When your bank account talks to Claude

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If we do the best thing for customers, people will gravitate towards us and I don't have like a fear around it. There's just so much to banking. Like it's not like Lord is going to go build a bank. We're going to hold you to that, Ahmad. Yeah, you say that. Don't give them an idea. 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. Then we're joined by Mercury's CEO. Ahmad Akun. We chat about his side hustle as a VC, whether AI will eat banking if credit card points are a scam and tech's poker culture versus the gamblification of everything. Welcome to Access. I'm Alex Heath here with my co-host, Ellis Hamburger. Ellis, how's it going, man? Good to see you. You too. Uh, I'm good. I am hopefully looking good because I resolved a very embarrassing camera problem that no podcast co-hosts have ever done. problem that no podcast co-host should ever experience. I could not figure out why I could not align my eyeline with the camera. 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. And do you know what the problem was? You were zoomed in. The camera was too zoomed in. I was on the 50 millimeter focal length. I did not realize that this camera Vox gave me zoomed. And ever since the beginning, I have been fully zoomed, which also is not very flattering for the shape of my head, right? Yeah. I mean, I thought you were a camera guy. Every time I see you, you've got a different camera. So I thought you understood that cameras zoomed. That's why this is embarrassing. I'm being revealed to be a poser. Access is a safe space. How's it going otherwise? I've been traveling. I've been in LA the last several days. Everything good? While you've been traveling, I've been enjoying my daily rewatch of Moana with my kids. I think we're getting into the approaching triple digits, I would say. I think what's interesting about it is that as much as we talk about screen time being a problem these days it's like we all grew up grew up watching the same disney movies like over and over and over again why is that not part of the same conversation i think most of us who watched aladdin 100 times turned out fine and it's not like every single second of that movie is some like ethical moral lesson you know what i'm saying 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 a hundred times in a row, but because it's Disney, all of a sudden we give it a free pass. So yeah, long story short, I think my firstborn may have learned a bit more from the Cocoa Melon 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. I've not seen Moana once, which I need to rectify. It's great. It's actually great. Yeah. Well, I have not had time to watch anything. I've been on the road uh road warring as i tend to do it's first at south by southwest in austin texas and then at the church of jensen nvidia gtc in san jose uh i actually did a day trip from austin to san jose where i did not even check out of my hotel in austin i left my suitcase there and i flew from texas to california in one day uh on monday and would not recommend it especially during spring break and tsa government shutdown um it was a long day but everything actually logistically went perfectly uh and i felt like i hacked life a little bit wow i was gonna say i mean even the travel pro-est of the travel pros you know can't squeeze pat i mean was clear open or tsa pre-check a bit more open because i mean i saw like oh yeah you got to do touchless id TSA Touchless ID with Clear is the ultimate hack. I think I saved about an hour at Dawson Airport that morning with that. That's unbelievable. But yeah, man, I mean, flying, you know, 5,000 whatever miles in a day and still going back to the same hotel is quite a time warp, especially when you're going to GTC, which is its just own unique universe. But first, South By, you haven't been to South By in a while, right? It was, what, over a decade since you've been? It's been a while. And I was going to ask how many PR guy viruses have you brought for show and tell? Oh, so many. Everyone is a brand strategist. You must have a great immune system. The immunity to thought leadership that I have built up over the years is so strong because everyone is a thought leader. Everyone's a strategist. everyone's a podcaster futurist i was on a panel where someone said a futurist with a straight face and i almost laughed uh i probably shouldn't have but yeah south by is an interesting thing man like it's it's not a tech show anymore i mean tech brands come but i would say like the coolest tech quote-unquote tech brand activation was yahoo this year right which kind of says a lot about the state of things. South by used to be where really cool products launched. I mean, Twitter, Foursquare, like back in the day, it was actually kind of at the vanguard of tech and culture. Now it's at the vanguard of futurism and brand marketing. But as a film and music festival, it's actually quite good and ascendant. So what did Yahoo do that was so impressive? 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. Of course, it was good to catch up with, uh, with land zone, the CEO there, uh, sources subscriber and, uh, Emily Sundberg was there doing a Q and a with him and they had a nice mix of, of creators and tech people. But yeah, I mean, I mean, South by is just, um, you know, it's, it's not where the big companies show up like they used to um and you've got kind of a new crop of more ai native or younger companies um shout out superhuman which had me come and and talk on a panel about taste in the age of ai as a creator which which was which was fun to be a part of and then i did a panel with ten cent uh on the future of gaming which was good but um yeah man the main thing at south by was was podcasting and so it was nice to hang out with uh With our Vox Media familia, we had a little party with a bunch of the pod hosts who were in town, got to see the K-Swish, the one and only Kara, who's given us a lot of love with feed drops and pivot, and some of our other hosts, and schmoozed the CMOs, convinced them why they need to get in front of the elite audience for access. well makes a lot of sense uh that the panel was about taste because no one's talking about taste anymore and south by is always a few months behind hey i'm in the hyperglobal think circle that is setting the trend as we learned in the last episode i am the tastemaker if you say that you're not a tastemaker if you say you're a tastemaker you're not that's my rule well i'm undoing that rule okay i guess you have more followers for the time being but since i got back on the podcast i'm rapidly gaining on you and so when i have more half years or bots anyway that's true minor uh pre-elon bots yeah so uh 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 Like the power dynamics change. So we'll see how that feels when that happens again. Well, we'll have to cross that bridge when we get to it. I then got to go from South by to NVIDIA, as I was saying, to see Jensen, which was my first time seeing a Jensen Wong keynote. I don't know if you got to read my write-up of it, but it is a unique experience, man. Well, so how long did he go? How long is long? Like two and a half hours. And he doesn't have a script. He just kind of freewheels it. I mean, he has his slides, the next slide, but there's no script. He doesn't prepare and it's clear he doesn't need to because it's all in his head. He is the LLM of NVIDIA. And the amount of acronyms that man was spitting at the audience in highly technical language was incredible to watch. The mastery he has of his domain. 