
2:53
Well, I have not had time to watch anything.
2:55
I've been on the road road warring as I tend to do.
2:58
It's first at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and then at the Church of Jensen Nvidia GTC in San Jose.
3:09
Uh I actually did a day trip from Austin to San Jose where I did not even check out of my hotel in Austin.
3:16
I left my suitcase there.
3:18
And I flew from Texas to California in one day on Monday and would not recommend it uh especially during spring break and TSA government shutdown.
3:29
Um it was a long day, but everything actually logistically went perfectly uh and I felt like I hacked life a little bit.
3:38
Wow, I was going to say, I mean, even the travel pro-est of the travel pros, you know, can't squeeze past I mean, was clear open or TSA precheck a bit more open cuz I mean, I saw like >> You got to do touchless ID.
3:52
TSA touchless ID with Clear is the ultimate hack.
3:56
I think I saved about an hour at the Austin Airport that morning um with that. >> That's unbelievable. But, yeah, man.
4:01
I mean, um flying, you know, 5,000 whatever miles in a day uh and still going back to the same hotel is is quite a a time warp, especially when you're going to GTC, which is its just own unique universe.
4:18
But, first uh South by, uh you haven't been to South by in a while, right?
4:23
It was what, over a decade since you've been?
4:25
It's been a while, and I was going to ask how many PR guy viruses have you brought for show and tell today? >> Oh, so many.
4:31
Um everyone is a brand strategist.
4:34
You must have a great immune system.
4:37
Uh the the immunity to thought leadership that I have built up over the years is so strong um because everyone is a thought leader, everyone's a strategist, um everyone's a podcaster, futurist.
4:47
I was on a panel where someone said uh futurist with a straight face, and I almost laughed.
4:54
Uh I I I probably shouldn't have.
4:57
But, yeah, South by is an interesting thing, man.
5:00
Like, it's it's not a tech show anymore.
5:02
I mean, tech brands come, but I would say like the coolest tech {quote} {unquote} tech brand activation was Yahoo this year, right?
5:09
Which kind of says a lot about the state of things.
5:14
South by used to be where really cool products launched.
5:16
I mean, Twitter, Foursquare.
5:19
Like, back in the day, it was actually kind of at the vanguard of of tech and culture.
5:23
Now, it's at the vanguard of of futurism and and brand marketing.
5:30
But, as a film and music festival, it's actually quite good and ascendant.
5:33
So, What did Yahoo do that was so impressive?
5:37
They took over a local outdoor saloon-type space and had uh you know, square dancing and really good local barbecue, uh open bar, all that stuff.
5:48
Of course, it was good to catch up with with Lan Zone, the CEO there, source of subscriber.
5:54
And Emily Sunberg was there doing a Q&A with him, and they had a nice mix of creators and and tech people.
6:00
But yeah, man, I mean South by is just you know, it's it's not where the big companies show up like they used to.
6:11
And you've got kind of a new crop of more AI native or younger companies.
6:16
Shout out Superhuman, which had me come and and talk on a panel about taste in the age of AI as a as a creator, which which was which was fun to be a part of.
6:25
And then I did a panel with Tencent on the future of gaming, which was good.
6:29
But yeah, man, the main thing at South by was was podcasting.
6:32
And so it was nice to hang out with with our Vox Media familia.
6:36
We had a we had a little party with a bunch of other pod hosts who were in town.
6:43
Got to see the the case swish, the one and only Kara, who's giving us a lot of love with feed drops and pivot.
6:48
And some of our other hosts, and you know, schmooze the CMOs, you know, convince them why they need to get in front of the elite audience for access.
7:00
Well, makes a lot of sense that the panel was about taste cuz no one's talking about taste anymore.
7:08
>> [laughter] >> And South by is always a few months behind.
7:11
Hey, I'm in the hyper-glocal think circle that is setting the trend as we learned in the last episode. I am the tastemaker.
7:18
If you say that, you're not a tastemaker.
7:20
If you say you're a tastemaker, you're not. That's my rule.
7:23
Well, I'm undoing that rule. Okay.
7:27
I guess you have more followers for the time being, but [laughter] since I got back on the podcast, I'm rapidly gaining on you.
7:33
And so when I have more half years or bots anyway. That's true.
7:37
Mine are pre-Elon bots, yeah.
7:41
So there was a moment early in my career where I passed my boss's follower count and that it definitely got awkward. Oh, yeah. Right?
7:50
Like, the power dynamics change.
7:54
>> [laughter] >> So, we'll see how that feels when that happens again.
7:56
Well, we'll have to cross that bridge when we get to it.
7:58
Uh I I then got to go from South by to Nvidia, as I was saying, to see Jensen, uh which was my first time seeing a Jensen Huang keynote.
8:09
Uh I don't know if you got to read my write-up of it, but it is a unique experience, man.
8:13
Well, so how long did he go? How long is long?
8:18
>> Like, 2 and 1/2 hours, and he doesn't have a script.
8:21
He just kind of freewheels it.
8:23
I mean, he has his slides, the next slide, but there's no script.
8:28
He doesn't He doesn't prepare, and it's clear he doesn't need to because it's all in his head.
8:31
Like, he is the LLM of Nvidia.
8:35
And the amount of acronyms that man was spitting at the audience and like highly technical language was incredible to watch, the mastery he has of his domain.
8:45
But then also just the fact that, you know, this was at the SAP Center in San Jose, and, you know, there's like 30,000 people in here to watch this like 2 and 1/2 hour highly technical, you know, acronym-heavy keynote.
8:57
It just It's It was in stark contrast to say Apple, right?
9:02
Where and this is where a lot of keynotes have gone, I think, uh especially out of the pandemic, uh thanks to Apple, is that they're just these prerecorded on-rails uh things.
9:13
I mean, in Apple's case, they literally gather you to watch a video, the same thing that they stream online for everyone. >> Yeah.
9:19
And I actually really appreciated the uh theatrical the realness of Jensen just getting up there and shooting it from the hip for 2 and 1/2 hours straight.
9:28
And he was making jokes, and like there were moments where things the transitions didn't work right, and we had he had to stop and start, and uh you know, just think on the fly and it's like, "Okay, no, this is like worth going to see in person."
9:41
And obviously like Nvidia's the most important company in the world right now, so there's also that, but he is just a a one-of-a-kind I would say the closest thing that I've seen from like a tech keynote or to like what Jobs used to be.
9:54
There really isn't anything else like it anymore.
9:56
I guess I need to watch the footage then cuz there aren't many who can do the the El Jabazo.
10:01
But um I mean, I feel like this is just another reminder as we are reminded constantly by Elon that the ultimate scarcity is actually being funny and just being able to like make a crowd laugh. Yeah.
10:14
And I feel like there's that, you know, unifying theory of Elon that all he wants is to be funny and just to like be liked.
10:20
And I think that's probably where all these CEOs and founders have found themselves arriving at.
10:26
They have the yacht, but like the final apex of being the Renaissance man that they aspire to be is being able to actually do stand-up comedy, which is really freaking hard, right?
10:35
And so I think it all tracks.
10:38
Or even just be being able to feel like you can own people for 2 and 1/2 hours.
10:44
And just the world revolves around him, man.
10:47
I mean, it was obviously his conference and everyone was there, but he was just talking about how involved he was in everything from like There was this hilarious pre-game.
10:55
You know, they kind of like are turning this into like a Super Bowl.
10:59
I mean, that's what it is.
11:01
It's like nerd Super Bowl, but in terms of, you know, there's a pre-game where they're all ESPN style sitting at a desk before.
11:07
And I tweeted this, but all the AI CEOs that Jensen hand-selected to be on the pre-game commentary bench were all wearing all black with sunglasses.
11:16
He was talking about like all of the sponsors.
11:18
There were over 400 sponsors.
11:20
I mean, everyone just wants to be close to Nvidia.
11:24
>> That's some sponsor dilution. Yeah.
11:26
[laughter] Everyone was thanking him like even during the pre-game.
11:28
Like the CEO of Open Evidence was like thanking Jensen for the GPUs and I actually was I was at the Nebius booth that afternoon doing some interviews and Jensen did his kind of walk through the expo floor with his entourage and to see you know everyone from Michael Dell to like the founder of Coreweave to the Nebius folks just kind of enraptured by his presence.
11:52
He was literally signing badges like he was Tex Taylor Swift.
