Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
in 2025. I think last year it was much more like, oh, you know, what's your PDoom, blah, blah, blah. That used to be a big conversation in the Bay Area. Now I feel like we're not talking about that as much. I feel like we're just talking about, you know, like more practical applications versus like, you know, the AGI. Yeah, that's a really good point. I wonder what changed it.
I guess because it feels like we're getting like really useful practical applications that can scale without like getting AGI.
Chapter 2: What existential threats do OpenAI and Anthropic face?
So maybe before it was like the only way we get something useful out of this is with AGI and that like tied to PDoom. But yeah, it has toned down. That's a good point. Yeah. I wonder if it's like a governmental change as well. Like the Democrats were like trying to do more legislation and things like that. So it was like more at the forefront. Yeah. I think it was also open AI.
Chapter 3: How is Tribe challenging traditional ad models?
Like that was their mission and that's what they're talking about. And then Anthropix mission as well. And then I feel like those companies have become more commercial. Everyone is just like focusing on the money.
Chapter 4: What is vibe coding and how does it work?
Yeah. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Founders in Arms podcast with me, Imad Akhand, co-founder and CEO of Mercury. And I'm Raj Suri, co-founder of Lima and Tribe. And today we have another one-on-one episode with Imad and I, just chatting about tech industry, you know, founder life, and just catching up. I mean, Imad and I are so busy, it's hard to catch up with him.
And so I'm glad I got some time with him. Yeah. And, uh, next year we have a special event, um, in early January, which, uh, should be January 14th, which will be at the Mercury headquarters. Um, and it'll be live in person, um, with, uh, you know, a few of you as well. So, um, we'll have more details on that. We'll share a link soon to sign up for that.
Chapter 5: What are the best and worst tech developments of 2025?
And, um, there's going to be, you know, a couple of hours with us and founders and just chatting and getting to know each other. Yeah, with potentially a special guest. But yeah, we'll share the link. It's relatively small space, I guess 100-ish people. So sign up quickly if you're interested. So I guess big news on my front is we actually just launched Mercury Personal.
We've had it in waitlist for a bit more than a year.
Chapter 6: Why is self-driving technology more impactful than AGI?
and had like, you know, we've had about 4,000 people using it, $80,000 in average balance. Not only do I use Mercury Personal, like we advocated to all of our immigrants that we help at Lima and like, you know, we actively, we've signed up many accounts for you guys. So, you know, so yeah, for their businesses and themselves personally.
So like it's, yeah, it works really well, you know, as a combo, I think. You do have to be a US resident to use it. I think the biggest value are like, yeah, if you're using it for both business and personal, I mean, especially if you have an LLC, like you have to move money back and forth all the time. So that's really valuable.
I think the other one that I find really valuable is kind of the collaboration features, right? Like my wife is on it. I have my
nanny on it uh if there's like a bill to pay and uh i have an ea sometimes for my bills like you know all of these kind of controls that you have on the business side where you can have accounts that can do certain things and they need approval for other things like they're just all pretty useful on the personal side uh but there isn't really like a personal banking product with the power of like a business financial platform um
And that's actually super useful. A lot of the things that one wants to do on business, you want to do on personal. Even automatically categorize all your transactions and upload your bills so that you can see. Normally on the personal side, you're like, what the hell was this transaction two years ago? You have no idea. Now you can see a bill and see more details around it.
It's been really fun to build it and use it. One of the unexpected benefits is as Mercury has scaled, not everyone that works at Mercury gets to use the Mercury product on the business side. Obviously, the finance team does, but the rest of the people don't. But we obviously gave it for free to anyone that works at Mercury. And it's just fun to dog food the product.
And then people get pretty passionate about fixing things when they're using it themselves and it's causing them issues. So that's been kind of an unexpected side effect of this thing. Yeah, it's great. I think once your team is using the product all the time, they're going to come up with better ideas and also be more motivated to fix things. Yeah, 100%. And more empathetic as well. Yeah. Yeah.
That's great. And, um, yeah, what I like about it, let's see. I mean, there's a few things. One is, I mean, you didn't mention the interest rate is really good, right? So like, uh, Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah. On savings, you get like the full, like, you know, 3% plus net these days, right? Three and a half percent, you know, which you got to fight for in other banks. Yeah.
I think we had three and a half right now. Yeah. Three and a half. So that's, that's pretty good. You're losing money if you're using a different bank account, you know, and you're not taking advantage of this rate and you don't have to do anything for it. It's just right there. So, you know, in your savings account. So that, that's big advantage. Um, And then, yes.
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Chapter 7: Why did Immad launch Mercury Personal despite skepticism?
You know, like if I, you know, I use Schwab right now and Schwab is great. Like there's no issues with Schwab, but like there's still things they can do better, you know? And like if you took the kind of the Mercury ethos like simplicity approach to it. I think you can do better analytics, better decision-making, using AI for things inside the app.
Like there's a better product to be made, I think, in brokerages.
Chapter 8: How does Mercury Personal enhance personal banking?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and there's definitely a power of putting it all in one place as well. Of course. I think one interesting lesson for me was, you know, I really wanted to do Mercury Personal for a while, but a lot of the team, and I would say quite a few investors did not want us to do it.
Not that like they were like, no, don't do it, no matter what kind of thing, but they weren't like, they're like, why does this make sense? We have so much to do on the business side, etc. And now almost everyone after like, you know, seeing us execute it and also use it potentially has like changed their position.
There's been an interesting kind of founder lesson that like even at scale and even as a CEO, you do have to kind of do things and not like opposition, but like you have to kind of use your own conviction to do things.
Like the most common sense thing to do is like, oh, hey, let's just like grow this product that like we have at scale instead of like go after a new customer profile and like deal with all of this, like, you know, investment in this new thing that's going to take years to pan out. Mm hmm.
But I think it's really important if you have like this kind of strong personal conviction to follow it as a founder. You know, when I started Mercury, I was a bit worried that like not enough people were saying it was a bad idea. I actually think like, I think like good ideas have to be like a little contrarian. So like, I'm a bit weird, obviously, like when people were like, this is a bad idea.
I was like, okay, we should definitely do it then. So yeah. I mean, obviously, you have to have the right balance there and have good taste to do the right thing. Yeah, I think what I like about Worker, you've been shipping great products, but you haven't been shipping too much either. It doesn't feel like you're shipping half-baked stuff. And that's a real important balance, right?
You've got to keep shipping cool things, but it has to be well-polished, well-executed, otherwise people will get turned off. And, um, and so, you know, the personal product's great. I'm glad you did it and it's working really well. And I see you're improving the product as well, but you're not adding too much that it's just like, oh, it's too much at once.
You know, like you can argue like open AI right now is just putting out too much stuff. People don't know what's going on. Right. And, um, and you know, Sam has done this, you know, before YC built so many things, we can see that that's entrepreneurial instinct to keep building stuff, but you gotta be really careful about it as well. Well, there was this, I mean, maybe we can tie in some news.
I mean, Sam did this code red to say like, hey, Gemini is coming after us. And one of the big parts of the code red was like, we need to focus down on like what's working rather than like do so many different projects. So I guess like even Sam is kind of recognizing, you know, that they need to have a little bit more focus. Yeah, I think so. And I'm glad he's recognizing that.
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