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 two and a half hour, highly technical, you know, acronym heavy keynote. It just, it, It was in stark contrast to, say, Apple, right, where – and this is where a lot of the keynotes have gone, I think, especially out of the pandemic, thanks to Apple, is that they're just these prerecorded on-rails things. I mean, in Apple's case, they literally gather you to watch a video, the same thing that they stream online for everyone. Yeah. And I actually really appreciated the realness of Jensen just getting up there and shooting it from the hip for two and a half hours straight. And he was making jokes, and there were moments where the transitions didn't work right, and he had to stop and start and just think on the fly. And it's like, okay, no, this is worth going to see in person. And obviously, NVIDIA is the most important company in the world right now, so there's also that. But he is just a one-of-a-kind, I would say, the closest thing that I've seen from a tech keynoter to what jobs used to be. There really isn't anything else like it anymore. I guess I need to watch the footage. I need to watch the footage then, because there aren't many who can do the El Jobzo. But 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 make a crowd laugh. And I feel like there's that unifying theory of Elon that all he wants is to be funny and just to be liked. And I think that's probably where all these CEOs and founders have found themselves arriving at. They have the yacht, but the final apex. 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? And so I think it all tracks. Or even just being able to feel like you can own people for two and a half hours. Yeah. And just the world revolves around him, man. 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 pregame. They kind of are turning this into. Like a Super Bowl. I mean, that's what it is. It's like Nerd Super Bowl. But in terms of, you know, there's a pregame where they're all ESPN style, like sitting at a desk before. And I tweeted this, but all the AI CEOs that Jensen Hand selected to be on the pregame commentary bench were all wearing all black with sunglasses. He was talking about like all of the sponsors. There were over 400 sponsors. I mean, everyone just wants to be close to Nvidia. That's some sponsor dilution. Everyone was thanking him. Like, even during. The pregame, like the CEO of Open Evidence was like thanking Jensen for the GPUs. And I actually was, I was at the Nebious 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 Coral Weave to the Nebious folks just kind of enraptured by his presence. He was literally signing badges like he was Tex Taylor Swift 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. He signed chips. He signed like parts of the booths that he was walking by Jensen, Jensen, the God, I guess. Can you take us back to like before the AI boom, what Nvidia was doing? Cause I feel like this all happened just like so spontaneously. They were a gaming company. 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. 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. Um, but yeah, man, he, uh, Nvidia was kind of toiling away and obscurity. I mean, they were obviously super important as a chip maker for, for gaming, but you can see it in their stock price. I mean, they were just flat. And then when chat GPT came out, it was just. Off to the races. He is the King maker of the tech industry. Whatever he touches goes up stock, go up, uh, you know, nebulous. I was there and like nebulous is a great example. It's this like Corley's competitor. And since Nvidia invested in them, their stock is up like 300%. And so of course, when he come out, comes over, it's like, you know, thank you, Jensen. Like you're literally like, uh, you know, making me money and, and, uh, he has that thing that everyone wants. How many dude bros. Yeah. He has the thing everyone wants and they can't get, which is more GPUs and who he decides to give them to can, uh, make your company or not. And, uh, he, I think is very much enjoying that King maker status. I could feel it, not just in the keynote, but in observing him interacting with the partner booths on the expo floor while everyone was taking selfies. Um, you know, he came over and was like. Uh, when I invest in you guys, like he knew the exact market cap number and like, it's up 300% since then. So it's just too bad. It's just too bad. What? Cause I'm a lot more interested in all of the old, like Nvidia graphics card box arts of which I have a whole book then stock prices. Oh, here's an Nvidia right here. The Nvidia G force for asylum. Wow. You just had that. This is what excites me. You just had that one. I just had it. Wow. I told you I'm a taste maker. It has become super financial. 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. I mean, Nvidia is the economy in a lot of ways. So I understand the focus, but even in the Q and a that Jensen did, where he literally just takes questions for like three hours straight from creators and press. Uh, people were asking about specific stocks and yeah, man, it's, the tech is still important, but it does feel like the money has really started to overtake things. Bring back, uh, graphics cards. 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. But, uh, everyone kind of knew that was coming. So there weren't any like huge surprises, but, uh, I guess the only real surprise was he brought out a AI powered Olaf, uh, on stage at the very end, uh, to hang out with him. And then this keynote was literally so long that they had to do a musical recap of it, uh, for like four minutes. 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. Well, Alex, your internet. Is sputtering to a halt. And so I think it's, uh, about time to cut to the interview. Is that why you were taking so long to respond? Cause I'm super delayed. Yeah. There's literally like a two second delay. Dave, do you think we should be concerned? Dave? Who who's the problem? Alex is the problem. Shit. No question. Everyone that's our producer, Dave on the mic. No, they're not going to, they're not going to hear me. They're not going to hit. No, we're keeping this. We're keeping this. I need people to know Alex is bad at tech. Wow. I wouldn't blame Alex, uh, per se, but yes, you're something's with you. Something's with your internet or your computer. Weird. Well, with that, we're going to roll our interview with Ahmad. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales. The result? You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Welcome. What's going on, Ahmad? It's good. It's good. I'm excited to be here. How are you? We're solid. You're a podcaster as well, aren't you? Yeah. We all got the mic set up. I mean. I feel like we, we have a lot to learn from you. 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. I'm not good at my podcast. Like I just, I just have fun talking to like people I meet in friends' minds. That's my main kind of vibe in the podcast, but I'm not very good at promoting it. Hey, that's our vibe too. Tell us about the peanut butter and jelly delivery though. How did that work as a. Growth strategy. 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 Mercury. It was just kind of fun to get out there and like deliver tasty food and like talk to customers. Uh, so. Where did that idea originate? I wonder. Kind of like a convoluted in-joke. 