INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Online-only banks have become a viable option for many people who would have traditionally used a brick-and-mortar bank but are now looking
for more flexible, potentially cheaper ways to handle their monthly incoming and outgoing finances, their savings and loans, and their
That maxim has also extended to the world of business, and today a startup that has built a business-focused challenger bank, specifically
for startups like itself, is announcing a round of funding as starts its growth in earnest.Mercury, which describes itself as a bank for
startups, has banked $20 million of its own in funding, a Series A that is being led by CRV with support also from Andreessen Horowitz, the
VC that led its investor-heavy $6 million seed round earlier this year
The company, I understand, has a post-money valuation now of $100 million.And by investor-heavy, I mean that on two counts: it featured a
lot of heavyweights, and there were nearly 40 individuals and firms chipping in
Others in this latest round include Kevin Hartz, CEO of Eventbrite; Scott Belsky, co-founder of Behance; Ryan Petersen, CEO of Flexport;
Its bigger list of backers now totals over 100 and also includes the founder of Silicon Valley Bank Roger Smith, Bill Clerico of WePay, and
Naval Ravikant, among many others.This latest funding comes on the heels of Mercury having launched only in April 2019, and is a result of
what appears to be very strong demand for what it has to offer
In the first week of its launch it had 1,500 signups, and it has been growing at 40% each month since.To be sure, there are already a number
of options on the market for a startup looking for a bank
Aside from traditional institutions that all offer special accounts for small businesses (which essentially is what a startup is), there is
Silicon Valley Bank), and other challengers like Revolut and N26 that started first with consumers but are now increasingly also targeting
services that could be a natural complement (and, thus, potential precursors) to basic banking, too
(No plans from Stripe to build something like this at the moment, co-founder John Collison told me earlier this month when I asked about
it.)Immad Akhund, the CEO and co-founder of Mercury, is aware of what the shortcomings are today in the market from a couple of perspectives
Heyzap in 2016, Akhund used some of the proceeds to become an investor in early-stage startups (120 in all), he saw the same challenge
have sprung up across Europe that were mostly targeting consumers (and now potentially stand to be competitors with newer business
services), he set out to build Mercury with a lot of services that are very specific to the kinds of things that a startup might need to be
with Evolve) that come with up to 1.75% interest, the service features clean, modern dashboards; easy interfaces for setting up payments; an
online sign-up that Mercury says takes only 10 minutes to go through, with the account ready to use within 24 hours; and a facility to
number of new features that Mercury is building, along with an API, that will let its clients manage the money in their accounts and all of
the places where it might typically be getting paid in and paid out
This could be useful, for example, for integrating this into another piece of accounting software
He also noted that in marketplace-style business, you are not only receiving money from many places but also needing to pay people out, so
having a way of being able to do that more easily and immediately could be a big boost to a business.The aim is to automate and speed up the
Despite the work that having a huge investor pool might entail for the business (many ideas, many voices to be heard) Akhund said that
knows the experience as it has been is fundamentally broken