11:54
I expected to see him like sign a forehead or sign a chest or something but he was signing literally pretty much anything presented to him.
12:03
He signed chips, he signed like parts of the booths that he was walking by.
12:10
Jensen Jensen the god I guess.
12:10
Can you take us back to like before the AI boom what Nvidia was doing?
12:19
Cuz I feel like this all happened just like so spontaneously.
12:23
They were a gaming company.
12:23
Yeah, that's that's like what I'm saying like or does he say kind of in retrospect that this was all part of the plan?
12:30
He did give a shout-out to the gaming business and the gaming chips at the beginning was like this is this is the thing that built this house and I thought that was cool to see him like throw that back.
12:43
Um but yeah man he uh Nvidia was kind of toiling away in in obscurity.
12:49
I mean they were obviously super important as a chip maker for for gaming but you can see it in their stock price.
12:55
I mean they were just flat and then when ChatGPT came out it was just off to the races.
12:59
He is the king maker of the tech industry.
13:01
Whatever he touches goes up. Stock go up.
13:07
You know Nebius I was there and like Nebius is a great example.
13:09
It's this like Coreweave competitor and since Nvidia invested in them their stock is up like 300%.
13:17
And so of course when he come out comes over it's like you know thank you Jensen like you're literally like you know making me money and and Uh, he has that thing that everyone wants.
13:26
How many dude bros even know that the G in GPU is for graphics? Yeah.
13:33
>> [laughter] >> Uh, he has the thing everyone wants and they can't get, which is more GPUs.
13:36
And who he decides to give them to can uh, make your company or not.
13:41
And uh, he I think is very much enjoying that kingmaker status.
13:47
I could feel it not just in the keynote but in observing him interacting in with the partner booths on the expo floor while everyone was taking selfies.
13:55
Um, you know, he came over and was like, "Uh, when I invest in you guys."
14:00
Like he knew the exact market cap number and like it's up 300% since then.
14:04
So, >> It's just too bad. It's just too bad. What?
14:09
Cuz I'm a lot more interested in all of the old like Nvidia graphics card box arts. Oh, wow.
14:18
>> I have a whole book than stock prices.
14:23
Oh, here's an Nvidia right here.
14:23
The Nvidia GeForce 4 Asylum. Wow.
14:29
>> [laughter] >> You just had that?
14:31
>> This is what excites me.
14:33
You just had that lying around? >> had it. Wow. >> you I'm a tastemaker.
14:36
It has become super financial.
14:38
Um, you know, there were people like day trading during the keynote I saw and then there are just a ton of analysts and investor types there.
14:46
I mean, Nvidia is the economy in a lot of ways.
14:49
So, I understand the focus, but even in the Q&A that Jensen did where he literally just takes questions for like 3 hours straight from creators and press, uh, people were asking about specific stocks and yeah, man, it's it the tech is still important, but it does feel like the money has really started to overtake things.
15:08
Bring back uh, graphics cards.
15:13
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, the the only other like headline news I would say is uh, is Nvidia getting into the inference game and uh expanding what its chips can do to better handle running AI versus just training it.
15:27
But uh everyone kind of knew that was coming.
15:29
So, there weren't any like huge surprises, but uh I guess the only real surprise was he brought out a AI-powered Olaf on stage at the very end uh to hang out with him.
15:40
And then this keynote was literally so long that they had to do a musical recap of it uh for like 4 minutes.
15:47
And it was Jensen sitting at a fire uh like a campsite with a bunch of humanoids playing music and singing about what he talked about. Amazing.
15:56
Well, Alex, your internet is sputtering to a halt, and so I think it's uh about time to cut to the interview.
16:02
Is that why you were taking so long to respond? Cuz I'm super delayed.
16:05
Yeah, there's literally like a 2-second delay.
16:07
Dave, do you think we should be concerned?
16:09
Dave, who who's the problem? Alex is the problem.
16:15
>> [laughter] >> No question.
16:18
Everyone, that's our producer Dave on the mic.
16:20
>> [laughter] >> No, they're not going to They're not going to hear me.
16:22
They're not going to hear me. No, we're keeping this. We're keeping this.
16:24
I need people to know Alex is bad at tech. Wow.
16:29
>> [laughter] >> I wouldn't blame Alex uh per se, but yes, you're something's with your Something's with your internet or your computer. Weird.
16:34
Well, with that, we're going to roll our interview with Emad Akund. >> [music] >> Welcome. What's going on, Emad? It's good. It's good. I'm excited to be here. How are you? We're solid.
16:48
You're a podcaster as well, aren't you? Yeah.
16:50
We got We all got the mic set up.
16:53
We got >> I mean, I feel like we we have a lot to learn from you.
16:56
I feel like there are a lot of a lot of growth hacks out there today for podcasts and uh companies and startups, um many of whom I work with, but I have not heard I've not heard about peanut butter and jelly delivery as a growth hack before.
17:10
I'm not good at my podcast.
17:12
Like I just I just have fun talking to like people I meet and friends of mine.
17:16
So, that's my main kind of vibe in the podcast and I'm not very good at promoting it.
17:19
Hey, that's our vibe, too.
17:21
Tell us about the peanut butter and jelly delivery though.
17:24
How did that work as a growth strategy?
17:26
Uh you know with these marketing things you never know if it's just like a you're just out there in the rain delivering peanut butter and jelly for no reason or whether it's actually going to like drive usage, but uh honestly it was like one of my favorite days of the last like 12 months of working at my career.
17:41
It was just kind of fun to get out there and like deliver tasty food and like talk to customers.
17:46
Uh so where did that idea originate, I wonder?
17:51
Kind of like a convoluted in-joke.
17:53
Uh basically like you know for a while we were working on this product, but we hadn't launched yet, so uh we'd call it PB and that was like the code name.
18:02
Uh and you know someone connected PB to peanut butter and then we had this like jar that all the team got with like peanut butter in it, but like instead of ingredients it was like all the features and yeah, it it was like this kind of funny uh funny jar of peanut butter.
18:19
Uh and then so so peanut butter was like a thing happening and then we were like oh like we were this year we tried to do like more creative things and more in-person things with marketing, so we like oh it'd be cool if we just went around SF and delivered peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
18:32
So it came from my co-founder who's like way more creative than I am.
18:36
Classic situation of uh startup code name actually becoming part of the product. Um I I love it though.
18:41
I mean I'm just so fascinated like I've been doing marketing and comms for a very long time and people look at an activation like that and they're like, "Well, what's the KPIs?
18:53
What's the conversion on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich?
18:56
How much time can we save by, you know, cutting off the crust versus not?"
19:00
It's like no, I feel like the best storytellers just kind of feel it out, right?
19:05
And know that some of this stuff can't quite be quantified.
19:09
Yeah, I I with marketing you want to do things that are like weird uh because there's such a there's so much noise out there uh that like, you know, you do something and like basically no one's going to listen.
19:22
Uh but if you do something that's like kind of interesting and it stands out like you can have a 100 x higher impact.
19:27
So, uh I'd rather do like 10 things and they're all like kind of fun and interesting and maybe nine of them like fall flat, but one of them is like a big viral hit or whatever and lots of people hear about it and it's kind of aligned with the brand.
19:38
Speaking of marketing, the brand was uh was activated at South by Southwest this last weekend.
19:44
Uh I was there in Austin. Were you there? I wasn't there.
19:48
I've never been to South by Southwest, which is kind of >> You've never been? Okay.
19:51
I've been in the startup ecosystem for 20 years, so I feel like every uh I'm like, "Oh, maybe I should go."
19:56
But If you want to be hounded by branding and comms consultants for 4 days straight, uh it's a great place to go. Why why did you go?
20:06
Uh I had a couple panels. >> go, Alex?
20:08
Vox Media um who who produ- who distributes this podcast uh had a bunch of stuff podcast stage there and I was there with uh with the Vox fam and you know, it's it's the good time to rub shoulders and do deals, you know.
20:22
Did you did you go to the Mercury thing we were doing there?
20:27
I think we were giving away some stuff.
20:28
But you you guys were giving away like Casio's and Aeropresses and really cool stuff it looked like. Yeah, yeah.
20:34
One of our themes this year is to like kind of talk about craft.
20:39
So, like part of the peanut butter and jelly thing was like it was like it was like very like well-crafted peanut butter and jelly.
20:44
Uh it was like coconut peanut butter and the jelly was mango flavored.