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 uh and yes 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 was like this kind of funny uh funny jar of peanut butter uh and then so so peanut butter was like a thing happening and then we were like oh like we were this year we're trying to do like more creative things and more in-person things with marketing so we're like oh it'd be cool if we just went around uh sf and delivered peanut butter and jenny's sandwiches so it came from my co-founder who's like way more creative than i am classic situation of uh startup code name actually becoming part of the product um i i love it though i mean i'm just so fascinated like i've been doing marketing in comms for a very long time and people look at inactivation like that and they're like well what's the kpis what's the conversion on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich how much time can we save by you know cutting off the crust versus not it's like no i feel like the best storytellers just kind of feel it out right and know that some of this stuff can't quite be quantified yeah i think actually 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 gonna listen 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 so 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 uh speaking of marketing the brand was uh was activated at south by southwest this last weekend uh i was there in austin were you there i wasn't there i've never been to south by southwest which is kind of you've never been okay i've been in the startup ecosystem for 20 years so i feel like every year i'm like oh maybe i should go but if you want to be hounded by branding and comms consultants for four days straight uh it's a great place to go why why did you go uh i had a couple why did you go alex vox media um who who 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 did you did you go to the mercury thing we were doing there i think we were giving away some stuff but you you guys were giving away like casios and aero presses and really cool stuff it looked like yeah one of our themes this year is to like kind of talk about craft 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 uh it was like coconut peanut butter and the jelly was mango flavored so that's why it's like it's like it's like it's like a lot of people are like casio and things like that like things that are like well-crafted uh regardless of kind of you know how simple they are also amad i've been waiting to see if you remember that we've met before do you remember how we met no idea is it i feel like this might be a trick question no we played poker together we sat next to each other and played poker at co2 a couple years ago oh that's cool i can't i can't remember who played better oh so we're gonna know if you're lying on the podcast today amad okay that does seem familiar you had the co2 east meets west thing yeah okay nice yeah yeah are you are you a regular player 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 two months but i feel like that's pretty fun like the co2 ones i feel like everyone takes it like a little too seriously like i i you know i mostly pay poker just to like have an excuse to sit with people and chat with them not to like try to make money uh what are you talking about i thought as a founder you just have to win everything or go home crying i mean i i feel i feel shitty if i don't win but like that's not the point of it like i'm you know i'm competitive but like that i yeah i want to play these games you have fun i think you did well i don't think we got in any heads up situations now that i'm remembering but yeah i remember like oh this really can't remember yeah this guy plays um it's interesting how poker has become uh such a part of like tech culture i don't know if it's the all-in guys or what but like i'm seeing poker games at conferences and just like house games happening in sf in new york and like the tech scene like constantly do you feel like that's always been the case or is it relatively new phenomenon i think it's always been the case like i mean even even when i first got here in sf in 2007 i used to arrange like poker games so it's like it's a thing uh i just feel like tech in general has become like a little bit more like a showy thing over the giant gamble there's just a lot more money in it there's a lot more you know things uh just like yeah in 2017 even it was kind of a small industry and now it's just a big big deal across everything uh so i think like there's these little characteristics of it like have become bigger 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 there is something geeky about it uh and i think the generally speaking tech doesn't like golf as much or at least like i mean it's golf is doing its thing so uh so i feel like you need some social social kind of networking thing right like if it's not golf then is it going to be like poker or you know what what else would it be and uh you don't need to be fit for poker so i think that helps do you have a crazy poker story i don't think i have a crazy poker story i mean i've been in my fair share of things where i should have won and i haven't won but i don't know how crazy they get what's what's your crazy poker story um i don't know you do meet so many interesting people you meet uh like random celebrities uh obviously like tech people um well i did go to a co2 another co2 event where they were also doing poker and i sat next to steph curry uh for like a solid one hour i talked to him while i was playing poker that was pretty cool how was he how did he play he was okay i don't think he was like that good but he wasn't bad it didn't like blow me away uh i think i did pretty well in that game uh this is a few years ago but it was just it was just fun to talk to him like just you know stay next to him and just shooting the shit kind of thing so i wasn't i wasn't as focused on poker well i have a pro level podcast segue which is that i feel like you know gambling scene especially with like the mobile games and draft king and fan duel and all the prediction market stuff i think you could argue that they are one of the very biggest problems in the world and i think that's why i'm for like personal financial independence and literacy and now you're building that type of product oh this is a great segue unless you really really nailed that i told you um how do you feel about that stuff philosophically because it's it's it's kind of funny to me to think that like all right we're gonna build all these personal banking products that are trying to solve this you know mission or this big idea um around helping people get control of their stuff whether they're independent or solo like some or sorry or like some of those videos uh you've been making 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 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 poker is not gambling that's what we tell our wives i mean i never bet more than i you know like a recreational amount uh but i like i you know i have friends that have like lost their lives or they have family members who've like fallen into gambling addictions it's like a it's a serious issue and i don't you know a lot of tech like unfortunately you know whether it's polymarket or drive kings or whatever like encourages this stuff even more which i've never been a fan of 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 every everyone needs it both on business and personal uh but your bank accounts like until until mercury have been pretty stupid like they don't do anything for you right like it's just like it's if anything they kind of get it get in the way of your life so yeah i would love for us to kind of help people run their business better so we actually just launched literally today this uh product that we call mercury insight uh okay so i know the insights has natural language questions you could ask so maybe alex now that he's a he's a user he could say am i up or my down um i need i need pdfs i need insights i need agentic uh reasoning helping me understand how much i should bring to the table on my uh should i bet or not because you could spin off cards with certain amounts of money right it's like honey it's only 250 tonight you literally can't spend anymore yeah or is it all cash alex is it all cash 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 definitely tag it so yeah i should ask um i'm kind of scared to uh but yeah i'm not i am a dau i uh when i went independent in september um it was i spent about i spent about 15 minutes looking for a bank um and uh mercury seemed like the simplest and uh the best uh from like a cost perspective too for a solo person like me uh and so it was actually a business right yeah for my business and it was a pretty uh pretty quick