Pattern Breakers · 2026-03-16 · 40 min
When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed over 48 hours in March 2023, it marked the third-largest bank failure in United States history and the largest since the 2008 financial crisis. But the fintech company Mercury was willing and ready to save the day for startups in need, landing $2 billion in new deposits in five days. That's what it looks like when a founder who thinks about a problem all the time is ready to seize the moment when it arrives. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Mercury co-founder and CEO Immad Akhund about why more than 200,000 of the world's most ambitious companies trust Mercury with their money, and why the company’s success was no accident. A prolific angel investor with a history of backing more than 350 startups including Ripple, Airtable, and Substack, Akhund had been living inside the startup ecosystem for years, and knew firsthand all about the challenges founders faced with banking. “In some ways the idea seems obvious to me,” Akhund says. “There’s no reason banking has to be broken.” Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike.
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