20:48
So, uh that's why it's like Casio and things like that.
20:51
Like things that are like well-crafted uh regardless of kind of yeah, how simple they are.
20:55
Also, I might have been waiting to see if you remember that we've met before.
20:59
Do you remember how we met?
21:02
>> [laughter] >> No idea.
21:03
This is I feel like this might be a trick question, huh?
21:05
No, we played we played poker together.
21:07
We sat next to each other and played poker at Katsu a couple years ago. Oh, that's cool.
21:13
You had the >> I can't remember who played better.
21:18
>> [laughter] >> Alex still remembers your tell though, so we're going to know if you're lying on the podcast today, Emad.
21:23
Okay, that does seem familiar.
21:23
You were at the Katsu East Meetup thing? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay, nice. Yeah. >> Yeah.
21:28
Are you a Are you a regular player?
21:30
>> I feel I I have a game that I play like I mean in theory once a month, but we get around to it like every 2 months, but I feel like that's pretty fun.
21:36
Like the Katsu ones I feel like everyone takes it like a little too seriously.
21:42
Like I I you know, I mostly play poker just to like have an excuse to sit with people and chat with them not to like try to make money.
21:48
Uh What are you talking about?
21:50
I thought as a founder you just have to win everything or go home crying.
21:53
I mean I I feel I feel shitty if I don't win, but like that's not the point of it.
21:58
Like I you know, I'm competitive, but like that I yeah, want to play these games to have fun. I think you did well.
22:03
I don't think we got in any heads-up situations now that I'm remembering, but yeah, I remember like oh, this guy plays.
22:09
It's interesting how poker has become such a part of like tech culture.
22:15
I don't know if it's the All-in guys or what, but I feel like I'm seeing poker games at conferences and just like house games happening in SF and New York and like the tech scene like constantly.
22:27
Do you feel like that's always been the case or is it a relatively new phenomenon?
22:31
I think it's always been the case.
22:34
Like I mean even even when I first got here in SF in 2007, I used to arrange like poker games.
22:39
So it's like it's a thing.
22:42
Uh I just feel like tech in general has become like a little bit more like a showy thing over the last like there's a >> [laughter] >> Yeah, there's just a lot more money in it.
22:51
There's a lot more Yeah, things.
22:54
Just like Yeah, in 2017 even it was kind of a small industry and now it's just a big big deal across everything.
23:02
Uh so I think like this these little characteristics of it like it become bigger.
23:05
I mean, it makes perfect sense to me that founders would like poker because it is a combination of like bravado and showmanship and understanding of probabilities that is going to be able to like maximize your output. Yeah, that's true.
23:22
There is something geeky about it.
23:22
Uh and I think that generally speaking tech doesn't like golf as much or at least like I mean, it's golf is doing its thing.
23:31
So, uh so, I feel like you need some social social kind of networking thing, right?
23:37
Like if it's not golf, then is it going to be like poker or you know, what what else would it be?
23:41
And uh you don't need to be fit for poker. So, I think that helps.
23:44
Do you have a crazy poker story?
23:46
I don't think I have a crazy poker story.
23:48
I mean, I've been in my fair share of things where I should have won >> [laughter] >> and I haven't won, but I don't know how how crazy they get.
23:54
What's your what's your crazy poker story? Um I don't know.
23:58
You do meet so many interesting people.
24:00
You meet uh like random celebrities, uh obviously like tech people.
24:03
Um Well, I did go to a go to another go to event where they were also doing poker and I I sat next to Steph Curry uh for like a solid 1 hour and talked to him while I was playing poker. That was pretty cool. How how was he? How did he play? He was okay.
24:18
I don't think he was like that good, but he wasn't bad.
24:19
He He didn't like blow me away.
24:21
Uh I think I did pretty well in that game.
24:23
Uh this was a few years ago, but it was just it was just fun to talk to him like just, you know, sitting next to him and just shooting the kind of thing.
24:29
So, I wasn't I wasn't as focused on poker.
24:33
Well, I have a pro-level podcast segue, which is that I feel like, you know, the gambling scene, especially with like the mobile games and DraftKings and FanDuel and all the prediction market stuff, I think you could argue that they are one of the very biggest problems for like personal financial independence and literacy.
24:54
And now you're building that type of product.
24:56
>> Oh, this is a great segue, Alex.
24:56
You really really nailed that. I told you.
25:01
How do you feel about that stuff philosophically?
25:02
Cuz it's it's it's kind of funny to me to think that like, all right, we're going to build all these personal banking products that are trying to solve this, you know, mission or this big idea around helping people get control of their stuff, whether they're independent or solo like some of or sorry or in a couple like some of those videos you've been making.
25:22
I mean, are you going to participate in this side of the story for financial literacy and and banking independence? >> Yeah, I I hope so.
25:29
Uh you know, I I personally really dislike uh you know, gambling as like a I think it's like poker is fun and like I know >> Poker's not gambling.
25:39
That's what we tell our wives.
25:40
I mean, I never bet more than I you know, like a recreational amount.
25:45
Uh but I like I you know, I have friends that have like lost their lives or their family members who've like fallen into gambling addictions.
25:52
It's like a it's a serious issue and I don't you know, a a lot of tech like unfortunately, you know, whether it's Polymarket or DraftKings or whatever like encourages this stuff even more, which I've never been a fan of.
26:03
Uh yeah, I would love for, you know, I guess like at a at a basic level like Mercury both on the business side and the personal side is like, you know, a utility product, right? Like it's like banking.
26:15
Every everyone needs it both on business and personal.
26:17
Uh but you know, bank accounts like until until Mercury have been pretty stupid.
26:24
Like they don't do anything for you, right?
26:26
Like it's just like it's if anything they kind of get get in the way of of your life.
26:29
So, yeah, I I would love for us to kind of help people run their business better.
26:32
So, we actually just launched it literally today this product that we call Mercury Insight.
26:36
Uh Okay, so I know that Insights has natural language questions you could ask.
26:41
So, maybe Alex now that he's a he's a user, he could say, "Am I up or am I down? Um I need I need PDFs. I need insights.
26:50
I need agentic reasoning helping me understand how much I should bring to the table on my >> [laughter] >> Should I bet or not?
26:57
Cuz you can spin off cards with certain amounts of money, right?
27:02
It's like, "Honey, it's only 250 tonight.
27:04
You literally can't spend any more." Or is it all cash, Alex? Is it all cash?
27:08
You have to you have to do cash, but I mean Mercury will see the ATM ATM, you know, Mercury sees that ATM transaction and I'll definitely tag it. So, yeah, I should ask. I'm kind of scared to.
27:20
Uh but yeah, I might I am a DAU.
27:20
I when I went independent in September, um it was I I spent about I spent about 15 minutes looking for a bank.
27:30
Um And [laughter] Mercury seemed like the simplest and the best from like a cost perspective, too, for a solo person like me.
27:41
And so, it was actually a pretty >> business, right? Yeah, for my business.
27:44
And it was a pretty pretty quick decision and have not regretted it.
27:46
It's it's actually a a legitimately good product.
27:51
It's where we have CEOs on where uh you know, one of us like I don't know if it's that rare, actually, but it's nice to have someone on and it's like, "Oh, yeah, no, it's I'm a DAU." Um >> Nice.
28:02
You should check out the insights launch we did today, actually.
28:03
We have a We have a fun little kind of creative marketing thing with it as well.
28:07
We actually worked with this like like generative artist uh And basically how it works is like we kind of plug in plug in the transaction data to to this like generative art thing and it makes like a different piece of unique art for every every customer based on the data. It's kind of fun.
28:27
And it's I got like funny things like if there's a lot of international transactions, then I'll put a globe there and there's like there's a lobster that shows up.
28:33
I can't remember why the lobster shows up.
28:36
>> [laughter] >> Anyway, we have a we have a fun little podcaster podcast about it.
28:39
So, it says Alex, uh "Your newsletter revenue sucks, but we made you a watercolor of a squirrel. Exactly.
28:49
>> [laughter] >> At least it looks pretty.
28:52
I mean, why is this so freaking hard?
28:52
I mean, I feel like even back when I was at The Verge, I remember covering that startup like Bank Simple.
28:57
And it's obvious that there's a lot of complexity, especially with actually being the bank.
29:07
But why why has this been so hard for anybody to do?
29:09
To just make something that's that's better.
29:11
Especially for for consumers, which I know you just launched.
