Thread by @immad

1/ Excited to unveil Mercury Raise today - a program to directly connect our early-stage startups with top investors.

We have 40+ investors in the program including @eladgil, @alisonbarrallen, @shl, @ryanhoover, @a16z, @sequoia and @crv.

mercury.com/raise

2/ We at @BankMercury always want to help entrepreneurs succeed and one of the biggest asks we get is startups wanting to connect with investors.

Instead of trying to accommodate these asks on a one off basis we decided to productize the process.

3/ We ran a small beta last month and were surprised by the level of interest from both entrepreneurs and investors. Both sides are looking for better tools to connect.

The beta resulted in 20 intros between startups and investors and at least 2 checks.

4/ Investors still rely on in-network recommendations or cold emails to find startups. Startups on the other hand struggle to raise if they don't have a gatekeeper's stamp.

With COVID-19, previously serendipitous connections that got startups funding have also disappeared.

5/ The deadline for the next round is Sept 23rd. We'll share Raise startups with our network of investors and facilitate intros to the companies they are interested in.

Raise is free and available to all Mercury customers (Mercury is also free) who are raising <$5m seed rounds.

6/

Raise is still an experiment and we will improve/enhance it as we run a few batches.

You can learn more about Raise here: blog.mercury.com/company-news/m…

7/ Since so many investors are asking. If you want to be included email raise At Mercury Dot Com.

We are only including active seed investors (>5 deals/year).