decision and uh have not regretted it it's it's actually a legitimately good product it's where we have ceos on where uh you know one of us like i don't know if it's that actually, but it's nice to have someone on and it's like, oh, yeah, no, I'm a DAU. Nice. You should check out the insights launch. We have a fun little kind of creative marketing thing with it as well. We actually work with this generative artist. And basically how it works is we kind of plug in the transaction data to this generative art thing and it makes a different piece of unique art for every customer based on the data, which is kind of fun. And it's got funny things like a lot of international transactions and I put a globe there and there's a lobster that shows up. I can't remember why the lobster shows up. But anyway, we have a fun little podcast about it. Says Alex, your newsletter revenue sucks, but we made you a watercolor of a squirrel. Exactly. At least it looks pretty. I mean, why is this so freaking hard? I mean, I feel like even back when I was at The Verge, I remember covering that startup like Bank Simple. And it's obvious that there's a lot of complexity, especially with actually being the bank. But why has this been so hard for anybody to do to just make something that's better, especially for consumers, which I know you just launched? I think there's like two aspects to it. Number one, it's just much, much harder to build fantastic art. It's just much, much harder to build fantastic art. It's just software things uh is that a burn to all the other stuff no no no i would i'm open to it my all my previous startups were software startups it's so simple to just build some software uh well yeah with fintech you gotta like go integrate into these like back-end legacy systems like you know wires are just this like it's literally like sftp files going back and forth with like a ton of exception cases so it's just like these complicated legacy systems and then yeah you have all of the regulations around it that also make it tricky and it has been hard to be a chartered bank so you know the way mercury works today is we partner with two sponsor banks 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 a 3.5 billion valuation before we were like let's go get a bank charter uh so yeah you have to work with sponsor banks it's actually relatively recent where there has been enough sponsor banks out there they've built enough tech on top of the sponsor banks that you can even do something like mercury uh when mercury launched we were the first neobank to have wires uh yeah bank simple did not have wires uh they also worked with sponsor banks 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? Like that's just like a basic requirement for business banking. So, you know, we had to push pretty hard to like find someone who would do it. And we were probably the first people that kind of got it working end to end. Yeah, 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. The products are good enough in the backend and, you know, enabled people like Mercury to. The charter thing is fascinating. I don't think people fully appreciate how unique and difficult that is uh 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 uh it's equally political and regulated and difficult and um there's just a very very finite supply um and what does that basically unlock for you it lets you do the whole stack yourself is that it yeah whole stack ourselves i mean the biggest thing for us is uh you know Delivering the best customer experience. Certain things are really hard to do as a fintech. Like we don't have Zelle support. Zelle only works with banks. It does not work with fintech. So we'll be able to do Zelle. We do very little lending right now. easier to do lending. I mean, it's still not easy, but once you have the low cost of capital, being a bank, you can really provide lending at scale. So yeah, mostly own the experience end to end, deliver the best kind of customer products. Also, I think it'll build trust with customers, right? Like right now, if you go to mercury.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. Yeah. I've seen this on other banks. It's like another thing. Yeah. Yeah. Most fintechs have that. But I think people should trust us more if they see that we're directly regulated. And the hardest thing about Mercury is that trust element, right? Like we have this kind of internal joke. I guess it's not funny, actually. But we will say like, yeah, step number one, send us all your money. That's how Mercury works. We all know the best way to build trust is making someone a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 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. And then it's a little bit de-risked from the trust perspective. Yeah, so it's a little easier when you're small and you're just starting out. But it's still like, you know, you're still trusting us with money. Yeah, there are lots of options out there that, you know, there's been banks that have been around for a hundred years. So like, you know, we're definitely like on the trust side, we have to like win that trust over time. And I think the bank charter would help us do that as well. Well, so what do you think are your best tactics to build that trust? I work with a lot of startups on like their storytelling and writing. And 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? You know what I'm saying? 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. It's like, all right, well, if he and his manager must have vetted this thing. And it's like, no wonder celebrity endorsements are such a big part of product commercials for new companies and whatnot. I mean, how are you thinking about that? Yeah, there's probably like three elements to it, right? Especially initially, there was like trust by proxy. You know, we had Andreessen Horowitz as one of our first backers. And actually we had a bunch of, we did have a bunch of celebs as backers as well. We had the original founder of Silicon Valley Bank as an investor in Mercury. So yeah, you get like trust by proxy. And Ashton Kutcher. No, Ashton Kutcher. We had Serena Williams. And yeah, we had a few other ones. So there's like this trust by association, which is like, oh yeah, all these people think it's good. They must be good. 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. Like, yeah, Alex just went through the onboarding process. You know, we have like spent so much fricking effort in the 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 tell you if you've uploaded the wrong kind of file. And, and, you know, we try to get like people that account within, within like a few hours, if we can. So making the experience like super smooth as you, you know, we want people to say like, wow, that was actually like amazing because like the alternative is you have to like walk to a, or drive to a bank branch and like sit in the line for two hours and talk to some, someone who doesn't understand your business and try to get a bank account that way. So, so you build the trust by having like this polished product. And then the third thing is you, you really want our customers being proponents for Mercury. So, you know, even today, 60% of our customers come from their friends and, you know, communities telling each other about Mercury. So I don't know where Alex, you, you kind of research this, but like if you look at X or Reddit, you know, Mercury comes up often. People recommend us there. Or if you ask your friends, they will be recommended. 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. It goes a long way to like build that trust as well. But it's definitely like, it's like a boulder. You got to keep pushing it uphill, right? 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 ahead. Now we have several customers that have more than $400 million using, using Mercury. So yeah, we keep pushing that boulder and we keep building that trust over time. Here, here, I needed to receive a wire to my LLC the day that I set my account up or at least like initiate it. 