29:15
I think there's like two aspects to it.
29:18
Number one, it's just much much harder to build fintech than it is to build pure software things. Uh Is that a burn?
29:26
>> [laughter] >> To all the other software CEOs you have here? >> I'm open to it.
29:28
My all my previous startups were software startups.
29:31
It's so simple to just build some software.
29:33
Uh yeah, with fintech, you got to like go integrate into these like back-end legacy systems, like, you know, why is it just this like it's literally like SFTP files going back and forth with like a ton of exception cases.
29:45
So, it's a it's just like these complicated legacy systems and then yeah, you have all of the regulations around it that also make it tricky.
29:51
And it has been hard to be a chartered bank.
29:53
So, you know, the way Mercury works today is we partner with two sponsor banks.
29:59
Uh we actually just applied to be a chartered bank, but you know, we only did that after we reached like a pretty massive scale and you know, we raised raised our 3.
30:05
5 billion valuation before we were like, let's go get a bank charter.
30:09
Uh so, you have to work with sponsor banks.
30:13
It's actually a relatively recent where there has been enough sponsor banks out there that built enough tech on top of the sponsor banks that you can even do something like Mercury.
30:22
When Mercury launched, we were the first neo bank to have wires.
30:25
Uh Uh yeah, Bank Simple did not have wires.
30:31
Uh they also worked with sponsor banks.
30:32
So, yeah, that sounds simple, but like obviously, you can't run a business on you can't run a business on a bank that doesn't have wire support, right?
30:40
Like that's just like a basic requirement for business banking.
30:44
Uh So, you know, we we had to push pretty hard to like find someone who would do it and we're probably the first people that that kind of got it working end-to-end.
30:53
Uh you know, fintech has only recently reached the kind of scale that like we can kind of get you know, get enough funding to kick these things off.
31:00
The The products are good enough in the back end and and you know, enable to people like Mercury to The charter thing is fascinating.
31:06
I don't think people fully appreciate how unique and difficult that is.
31:10
I guess to go back to our earlier conversation, it kind of reminds me of getting like a gambling or like like a casino license or something in a state.
31:20
Uh it's equally political and regulated and difficult and um there's just a very very finite supply.
31:28
Um and what does that basically unlock for you?
31:30
It lets you do the whole stack yourself? Is that it?
31:33
Yeah, whole stack ourselves.
31:35
I mean, the biggest thing for us is uh you know, delivering the best customer experience.
31:38
So, you know, there are certain things that are really hard to do as a fintech.
31:41
Like we don't have Zelle support.
31:42
Uh Zelle only works with banks.
31:45
Uh it does not work with fintechs.
31:46
So, we'll be able to do Zelle.
31:49
Uh we do very little lending right now.
31:51
It's much easier to do lending.
31:51
I mean, it's still not easy, but once you have the low cost of capital of being a bank, you can really provide lending at scale.
31:59
Uh So, yeah, mostly own the experience end-to-end, deliver the best kind of customer products.
32:03
Uh Also, I think it'll build trust with customers, right?
32:07
Like right now if you go to mercury.
32:07
com, there's a lot of disclaimers everywhere and we have to really explain to you like You're actually banking with someone in Arkansas that you don't know or something.
32:15
Yeah, I've I've seen this on other banks. It's like another thing. Yeah.
32:19
Yeah, most fintechs have that.
32:19
Uh but I think like people will Yeah, should trust us more if they see that we're like directly regulated.
32:25
Uh and you know, the hardest thing about Mercury is that trust element, right?
32:30
Like it's uh like we have this kind of internal joke.
32:34
I guess it's not funny actually, but we will say like, yeah, step number one, send us all your money.
32:37
Like that's [laughter] That's how Mercury works.
32:39
We all know the best way to build trust is making someone a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
32:44
Or you're me and you don't have money yet and you just started your business and you can start and build your Mercury from zero.
32:49
And then it's a little bit de-risked from the trust perspective.
32:54
>> a little easier when you're small and you're just starting out, but but it's still like, you know, you're still trusting us with money.
32:58
Um yeah, there are lots of options out there that that, you know, there's been banks that have been around for 100 years.
33:02
So like, you know, we are we we definitely like on the trust side we have to like win that trust over time and I think the the bank charter would help us do that as well as well.
33:12
Well, so what do you think are your best tactics to build that trust?
33:13
I uh I work with a lot of startups on like their storytelling and writing and it I've come to believe that like they're really I think in this case there is something you could say to increase the trust, but if you are a tech startup do they even believe you that you are an actual bank?
33:32
You know what I'm saying?
33:33
And I've kind of gotten to the point where like saying trust us just kind of doesn't do anything and it's more about, you know, the even doing a commercial with Steph Curry.
33:41
It's like, all right, well, if he and his manager must have vetted this thing.
33:46
And it's like, no wonder celebrity endorsements are such a big part of uh product commercials for new companies and whatnot.
33:52
I mean, how are you thinking about that?
33:53
Yeah, there's a there's probably like three elements to it, right?
33:56
That especially initially there was like trust by proxy.
33:58
Uh you know, we had Andreessen Horowitz as one of our first backers and actually we had a bunch of uh we did have a bunch of celebs as backers as well.
34:05
Uh we had the original founder of Silicon Valley Bank as a as a as a investor in Mercury.
34:10
So, yeah, you get like trust by proxy by like >> No, I should go say we had Serena Williams one and yeah, we had a few other ones.
34:20
Uh So, there's like this trust by association which is like, oh yeah, if all these people think it's good, uh they must be good.
34:25
Uh the second one which I think is like actually like slightly unintuitive and I didn't even think about this, but, you know, how polished the product is, especially the initial experience.
34:33
Like, yeah, Alex just went through the onboarding process.
34:36
You know, we have like spent so much freaking effort in that onboarding process to make it like very easy to like upload the right files and like, you know, when you upload your formation docs, it'll it'll tell you if you've uploaded the wrong kind of file and and, you know, we try to get like people uh that account within within like a few hours if we can.
34:53
Uh so, making that experience like super smooth is you we want people to say like, "Wow, that was actually like amazing."
34:59
Because like, the alternative is you have to like walk to a bank or drive to a bank branch and like sit in a line for 2 hours and talk to some someone who doesn't understand your business and try to try to get a bank account that way.
35:11
Uh so, uh so, you go build a trust by having like this polished product.
35:14
And then the third thing is uh you really want our customers being uh proponents for Mercury.
35:22
So, you know, even today 60% of our customers come from their friends and, you know, communities telling each other about Mercury.
35:28
Uh so, and you know what, Alex, you you kind of research this, but like if you look at X or Reddit, you know, Mercury comes up often.
35:35
People recommend us there or if you ask your friends, they'll we'll we'll we'll be recommended.
35:39
So, you know, having like that customer customer love where you've done right by a lot of customers both product and customer support and things like that uh goes a long way to like build that trust as well.
35:50
But it's definitely like it's like a boulder, you got to keep pushing it uphill, right?
35:53
Like we you know, when we first started, if you raised a million dollars, you would be like, "Oh my god, I'm not going to leave a hair."
35:58
Now we have several customers that have more than $400 million using using Mercury.
36:03
So, uh yeah, we keep pushing that boulder.
36:06
And we keep holding that trust over time. Here, here.
36:08
I needed to receive uh a wire to my LLC uh the day that I set my account up uh or at least like initiate it.
36:16
And I was just like, "I need something that will get me from zero to making this happen in the least amount of time as possible."
36:22
And uh I actually tried some of your competitors and in onboarding um it just was confusing or didn't work or there was like some kind of hiccup that I couldn't figure out and it feels like that does matter, especially when you're onboarding like someone like me who's just like a one-person entity. Here's a barrier though.
36:41
I know you're trying to ostensibly make things more transparent with the membership fee, but that also creates, you know, a hurdle to jump over for a lot of people.
36:53
How are you thinking about that trade-off?
36:54
So, the business account is completely free.
36:55
The personal account is actually we just made it so if you have a business account, you get the personal for free, but we do charge for it if you do not.
37:03
It's like 250 a year or something.
37:03
It's Yeah, it's 240 a year. So, 20 20 a month.
37:09
Um Yeah, we'll probably experiment with this over time.
37:13
Our our main thing is we want to provide like a super high-touch, high-quality service.
