![]() ![]() companies to go public in the first half of last year were customers - Mercury’s advantage over SVB is that it’s a “product-first” startup, Akhund argues.Īkhund says he knows the pain points of startups well, having previously co-founded two earlier companies, including Heyzap, a mobile ad network that was acquired in 2016. While a growing number of startups have begun securing debt nevertheless while either raising a round or soon afterward to extend their runway - SVB says a whopping 63% of U.S. There are a ton of calls back and forth, a lot of Excel spreadsheets.” Everything is still happening over email and PDFs. “It seems obvious as a product entrepreneur, but that’s just how these experiences are built at banks. “These banks have just never had to build a product, so the idea that you go to a website, fill out a form and connect to QuickBooks is not something any bank would normally think of,” Akhund says. Like a lot of fintech startups, Mercury - which is not a bank itself but a banking platform that offers FDIC-insured products through an Arkansas-based bank called Evolve Bank & Trust - says bigger rivals like SVB are cumbersome and don’t understand the changing expectations of its customers. Mercury co-founder and CEO Immad Akhund says that’s very much the idea, too. The move puts the 250-person, San Francisco-based outfit - which says it already has 60,000 businesses on its platform - on a collision course with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). The product is for early-stage startups only, with Mercury offering between 25% to 50% of a startup’s equity round in debt. ![]() The idea is to loan out $200 million this year and up to $1 billion next year to startups that have already raised $2 million in funding from at least one institutional investor. As far as the product goes right now, I will not recommend Mercury to anyone else.Mercury, a well-funded, three-year-old startup that offers a host of banking services to startups, is today rolling out a new offering for its customers: venture debt. If the product team wants to reach out, I will talk to them and tell them how I feel. No, my second round of experience is just as bad as the first time. Then we merged our business and the next group of investors wanted to use Mercury, so I thought okay maybe the product got better this time. We closed it within the first 2 months and transitioned back to a well-established bank. I used it last year and absolutely hated it. When you need help, as mentioned in point #1, nobody cares about you or your money, or your business, really. They just change rules/policies as they go which is really annoying. If you were closing on a real estate deal, you're screwed BIG TIME. Apparently, it takes this bank 1 full day. Domestic wire transfer usually takes a few hours to receive. You have to ask follow up questions and they take 6-8 hours in between to get back to you. Templated answers with no real solutions. There's ABSOLUTELY zero support when you have a question and customer service takes 6-8 hours to answer questions and their answers weren't even helpful. If you open an account with any other bank, you can just go to a local branch or call 24/7 customer service line. Customer support takes forever to respond. I am reporting this company to the BBB and the FTC. I have never received a notification, text, or and correspondence that a fraud alert was on my account. I've never, ever heard of a credit card not only declining once for no valid reason, let alone that situation creating a continuous problem. I asked him three different times why the initial charge was declined and he couldn't answer me. The first charge was declined, and after that, his words "a domino effect happened". He was polite enough but abrupt, he essentially told me that he didn't know. I called Mercury, spent a lengthy time on hold, until a rep called me back. Then it happened three more times, at businesses that I shop at frequently. About a month ago, my card was declined at a movie theater, a small amount, a regular place I had been to frequently, in my area. I had a zero balance, full $1500 balance available. I had no problems with my Mercury card for months. ![]()
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