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. And I actually tried some of your competitors and in onboarding it just was confusing or it 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. 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. How are you thinking about that trade off? So the business account is completely free. 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. Was it 250 a year or something? It's yeah, it's 240 a year. So 20, 20 a month. You know, we'll probably experiment with this over time. Our main thing is we want to provide like a super high touch, high quality service. And, you know, 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. Like, you know, you make money through various things. You can definitely and I've talked to a bunch of like other neobanks that have done this. 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. So that's the main thing. We're looking to avoid on the personal side. 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? Are you actually going to use it rather than like, like, you know, just sign up and, like, put some money in it and then forget about it kind of thing. So it's more about that than, like, actually, like, using the subscription service to make money. But it also means that we can provide, like, this really, really kind of high-quality product, right? Like, we have great support around it. We have a really high-yield savings account. We're going to launch a credit card at some point. It'll be an amazing credit card. 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. You got to spend money to make money, as they say. Yeah. 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. Is that kind of the motive behind, like, doing the credit card thing, or do you think all of that is kind of, like, BS and, like, actually it's a less stressful life to just get cash back on everything and just let it be? Because I'm certainly on Reddit trying to maximize my points, and I feel stupid. You're a points guy. I hate points, personally. It's hard to actually figure out exactly what percentage of people, like, love points and hate points. I think it's, like, I actually think probably, like, people who love points are, like, these really loud people where they're like, oh, my God, you can get points here, and did you get this card? You know, like, that kind of thing. And people who hate points don't talk about the fact that they hate it mostly. Is that me, Alex? Do I sound like that? Yeah. Great. 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. Like, I have a bunch of Chase Sapphire points. I can never freaking figure out how to spend them. I can help you with that after if you want. Yeah, but I don't want to think about it. I just want to, like, either give me money or just get out of my way. 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. Dave Portnoy has a million Amex points famously and has never spent them, which I also love. Yeah, I mean, that's probably a problem for AI to help solve, how to spend your points well. I was actually going to ask Claude about that this morning, but I forgot. Thanks for the reminder. The answer is they don't want you to spend those points, right? Well, of course not. That's the trick. Like, they're making money on people by, like, all those points that you never spend it, and, like, it's just, like, free money for that. Well, so exactly. So if you look at the Chase Sapphire Reserve, they got doors. They got DoorDash. They got StubHub. They got Lyft. They got the $300 travel credit. 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. And so. Yeah, they want you to spend the money, pay the yearly fee, and not use the rewards. Like, that's the ideal thing. So is this going to be a part of your credit card philosophy? Because, I mean, this could be a storytelling lever to say, listen, like, yeah, the credits. 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 the money and not make you think about it. 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 an air mile program at some point. But, yeah, the rest of it is, I think, it's, like, a hack to, like, make money from people. If you can somehow get every airline on there and be the first credit card to have every major airline alliance, because, you know, Amex, only has some, and Chase only has some, that would be huge. That would be AGI for finance. I'm guessing that's, like, hard to impossible, but. Yeah. Sure. We'll try, Alex. Something else, Ahmad, while, you know, when we have CEOs of products we use on, we like to, you know, just ask them to build things for us. When will I be able to talk to Mercury and my Mercury data securely via Cloud? Yeah, you can do that already. You can do that already? So, A, the Mercury Insights launch has built-in Insights, so you don't need to go to Cloud. You could just, like, just log in right now, Alex. Click on Insights on the left-hand side and you can talk to it. So, that's. But what if I'm doing, like, financial planning, tax planning in Cloud and I want to pull in my Mercury data? Yeah. So, then we also have a Mercury MCP. So, if you go to Cloud and, I don't, I should really know this, but there's a place in there that you can, like, add MCPs. Oh, I see it. Yep. Gosh. So, that's actually growing super fast. We only launched that a couple of months ago. People really love it. 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. I mean, that's partly what kind of drove us to build it directly into the product because, obviously, like, there's geeky people like you that want to learn what MCP is and do it themselves, but other people just want to, yeah, just be able to, like, pull that data directly into the AI directly in Mercury. But I do think, like, this is one of the, you know, interesting things to think about that, like, banks are, like, so far behind that, like, I think AI just accelerates that, right? 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 MCP server or know what that means. I would doubt that Bank of America is on MCP. So, how do you feel, though, about giving over the interface, essentially, to Claude in this case via MCP? I assume it can also plug into chat. But is the SaaS apocalypse coming to banking or how do you feel about that? I think at the end of the day, like, do great things for customers, right? Like, I think this mindset of, like, fear is, yeah, if we do the best thing for customers, people will gravitate towards us and I don't have, like, a fear around it. I think the idea of then, yeah, there's just so much to banking. Like, it's not like Claude is going to go build a bank. Yeah, you say that. Don't give him an idea. But there's just, like, the depth of features is really, like, deeper than Mercury. And there's, you know, certain things where you do want to, like, talk to it. And there's certain things where you want to click around, right? Like, if you're looking at graphs and you're, like, you know, adding a user, like, yeah, there's a set of things where, like, talking is the right interface and a set of things where, like, actually, like, you do want to click around and, like, see the information in, like, a densely packed kind of way. But, yeah, we keep building things. And, you know, as long as we're doing good things by customers, I think we'll succeed. I don't see it as a threat. Thank God. Yes, and it's telling me I'm making more money than I'm spending, which I wasn't actually aware of until now. Oh, good. Problem solved. We'll see you next time. Bye. Well, here's what we need to do with MCP. We have Alex's little poker card that we're going to spin up. And whenever he's up, his eight-sleep bed is going to, like, be, like, the perfect temperature. Whenever he's down, it's going to, like, go to 100 degrees and make him sweat and, like, actively punish. And I think, you know, there's kind of going to be a little Pavlovian loop there to help Alex play better. Just no interest. I know you're saying, like, you know, we'll just got to build the right product and it'll be fine. I mean, you do have the benefits of being in a heavily regulated space, right? Like, you're going after a charter and it's, you know. You're right. I don't think Anthropics is going to go for a bank charter. But they probably do want to absorb a lot of the -- even this in-science announcements today, you know. They probably would like for a lot of that data to be happening in Claude. And you've got the connector to kind of make it happen at the data layer. 