37:19
And yeah, on business obviously, people who set up businesses, maybe not Alex, but you know, they tend to have higher balances and they're using it actively and like you you make money >> [laughter] >> You make money through various things.
37:33
You can definitely and I've talked to a bunch of like other neo banks that have done this.
37:37
You can end up with like a consumer product where, you know, you have millions of customers that have like hardly any money in there, they're hardly using it and it just costs you like a ton of money to service that.
37:45
So, that's the main thing we're looking to avoid on the personal side.
37:48
It's not I mean, obviously we'll make some money on it, but it's actually to make it so like, "Hey, are you really really committed to this product?
37:53
Are you actually going to use it rather than like, you know, to sign up and like put some money in it and then forget about it kind of thing?"
38:00
So, it's more about that than like actually like using the subscription service for uh to make money.
38:08
Uh but it also means that we can provide like this really really kind of high-quality product, right?
38:12
Like we have great support around it.
38:14
We have really high-yield savings account.
38:16
Uh We're going to launch a credit card at some point.
38:19
It'll it'll amazing credit card.
38:20
So, like we really want to make that product really amazing and they're making it amazing and like high touch does cost money and we want to make sure those customers are like committed to it.
38:29
You got to spend money to make money, as they say. Yeah.
38:33
I mean it's kind of silly I think, you know, with the upmarket approach, a lot of those folks do really care about, you know, the airport lounge or the edit by Chase Sapphire Reserve with a whole lot of disclaimers on it.
38:49
Um is that kind of the motive behind like doing doing the credit card thing or do you think all of that is kind of BS and like actually it's a less stressful life to just get cash back on everything and just let it be.
38:59
Cuz I'm certainly on Reddit trying to maximize my points and I feel stupid.
39:03
You are you are a points guy?
39:06
I hate points personally.
39:08
I don't I it's it's hard to actually figure out exactly what percentage of people like love points and hate points.
39:13
I think it's like I actually think probably like a like people who love points are like these really loud people where they're like, "Oh my god, you can get points and did you get this guy?"
39:21
You know, like that kind of thing.
39:22
And people who hate points don't talk about the fact that they hate it mostly.
39:25
Is that I think Do I sound like that? Yeah. Great.
39:31
>> So So I suspect a lot of people just don't want to bother with this stuff and they just want to get like a reasonable cash back and not jump through hoops.
39:37
Like I have a bunch of safe Chase Sapphire points.
39:39
I can never freaking figure out how to spend them.
39:40
Uh I can help you with that after if you want.
39:44
Yeah, but I don't want I don't want to think about it.
39:45
I just want it like either give me money or just get out of my way.
39:49
It's like you have to book it like 300 days in advance to get like a business I don't know. It's so confusing. I hate points.
39:53
Dave Portnoy has a million Amex points famously um and has never spent them, which I also love.
40:00
Yeah, I mean that's probably a problem for AI to help solve how to spend your points well.
40:04
I was actually going to ask Claude about that this morning, but I forgot. Thanks for the reminder.
40:09
>> The answer is they don't want you to spend those points, right?
40:11
That's the That's the trick.
40:12
Like they're making money on people by like all these points that they you never spend it and like it's just like free money for that. >> Also, exactly.
40:19
So, if you look at the Chase Sapphire Reserve, they got DoorDash, they got StubHub, they got Lyft, they got uh the $300 travel credit.
40:28
My calculation in my mind is that if I'm using it all, then I'm clearly getting an added value because that's their whole bet is that no one's using it.
40:39
And so Yeah, they want you to spend the money, pay the yearly fee, and not use the rewards.
40:42
Like that's that's that's ideal thing.
40:44
Also, is this going to be a part of your credit card philosophy?
40:45
Cuz I mean, this could be a storytelling lever to say, "Listen, like yeah, the credits can the points can be fun and this and that, but like Yeah, we want to make it simple and yeah, we're going to just give you give you the money and and not make you think about it.
40:59
I do think there's like a world where air miles make sense for people who like travel a lot and you know, maybe we'll have a uh air mile program at some point.
41:07
Uh but yeah, the rest of it is I think it's like a hack to like make money from people.
41:13
If you can somehow get every airline on there and be the first credit card to have every major airline alliance cuz you know, Amex only has some and Chase only has some. That would be huge.
41:24
That would be AGI for finance.
41:26
hard to possible, but Yeah. Um >> We'll try, Alex.
41:31
Something else in my world, you know, when we have CEOs of products we use on, we like to, you know, just ask them to build things for us.
41:38
Um when will I be able to talk to Mercury and my Mercury data securely via Claude?
41:44
Yeah, you can do that already. You can do that already?
41:46
So, A the Mercury Insights launch has it built in inside, so you don't need to go to Claude.
41:51
You could just like just just log in right now, Alex.
41:53
Click on click on Insights on the left-hand side, uh and you can talk to it.
41:58
Uh So, that's But what if I'm doing like financial planning, tax planning in Claude and I want to pull in my Mercury data?
42:07
>> then we also have a Mercury MCP.
42:07
Uh so, if you go to Claude and I don't I should really know this, but there's a place in there that you can like add add MCB's. >> Yeah.
42:16
Uh so that's actually growing super fast.
42:18
We only launched that a couple of months ago. People really love it.
42:21
So you can pull in all that data and you can yeah, you can plug in whatever other data you have. So that's growing. People are using that. Yeah.
42:26
I don't I mean that's partly what what kind of drove us to build it directly into the product because obviously like there's geeky people like you that are that want to learn what MCB is and do it in themselves, but other people just want to uh yeah, just be able to like pull that data directly into into the AI directly in Mercury.
42:46
Uh but I do think like this is one of the, you know, interesting things to think about that like banks already like so far behind uh that like I think AI just accelerates that, right?
42:56
Like I can't I assume no other I haven't actually researched it, but I assume none of the big banks have like an MCB server uh on or know what that means.
43:03
I would doubt that Bank of America is on MCP.
43:08
So how do you feel though about giving over the interface essentially to Claude in this case via MCP?
43:14
Um I assume it can also plug into chat, but is the SAS apocalypse coming to it to banking or how do you feel about that?
43:21
I think at the end of the day like do great things for customers, right?
43:24
Like I think uh this mindset of like fear is is yeah.
43:27
If we do the best thing for customers, people will gravitate towards us and I don't have like a fear around it.
43:34
Uh I think that idea of then yeah, this is so much to banking.
43:39
Like it's it's not like Claude is going to go build a bank.
43:43
Uh We're going to hold you to that, Immad. Yeah, you say that. Don't give them an idea.
43:47
>> [laughter] >> But but there's just I like the depth of features is is really deeper than Mercury and there's yeah, certain things where you do want to like talk to it and there's certain things where you want to click around, right?
43:57
Like if you're if you're looking at graphs and you're like uh you know, adding a user like yeah, there's a set of things where like talking is the right interface and there's a set of things where like actually like uh you do want to click around and like see the information in like a densely packed kind of way.
44:11
Uh but yeah, we keep building things and yeah, as long as we're doing good things by customers, I think we'll we'll succeed.
44:18
I don't I don't see it as a threat.
44:20
Thank god, I'm in insights and it's high me.
44:22
I'm making more money than I'm spending, which I wasn't actually aware of until now. Um Oh, good.
44:28
>> [laughter] >> Problem solved.
44:30
Well, here's what we need to do with MCP.
44:32
We have Alex's little poker card that we're going to spin up.
44:34
And whenever he's up, his eight sleep bed is going to like be like the perfect temperature.
44:41
Whenever he's down, it's going to like go to 100° and make him sweat and like actively punish.
44:45
And [snorts] uh I think, you know, there's kind of going to be a little Pavlovian loop there to help Alex play better.
44:52
Just know interest I know you're saying like, you know, we we'll just got to build the right product and it will be fine.
44:56
And I mean, you do have the benefits of being in a heavily regulated space, right?
44:59
Like you're going after a charter and it's, you know, I you're right.
45:03
I don't think Anthropic's going to go for a bank charter.
45:04
Um but they probably do want to absorb a lot of the even this insights announcements today, you know, they probably would like for a lot of that to be happening in Claude.
45:15
Um and you've got the connector to kind of make it happen at the data layer.
45:17
So, is this just kind of early everyone in tech is, you know, figuring this out and going like, what do we give to the AI? What do we keep?
45:25
And it's just early and therefore it's fine to do both or do you think that that will change at any point?