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? And it's just early and, therefore, it's fine to do both? Or do you think that that will change at any point? I mean, like, you can kind of think about, like, what's the potential end result, right? 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? And it's, like, 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. I think the benefit of being a startup and being creative is, like, you can actually try to write that, right? Like, I think most things that have gone wrong since Mercury has launched have, like, helped Mercury, which is, you know, like, this is maybe, like, a 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? And, yeah, every year something crazy happens in the world and, like, Mercury ends up, like, doing well. 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. If you try to fight the future, eventually, like, maybe you can hold that line for a little bit. Like, you know, maybe you use some SaaS app and you, like, refuse to give API access and you try to block, like, you know, computer use agents 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 gonna act like how a human acts. So, like, you just can't block that forever. I think a better move for that SaaS app is to go, like, okay, you know, how do we enable this AI? How do we build our own? own agents do they interact with people and like that's like you know try to yeah when i i'm also an investor but when i when i think about mercury when i invest in people like i want to go like does this feature exist in 10 years time and like i think the future is this 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 is like sure let's just do it and like everyone has to use mercury and you know like i think the alternative is is like you're trying to fight the future and i think a that's just not going to be possible uh but b i think you're going to like lose out on the opportunity when you try to fight the future 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 passe at this point within banking world you. i think there's like strong use cases for this honestly i think if you're in the u.s and you want to do things with u.s dollars uh it's not that useful right like you can get a mercury account pretty quickly you can send money between people same day you can get cards spun up like it's just a pretty good system uh i think the you know if you're in i don't know turkey or argentina or whatever right like you know you don't necessarily trust your local currency 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 kind of local currency 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 do well and there's a you know uh stripe acquired a company corporate that's done a really good job of enabling a lot of those uh those players uh so i think there's a there's a place for it uh but yeah i think in the basic like u.s dollars u.s 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 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 and while it sounds nice philosophically uh to be able to you know own your shit and have it on you that's also like incredibly scary you know like i perpetually hide things from myself and lose things and as cool as the tony fidel 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 gonna lose this thing and then there goes the nest egg and so you know whether it's with the fdic or otherwise it's like you want to have that safety net and like when you you know when you swipe a card right like you can go complain about something if they don't deliver the service right like what happens in the world where you're like own your wallet and you send them money and they just disappear ahmad it's it's rare that we have uh founders on who are as prolific investors as you are i think it's always fascinating to to talk to ceos who also invest a lot um we had dylan field was one of our first guests and he's also a very uh active angel uh and you've invested in what hundreds of startups you have your own you know fund um how does that intersect with running mercury 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 i mean i think uh investors are kind of like the superstars of the tech ecosystem so like everyone wants to kind of talk to them and like aspire to be them because like i guess you need them so our initial mercury customers were investors things i'd invested in uh that's still obviously the case a lot of our investors are investors so i think it's a good thing to have a good portfolio uh my invest portfolio companies are mercury customers uh i also think like you know for me personally you know especially as your company gets bigger you're you know you're ceoing right like you're hiring execs you're doing all this stuff that like takes you away from like what it's really about or in terms of innovation and building product and things like that uh so yeah i you know now like everyone i invest a lot in ai so yeah i i have like 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 like especially like for every one company you invest in you might talk to five other companies and like you know i've done like one vision startup so i've talked to probably like five vision startups so you end up just knowing a little bit about a lot of things uh and you're generally people doing new things are doing it at the edge of what's possible right so they're they're you know to go back to like showing you the future right 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 it was a c-stage company but they were like imagine how good it's going to be in 10 years time and i was like okay you know obviously they're selling me it'll be really good in one year's time 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 is going to be like and they can like help go like oh yeah this is like yeah this is what it'll be and i need to get on get on top of it kind of thing uh also just gives me a lot of energy i feel like i have this like idea that like you know what is not limited is time but what's limited is energy 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 18 hours i definitely relate to the energy of learning a little bit about a lot of things as a journalist my entire adult life there is a lot of intersection with the patterns uh that a goes through day to day. 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 really fun to get to actually like also place bets, I would imagine. So talk to us about like, what you're looking for in the companies you invest in, in how they're using AI at this early stage. And talk to us less so from like the product building point of view. But I mean, you brought up hiring executives, 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? Have you seen AI come into that part of the process yet with the companies you're investing in? Yeah, I feel like hiring is like not something that's changed too much. 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, like perfectly. So you have to kind of, yeah, I've seen like, coding challenges are getting way more complicated. And people are like asking for like, you know, give us all the prompts you use 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. Outside that, I, I'm like, I'm wondering whether AI would be good at this yet. Like, I feel like AI is not always great at judgment. 