45:31
>> I mean, like you can kind of think about like what's the what's the potential end result, right?
45:34
The end result might be like I've got this like AI in my ear and it's just like running my life for me, right?
45:39
It's like and it's like if I, you know, if I want to buy a car, it like negotiates it for me and if I want to get a mortgage, it sets it up for me and all that kind of stuff.
45:47
Uh I think the benefit of being a startup and being creative is like you can actually try to write that, right?
45:54
Like I think most most things I've gone wrong since Mercury has launched have like helped Mercury, uh which is, you know, like I this is maybe like a uh morbid way to say it, but like COVID happened and, you know, suddenly all the bank branches shut down and like how would you get a bank account and like Mercury was there, right?
46:12
Uh And yeah, well, every year something crazy happens in the world and like Mercury ends up like doing well.
46:19
And I think like when you're on the side of the future and where the future's going, you you know, you do well.
46:25
If you try to fight the future, eventually like maybe you can hold that line for a little bit, like, you know, maybe you you're some SaaS app and you're like refuse to give API access and you you try to block like, you know, computer usage and from like using you and like you do all this stuff and like, you know, at the end of the day like the AI is just going to act like how a human acts.
46:42
So, like, you you just can't block that forever.
46:44
I think a better move for that SaaS app is to go like, "Okay, you know, how do we enable this AI?
46:49
How do we build our own agents to then interact with people?"
46:51
And like that's like, you know, try Yeah, when I I'm also an investor, but when I when I think about Mercury or when I invest in people, I don't want to go like, "Does this feature exist in 10 years' time?"
47:01
And like I think the future is this.
47:03
Like the future is like AI is going to be a big part of like how people interact with all services and, you know, maybe in that world like every other bank like tries to block it and Mercury's like, "Sure, let's just do it."
47:15
And like everyone has to use Mercury.
47:17
You know, like I think the alternative is is like you try to fight the future and I think A, that's just not going to be possible.
47:26
Uh but B, I think you're going to like lose out on the opportunity when you try to fight the future.
47:30
Is there still, speaking of the future, are there any narratives going around about, you know, whether it's with stable coins or being able to have a custodial, you know, wallet of your funds that's completely within your control, or is that kind of passé at this point within banking world?
47:47
Uh I think there's like strong use cases for this.
47:52
Honestly, I think if you're in the US and you want to do things with US dollars, it's not that useful, right?
47:57
Like you can get a Mercury account pretty quickly, you can send money between people same day, you can get cards mailed out.
48:03
Like it's just a pretty good system.
48:04
Uh I think that, you know, if you're in, I don't know, Turkey or Argentina or whatever, right?
48:10
Like, you know, you don't necessarily trust your local currency.
48:13
Uh if you want to do in, you know, any sort of international stuff, like you want to like contract with people and like do remote work or whatever it is, like you need to be able to operate outside your local currency.
48:26
And that's where I think like, you know, stable coins and like uh wallets have done like well, and I think they'll continue to well, and there's a you know, uh Stripe acquired a company called Bridge that's done a really good job of enabling a lot of those uh those players.
48:39
Uh So, I think there's a there's a place for it.
48:43
Uh but yeah, I think in the basic like US dollars, US ecosystem uh kind of world, uh I think stable coins actually like add a layer of confusion rather than like make it better for customers right now, at least.
48:56
Yeah, and I think like speaking of onboarding and craft, I mean, I was experimenting with a lot of that stuff like years ago, you know, during the crypto boom, just to see what was going on.
49:06
And while it sounds nice philosophically, uh to be able to, you know, own your and have it on you, that's also like incredibly scary, you know?
49:14
Like I perpetually hide things from myself and lose things.
49:20
And as cool as the Tony Fadell Ledger wallet looked and as much as I love the tagline, which was trust yourself, which is one of my favorite taglines, I'm like, I'm literally going to lose this thing, and then there goes the nest egg.
49:33
And so, you know, whether it's with the FDIC or otherwise, it's like you want to have that safety >> like when you you know, when you swipe a card, right?
49:41
Like you can go complain about something if they don't deliver the service, right?
49:44
Like what happens in the world where you like own your wallet and you send the money and they just disappear?
49:48
Ahmad, it's it's rare that we have uh founders on who are as prolific investors as you are.
49:54
I think it's always fascinating to to talk to CEOs who also invest a lot.
49:59
We had Dylan Field was one of our first guests and he's also a very active angel. You've invested in what? Hundreds of startups.
50:08
You have your own, you know, fund.
50:09
How does that intersect with running Mercury?
50:12
Do you find that that gives you a unique vantage point or alpha in how you run the company because you're seeing all these new ideas and meeting all these, you know, really interesting founders building the future or how does that, yeah, does it does it affect Mercury at all? Yeah, 100%.
50:26
I mean, I think uh investors are kind of like the superstars of the tech ecosystem.
50:32
So, like everyone wants to kind of talk to them and like aspire to be them because like I guess you need them.
50:37
So, initial Mercury customers were investors, things I'd invested in.
50:42
That's still obviously the case with a lot of my investees.
50:46
Portfolio companies are Mercury customers.
50:48
Uh I also think like, you know, for me personally, you know, especially as your company gets bigger, you're you're you're CEO-ing, right?
50:56
Like you're hiring exacts, you're doing all this stuff that like takes you away from like what it's really about in terms of innovation and building product and things like that.
51:04
Uh So, yeah, I I you know, now like everyone I invest a lot in AI.
51:09
So, yeah, I I have like a a chip company that I invested in and I know like, yeah, you don't know like a lot about it, but investing is kind of fun.
51:17
Like especially like if every one company you invest in, you might talk to five other companies and like you know, I've done like one fusion startup.
51:23
So, I talked to probably like five fusion startups.
51:24
So, you you end up just knowing a little bit about a lot of things.
51:28
Uh and you generally people doing new things are doing it at the edge of what's possible, right?
51:33
So, they're they're you know, to go back to like showing you the future, right?
51:37
Like they're they're like telling you like, oh, you know, like I literally had this conversation yesterday where they were like, oh, yeah, this like barely works right now.
51:43
This is a seed stage company, but they were like, imagine how good it's going to be in 10 years time."
51:47
And I was like, "Okay, you're not turning any obviously they're selling me it'll be really good in one year's time."
51:52
Uh but I do think like uh startups are like you know, always taking risks, doing new things, and like entrepreneurs when you invest in them can really show you what's like what the future's going to be like and they can like help kind of like, "Oh yeah, this is like yeah, this is what it'll be and I need to get on get get on top of it." kind of thing.
52:08
Uh also just gives me a lot of energy.
52:11
I feel like uh I have this like idea that like you know, what is not limited is time, but what's limited is energy.
52:18
Uh like I think like you know, you can just keep going if like if everything you do is kind of fun and it gives you energy, you can just like do it for 24 hours, right?
52:28
Well, maybe not 18 hours.
52:28
I definitely relate to the energy of learning a little bit about a lot of things as a journalist my entire adult life.
52:37
There is a lot of intersection with the patterns uh that a VC goes through day-to-day.
52:42
Um and it is it is the kind of thing that if you're deeply curious about this stuff and you're just interested in where tech is headed, it's it's really fun to get to actually like also play Spats, I would imagine.
52:53
So, talk to us about like what you're looking for in the companies you invest in and how they're using AI at this early stage.
53:01
And talk to us less so from like the product building point of view, but I mean you brought up hiring executives.
53:07
I feel like I've I've known a lot of executives historically that are frankly god awful at hiring and it seems like a ripe opportunity for AI to help establish like what are the actual criteria we need to be looking out for this role, what type of questions are we asking, how can we involve people more in like teasing out better reviews, especially on panels, you know, for hiring and whatnot.
53:33
Have you seen AI come into that part of the process yet with the companies you're investing in?
53:38
Yeah, I feel like hiring is like not something that's changed too much.
53:41
I think one one part of the one part of it that is changing, especially if you're hiring engineers, is like how do you how do you judge someone when they can like you know, do any coding challenge very quickly and like perfectly.
53:54
Uh so, you have to kind of uh yeah, I've seen like coding your coding challenges getting way more complicated and people are like asking for like, you know, give us all the prompts you used to like build this thing and then like maybe you ask them a bunch of questions about like how does it work and like, you know, why they made choices they did.
54:09
Uh outside that, I I'm like I'm wondering whether AI would be good at this yet.