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. That's just like, there's just a thing about like, when you put a box in it, people will 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, you know, learn the, unique experiences and like, get it. But I was saying, like, you know, like, even a year ago, like something like insights wouldn't have worked, like AI was like, really bad at numbers. And now it's actually like, pretty good at like, reasoning about numbers and things like that. So yeah, I think even what I'm saying here could easily be wrong in like, six months time or years time where like, you wouldn't, like, I can imagine in a year's time, you would not trust a human to like, run a hiring process, you'd be like, of course, they have. Well, the hallucination rate was a huge factor for a while with this stuff. I mean, imagine for insights, like, your hallucination rate for that needs to be zero, right? Yeah. And it needs to like, not try to make up numbers, but actually look at real numbers and like, reason about them. But yeah, to come back to your question around like, investing in AI, it's actually kind of funny, because like, AI just changes so much that the criteria you use to invest every three months is like, completely different, right? Like, to give you an example, yeah, there was a bunch of accounting software, like, like a year ago, everyone was like, super excited about like, hey, accountants have lots of humans and like, yeah, I could do this. You know, there was this kind of bloom of like, 10 plus, like, startups that raise like, seed or series A kind of. Isn't that sad? Lots of humans is the problem statement for tech builders. Well, there's a, it's a combo effect, right? It's like lots of humans and labor shortage, which we have in accounting, and we have in a few other places as well. But yeah, I mean, in general, like, I don't think humans should do things that, like AI can do. Over time, at least like, you know, because at least right now, AI actually does like, relatively mundane things. And like these, 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 then like, is this transaction a travel transaction? Or is this a meal? Like, you know, like going like one by one categorizing things like like, that's no one's having fun doing that. Like, we should have the the machine do the non fun. But I have to get my books in order for my, my CPA, can I just prompt mercury to do that for me yet? Or when do we get to that point, as part of the insights thing, we are auto categorizing all the transactions, I think we went back and order guys categorize everything in the last 18 months as well. also, check it out. There's always improving things. But I think we'll have it all categorized for you. So you should be able to just hand that over. Well, so what do you expect your employees, your human employees to be doing? Let's just say even a year and a half. Like, where is that leverage? Do you feel like for them? Yeah, I mean, as I said, AI is moving so fast, it's hard to like predict, like, where's the leverage? 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? Like, I think I'm like a pretty good engineer. But 90% of the time when you're engineering, like you're just writing the like road things, you're like, Oh, I have to create this file, and I have to create this function. And this function has to do this. And it's just like very basic stuff. 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 everyone, every engineer knows that you have to do when like a web pages hit or something like that. So, you know, when I look at engineering today, it's like, yeah, the basic stuff that everyone could do anyway. And it's just a race of who could do it faster, like the AI could just do it for you and very fast. And, you know, all the actual workers and like thinking about the problem of thinking about customers thinking about architecture, and kind of guiding the guiding the AI. So yeah, I think the same thing applies to lots of different functions, right? Like, I don't think the I don't think the AI is going to be able to do the same thing. I don't think the AI is going to come up with the PB and jelly idea. But it can probably like write the spec and like, yeah, eventually go find the truck and like all that kind of stuff. So 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. And I think one of the things that I don't know, maybe could be an interesting, like, thing to think about, I know, you talk about your criteria, not being a minimum viable product, but being minimum delightful product. 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. I don't know, is that something that only humans can do in your mind? For now? 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. It's really hard to tell, like where the technology goes in the next few years. But I mean, even as the technology is a super powerful, right? Like, I think there's a, there's a ton of work that doesn't involve like the delight part of life. And there's just a lot of stuff out there. And like, that by itself will be disruptive, disruptive, right? Like, you know, Mercury is growing really fast. And we're doing a lot of stuff. So like, you know, I think we'll, we'll continue needing humans. But like, you know, we saw block, which they weren't growing very fast. And they were like, Hey, actually, we just don't need 40% of people that work anymore. I'm sure it's not just AI. But but that's, yeah, that's kind of scary. I think. Thank you for saying that, like, that they weren't growing very fast. I mean, so many people just, I think, took Dorsey's framing of this is to get ahead of what's coming with AI. And it's like, no, like, block had more employees than its competitors, and it was growing slower. 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 doing well, regardless of what's happening with AI. And I wish more people just said that. I think there's an enablement factor to it, though. Like, I think like, there, there is a element of, you know, 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 use AI more aggressively to like, add to some of this work that humans were doing. But you and your position, like Mercury's growing very fast. Like you said, you're constantly expanding, I'm sure you're hiring a ton. Like, it's not rational for you to just go. 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. Yeah, that would be insane. Yeah. Yeah. And it really does come down to like, you know, we're profitable as well. Like there's, there's, there's so much work to do, like we actually act across almost every role we actively hiring, right? Like, we're gonna grow the team by like 20-25% this year. 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. So, you know, if we can make their lives a little easier, they'll be good. I was talking to Gustav, the COC of Spotify the other day, and he framed it in a way that I thought was good, which was our roadmap, is always longer than what we're able to get done at any given moment. And until that gap has fully collapsed, there's going to always be opportunity to do more with AI, like AI is not replacing things, it's not replacing humans, if anything, we're just going to add more to get our roadmap done. Because, yeah, like that, that gap is still there. And maybe we'll get to a point where AI can just like fill that roadmap in for you. But it doesn't seem like we're getting there anytime soon. Yeah. I actually feel like product builders, whether it's engineers, or designers, or PMs, you actually need even more off with AI, which is like a little ironic, because I'm like, yeah, I look at like our sales team, and I'm like, Oh, my God, if I just had like a two engineers, I could just work alongside the sales team, they could like deploy so much AI to like, speed them up, get leads better, you know, 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 to be deployed across like the rest of the company, which I think is like also a little ironic. So you have kids, right, Ahmad? Yeah, three, 14, eight, and one years old. So full spectrum. Oh, wow. So you're back at square one a little bit. I have a two year old and a five year old. And I think we all know that, you know, it's a good thing to do to teach financial responsibility, literacy. How are you thinking about that? I feel like even the age old example of something like allowance, I think, would be a good thing. It was so powerful for me to start thinking about earning or having some scarcity with my money and being even more deliberate about it. I remember having a Visa bucks card. Do you remember what that was? No, I wasn't born. I didn't grow up in the US. It was 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. And to some extent, you could spin up cards now with Mercury and give your kids, you know, specific amount of money, or whatever. How do you feel like that's gonna look for kids growing up? How are you doing it? Yeah, I'm a I'm a really big fan of like, giving kids access to kind of real money. So with my younger kid, my eight year old, 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. It's actually kind of funny. Like, as soon as I introduced that this is about like a year and a bit ago, she stopped spending money. I was like, like, she, you know, before she'd always asked 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. And she was just like, doesn't ask for things anymore, which I thought was like hilarious. With my older one. Yeah, she has a, you know, one of my in my personal bank, like, for Mercury personal, I have a account for her and I load it up with with money. And one thing that I did that I thought was really good. Good for her. No, I haven't done it with my younger one yet, because she's a bit too young for his wise, I set up. I used eat rate for this, because my query doesn't have it yet. But I set up like a custodial account for her. And then I gave her some starting money. I'm like, Hey, you know, what are your favorite products? Like, what should you invest in? And she did invest in like a bunch. And then I actually 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 Coinbase stock. But like, I think that's been really good for her to like, you know, see in and it's already been in there for a few years. So she's seen like the value of compounding and stuff like that. But yeah, giving 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. Amad, can you break it down for us? Something goes up by 10% every year, then in 100 years, you can have a shit ton of money. Claude can do this. Now it can visualize that it was one of the examples that they gave Claude recently added the ability to do like visual, generative responses, like charts and diagrams. And one of the examples, you're a real Claude person, I'm very, I mean, I use both I use it all, but I've just it's really started to hook in for me. But but compound interest was one of the top examples they have in the blog posts, like a visual diagram. So let's just prompt it. Well, I think I mean, the thing that just kind of breaks my heart is that there is so much we could do to make financial money. And I think it's really important to do that. And I think it's investment literacy, more accessible, but that still doesn't change the fact that just so many people these days don't even have the money to invest. They're just living paycheck to paycheck. You know, 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? Like every, every kid, every kid born 2025. And after starts with $1,000 in investment account, and that like, you know, by the time they're 18, they've like seen this, like, hopefully grow over time. And they've they've been part of that journey. gives them a lump sum, but also gets them into investing early. So yeah, I think that's big. Well, do you see it as part of your role building these products as they expand to investing and maybe eventually thinking about helping you get a picture of your future to try and help people make what you believe are good decisions? Like, for example, hey, you've been day trading a lot, and I know that's fine, but the S&P is up 17% this year, and that's pretty hard to beat. Yeah, I mean, really, even buying individual stocks is mostly a bad idea. Every now and then I talk to someone who's like. That's what I'm saying. Can you turn that into a tool tip? Yeah, I think we can. But at the end of the day, people are people, and they do have fun investing, and they have these ideas around it. So yeah, I think overall, the product will always treat them as adults and give them information and let them do what they want to do. I don't know if I'd want to be like, oh, you're me. Moving money into DraftKings. Are you sure that's a good financial decision? I feel like that might be a little frustrating, but I think the other side of it is like, yeah, make it super easy to make the right choice. And your paycheck comes in, it automatically gets distributed to the personal banking side already has this Mercury Invest product that is very simple. It's just put in S&P or government T-bills and don't overthink it, which honestly is what 99% of people should probably be doing. And everything else is like, not the correct thing to do. Alex's OpenClaw 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. So maybe bad idea? Yeah, no, that would definitely be the case considering I know nothing about basketball. But yeah, where should we land this? Alice, do you have any zingers to land us? We can always just ask him out to ask us some questions. With the three minutes we have left. You got any feature requests, Alex? Well, knowing that I can already connect to Claude is great. Not really. I mean, I think you guys have done such a good job with the simplicity of the interface. I think yeah, I mean, I actually haven't turned on the personal yet, but I'm going to. I think you know the direction you have to go, which is like the charter and building all the ending capabilities and Zelle and all those features. Don't let PMs destroy your product, Ahmad. Because there's so many opportunities for incremental growth in a financial product, right? You could add 100 buttons. Yeah, yeah. Actually, yeah, that's one of the benefits of AI interfaces, right? There's no buttons. And you can actually have a lot of products behind the scene, which I think is an interesting world to think about when it comes to interfaces that you could have way more features, but they're going to show up at the end of the day. The right time and they're like kind of automated rather than like you have to click buttons for it. But yes, yeah, I used to be very anti-PMs actually for the first basically 80 people, we had no PMs. And then 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. But eventually I came to love PMs. I think that's just the right way to do PMs, which is like very kind of customer centric and they're part of the team. And they're not like kind of dictators. But yeah, I think that's just the right way to do PMs, running the show. But, but yeah, it is it is dangerous to have the wrong kind of PM. Awesome. I think we're at time. Thank you so much for joining us. This was a ton of fun. Yeah, this was really fun. Yeah, I didn't know what to expect. But we just did it. We did it. Thank you. Booking.com is the easiest way from a day surrounded by noise to a state surrounded by nature. That's nice. Go on, book it. It's easy. Booking.com. Booking. Yeah. Fall is the perfect time to refresh and reorganize your space. At the Home Depot, find power tools and tool sets you can use to make the most of your time. Starting at $50 to help tackle DIY projects, home updates, and more. Whether you're drilling brackets to support new shelving or sharpening your hedge trimmer blade with an angle grinder, the Home Depot has the tools you need to check projects off your list. 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