54:15
Like I feel like AI is not always great at judgment.
54:17
Uh Well, you need to create a criteria or a rubric, I think, and then it is it can be good at it. I don't know.
54:23
There's just like a there's just a thing about like when you put a box in it, people would like learn how to cheat the box and like it's part of like being a good hiring person is to try to like really get underneath the hood and like, uh you know, learn the unique experiences and I get a uh but I was saying like, you know, like even a year ago, like something like insights wouldn't have worked.
54:44
Like AI was like really bad at numbers.
54:48
And now it's actually like pretty good at like reasoning about numbers and things like that.
54:50
So, yeah, I think even what I'm saying here could easily be wrong in like 6 months' time or year's time where like you you would have like I can imagine in a year's time you would not trust a human to like uh run a hiring process.
55:02
You'd be like, of course AI would.
55:04
Well, the hallucination rate was a huge factor for a while with this stuff.
55:07
I mean, I imagine for insights, like your hallucination rate for that needs to be zero, right?
55:12
Yeah, and it needs to like not try to make up numbers, but actually look at look at real numbers and like reason about them.
55:19
Uh Uh but yeah, to come back to your question around like investing in AI, it's actually kind of funny because like uh AI just changes so much that the the criteria you used to invest every 3 months is like completely different, right?
55:33
Like uh like to give you an example, yeah, there was a bunch of accounting software that like a year ago everyone was like super excited about like, "Hey, accountants have lots of humans."
55:42
And like, yeah, I could do this.
55:43
So, you know, there was this kind of bloom of like 10 plus like startups that raised like seed or series A kind of Isn't that sad?
55:49
Lots of humans is the problem statement for tech builders.
55:54
>> [laughter] >> Uh well, there there's a It's a combo of it, right?
55:57
It's like lots of humans and labor shortage, which we have in accounting and we have in a a few other places as well.
56:02
Uh But yeah, I mean in general like I don't think humans should do things that like AI can do. Uh overtime at least.
56:09
Like, you know, cuz at least right now AI actually does like relatively mundane things.
56:15
And like these are, you know, it'll be better for an accountant to like give you tax advice and like really give you thoughtful business advice rather than like click there and like is this transaction a travel transaction or is this a meal?
56:26
Like, you know, like going like one by one categorizing things.
56:30
Like like that's no one's having fun doing that.
56:31
Like we should have the the machine do the non-fun but >> I have to get my books in order for my uh my CPA.
56:38
Um can I just prompt Mercury to do that for me yet or when do we get to that point?
56:44
>> As part of the insights thing, we auto-categorizing all the transactions.
56:47
I think we went back and auto-categorized categorized everything in the last 18 months as well. So, uh check it out.
56:52
Uh there's we're always improving things.
56:53
Uh but I think we'll have it all categorized for you so you should be able to just hand that over.
56:59
Well, so what do you expect your employees, your human employees, to be doing?
57:04
Let's just say even a year and a half.
57:06
Like, where is that leverage do you feel like for them?
57:09
Uh I yeah, I mean as I said, AI is moving so fast so it's hard to like predict like where's the leverage?
57:14
Uh I mean right now I think like humans are the main place where you get like judgment and creativity and like it's AI is much more like you know, even like I used to be an engineer, right?
57:25
Like, I think I'm like a pretty good engineer.
57:27
But 90% of the time when you're engineering, like you're just writing the like wrote things.
57:32
You're like, "Oh, I have to create this file and I have to create this function and this function has to do this."
57:36
And it's just like very basic stuff.
57:38
Like and like actually if you're a better engineer, you can just like type a little faster and do it a little faster, but like it's not like you're like adding that much creativity to like the you know the thing that's going to do the basic thing that like every every engineer knows that you have to do in like a web page or something like that.
57:54
Uh So, you know, when I look at engineering today, it's like yeah, the the basic stuff that everyone could do anyway and it was just a race of who could do it faster.
58:02
Like the AI could just do it for you and very fast.
58:05
Uh and you know, all the actual work is in like thinking about the problem, thinking about customers, thinking about the architecture, uh and kind of guiding the guiding the AI.
58:13
So, Yeah, I think the same thing applies to lots of different functions, right?
58:16
Like I don't think the I don't think the AI is going to come up with the PB&J idea.
58:23
Uh but it can probably like write the spec and like you know, eventually go find the truck and like all that kind of stuff.
58:29
Uh So, And I do think this is like a very important conversation that I personally feel like working with founders all day that one of the main jobs I feel like I'm doing with storytelling with a lot of these companies I work with is trying to get specific about this future.
58:43
And I think one of the things that I don't know, maybe could be an interesting like thing to think about.
58:49
I know you talk about your criteria not being a minimum viable product, but being minimum delightful product.
58:56
And I think delight is kind of something that only a human is able to evaluate unless we evaluate delight as nice juicy buttons, which I think are just a subset of delight.
59:10
I don't know, is that something that only humans can do in your mind? For now.
59:14
>> [laughter] >> I think that I think for I would say like you know, that human touch and delight and creativity, all of that like it is it is for now like a domain of humans.
59:26
Uh I I it's really hard to tell like where the technology goes in the next few years.
59:30
But I mean even as the technology is a super powerful, right?
59:32
Like I think there's a uh there's a ton of work that doesn't involve like the delight part of of life.
59:39
And there's just a lot of stuff out there.
59:41
And like that by itself will be disruptive disruptive, right?
59:43
Like I think you know, Mercury is growing really fast and we're doing a lot of stuff.
59:48
So like, you know, I think we'll we'll continue needing human humans, but like, you know, we saw Block, which yeah, they weren't growing very fast and they were like, "Hey, actually we just don't need 40% of people that work here anymore."
1:00:00
Uh I'm sure it's not just AI, but uh but that's yeah, that's kind of scary, I think.
1:00:06
Thank you for saying that.
1:00:06
Like that they weren't growing very fast.
1:00:08
I mean, so many people just, I think, took Dorsey's framing of this is to get ahead of what's coming with AI.
1:00:16
And it's like, "No, like Block had more employees than its competitors and it was growing slower."
1:00:22
>> [laughter] >> Like that's And I think a lot of companies are kind of like whitewashing their layoffs with AI when in reality they overhired in the pandemic or they're just not structurally uh doing well regardless of what's happening with AI.
1:00:35
Uh and I wish more people just said that.
1:00:38
>> I think there's an enablement factor to it though.
1:00:40
Like I think like there there is a element of, you know, that you can do more with AI and that does enable people who aren't growing, they need to like reduce costs to go like, "Okay, you know, we'll we'll use AI more aggressively to like outsource this work that humans were doing."
1:00:55
But you in your position, like Mercury's growing very fast like you said.
1:00:59
You're constantly expanding.
1:01:00
I'm sure you're hiring a ton.
1:01:02
Like it's not rational for you to just go uh and you're very plugged in on AI, but you're not going to just go, "I'm just going to preemptively lay off half my employees." >> would be insane. Yeah, yeah.
1:01:14
Uh yeah, and it really does come down to like, yeah, we're profitable as well.
1:01:19
Like there's a there's there's so much work to do.
1:01:21
Like we actually to across almost every world we actively hiring, right?
1:01:25
Like we we're going to grow the team by like 20 25% this year.
1:01:29
But at the same time we will like try to automate as much as possible and like, you know, it's it's actually hard to keep up with all of our growth even with the people we have.
1:01:36
So, you know, if we can make their lives a little easier that'll be good.
1:01:40
>> I was talking to Gus Gustav, the co-ceo of Spotify the other day and he framed it in a way that I thought was good, which was our road map is always longer than what we're able to get done at any given moment.
1:01:52
And until that gap has fully collapsed, there's going to always be opportunity to do more with AI.
1:01:58
Like AI is not replacing things, it's not replacing humans.
1:02:02
If anything, we're just going to add more to get our road map done.
1:02:06
Uh because um yeah, like that that gap is still there.
1:02:11
And maybe we'll get to a point where AI can just like fill that road map in for you, but it doesn't seem like we're getting there anytime soon. Yeah.
1:02:18
I actually feel like product builders, whether it's engineers or designers or PMs, you actually need even more of with AI, which is like a little ironic because I'm like uh yeah, I look at like our sales team and I'm like, "Oh my god, if I just had like a two engineers that could just work alongside the sales team, they could like deploy so much AI to like speed them up, get leads better, you know."
1:02:37
There's just so much you can do with AI that you actually need more engineers and more people who can like use it actively uh to be deployed across like the rest of the company, uh which I think is like also a little ironic.
1:02:48
So, you have kids, right, Immad? Yeah, three. 14, 8, and 1 years old. So, full spectrum. >> Oh, wow.
1:02:56
See you're back at square one a little bit.
1:02:59
Um I have a a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old and I think we all know that, you know, it's a good thing to do to teach financial responsibility, literacy.
1:03:07
How are you thinking about that?
1:03:11
I feel like even the age-old uh example of something like allowance, I think, was so powerful for me to start thinking about earning or having some scarcity with my money and being even more deliberate about it.
1:03:26
I remember having a Visa Bucks card.
1:03:28
Do you remember what that was?
1:03:30
No, I wasn't born in I didn't grow up in the US, so It was, uh, something that your parents could load money onto and it was like my favorite thing ever and I would know exactly how much I had and I would go, you know, buy video games and then sell my old video games.
1:03:45
And to some extent, you could spin up cards now with Mercury and give your kids, you know, specific amount of money or whatever.
1:03:51
How do you feel like that's going to look for for kids growing up? How are you doing it?
1:03:56
>> Uh, yeah, I make I'm a really big fan of like giving kids access to kind of real money.
1:04:01
Uh, so with my younger kid, my 8-year-old, uh, I try to do with cash because, like, you know, digital money is like a little abstract for her, so, you know, give her like physical pocket money and if she wants to like spend something, I'm like, "Okay, you know, you can pay for it."
1:04:14
Uh, it's actually kind of funny.
1:04:14
Uh, like as soon as I introduced that, this was about like a year and a bit ago, like she stopped spending money.
1:04:21
I was like like she, you know, before she'd always ask me to buy her things and then when I was like, "Okay, you know, now you have your pocket money, like, you can buy your own things."
1:04:29
And she was just like doesn't ask for things anymore, which I thought was like hilarious.
1:04:32
Uh, with my older one, uh, yeah, she has a, you know, one of my in my personal bank, like, uh, for Mercury personal, I have a account for her and I load it up with uh, with money.
1:04:43
Uh, and one thing that I did that I thought was really good for her, you know, I haven't done it with my younger one yet because she's a bit too young for advice, I set up uh, I used E-Trade for this because Mercury doesn't have it yet, but I set up like a custodial account for her.
1:04:58
Uh, and then I gave her some starting money.
1:04:59
I'm like, "Hey, you know, what are your favorite products?
1:05:00
Like, what should you invest in?"
1:05:01
And you know, she did invest in like a bunch and then I actually I told her to invest in Coinbase, which is the best stock she's she invested in because we did it like right at the bottom of the 2022 kind of uh, Coinbase stock.
1:05:12
But like I think that's been really good for her to like, you know, see it and it's already been in there for a few years.
1:05:19
So, she's seen like the value of compounding and stuff like that.
1:05:21
But yeah, giving you a real access to money and like getting them like, you know, I've tried to explain compounding to her like lots of ways, but you know, I still don't understand it, Hamad.
1:05:31
Can you break it down for us?
1:05:33
>> [laughter] >> If something goes up by 10% every year, then in 100 years you could have a ton of money.
1:05:39
>> [laughter] >> And that's the That's the pitch. Claude can do this now.
1:05:43
It can visualize the It was one of the examples that they gave.
1:05:47
Claude recently added the ability to to do like visual generative responses like charts and diagrams.
1:05:52
And one of the examples >> You're a real Claude person, huh? Like no ChatGPT love? I I mean, I use both.
1:05:59
I use it all, but I've just It's really started to hook in for me.
1:06:03
But But compound interest was one of the the top examples they had in the blog post like a visual diagram. So, I'll just prompt it.
1:06:10
Well, I think the kind I mean, the thing that just kind of breaks my heart is that there is so much we could do to make financial and like investment literacy more accessible, but that still doesn't change the fact that there's so many people these days don't even have the money to invest.
1:06:24
They're just living paycheck to paycheck, you know?
1:06:28
Uh I mean, I did, you know, it's it's not the best name, but like Trump accounts are like kind of a good idea, I think, right?
1:06:34
Like every every kid Yeah.
1:06:37
Every kid born in 2025 and after starts with $1,000 in an investment account and then like, you know, by the time they're 18 they've like seen this like hopefully grow over time and uh they've they've been part of that journey and like, you know, it gives them a lump sum, but also like gets them into investing early.
1:06:52
So, uh yeah, I think that's that's big.
1:06:54
Uh But do you see it as part of your role building these products as they expand to investing and, you know, maybe eventually thinking about helping you get a picture of your future to try and help people make what you believe are good decisions.
1:07:07
Like for example, hey uh you've been day trading a lot and I know that's fun, but the S&P is up 17% this year and that's pretty hard to beat.
1:07:17
Yeah, I mean really even buying individual stocks is mostly a bad idea.
1:07:21
You know, every now and then I talk to someone who's like, you know, spends >> saying.
1:07:25
Can you turn that into a tool tip? Yeah, I think we got it.
1:07:29
But at the end of the day, you know, people are people and like they they they do have fun in investing and they have like these ideas around it.
1:07:37
So, yeah, I think overall the product will like always treat them as adults and like give them give them information and let them do what they want to do.
1:07:42
I don't I don't know if I'd want to be like, "Ooh, you're moving money into DraftKings.
1:07:48
Are you sure that's a good financial decision?"
1:07:50
Like >> [laughter] >> you know, I feel like that might be like a little little frustrating, but I think there is like the other side of it is like, yeah, make it super easy to make the right choice and, you know, like your your paycheck comes in and automatically gets distributed to the Mercury account.
1:08:05
Yeah, we the personal banking side already has like the Mercury Invest product that just like is very simple.
1:08:08
It's just like put in S&P or government T-bills and like don't overthink it.
1:08:15
Which honestly is like what 99% of people should probably be doing and everything else is like not not the correct thing to do.
1:08:21
Alex's open claw instance is going to say Alex, I see you betting money on the Lakers, but according to your chat transcripts, you've done 86% less research than the average Lakers better.
1:08:35
>> [laughter] >> So, maybe bad idea? Yeah.
1:08:35
No, that that would definitely be the case considering I know nothing about basketball.
1:08:40
Um but yeah, uh where should we land this?
1:08:45
Alex, do you have any zingers to land us?
1:08:46
We can always just ask him out to ask us some questions.
1:08:50
>> [laughter] >> With the 3 minutes we have left.
1:08:52
>> any feature requests, Alex?
1:08:52
Uh well, knowing that I can already connect to Claude is great. Um not really.
1:08:59
I mean, I think you guys have done such a good job with the simplicity of the interface.
1:09:02
I think um um uh yeah, I mean, I actually haven't turned on the personal yet, but I'm going to.
1:09:11
Um I think I think you know the direction you have to go, which is like the charter and building all the full, you know, lending capabilities and Zelle and all those features.
1:09:19
>> Don't let PMs destroy your product, Imad.
1:09:22
>> [laughter] >> Cuz there's so many opportunities for incremental growth in a financial product, right?
1:09:26
That's you could add 100 buttons. Yeah. Yeah.
1:09:31
Yeah, that's one of the benefits of like AI interfaces, right? There's no buttons.
1:09:35
Uh and you can actually have like a lot of products behind the scene, which I think is like an interesting world to think about when it comes to interfaces that you could have like way more features, but they're like going to show up at the right time and they're like going to automate it rather than like you have to click buttons for it. Uh but yes.
1:09:50
Yeah, we I used to be very anti-PMs actually for the first uh basically 80 people we had no PMs and then we we we wouldn't call them PMs for the next 180 like until we get to 180 people, we'd call them like business leads or like some other term.
1:10:04
But eventually I came to love PMs.
1:10:07
I think there's just a the right way to do PMs, which is like, you know, very kind of customs customer-centric and they're part of the team and they're not like kind of dictators uh uh running the show.
1:10:18
Uh but but yeah, it is it is dangerous to have the wrong kind of PM. Awesome. I think we're at time.
1:10:25
Thank you so much for uh joining us. This was a ton of fun.
1:10:27
Yeah, this was really fun.
1:10:29
Uh I yeah, I didn't know what to expect.
1:10:33
We [laughter] just did it, so >> We did it. Thank you.
1:10:37
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