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@BankMercury

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@immad

15 Sep

@VossNegotiation

1/ My fav "how to sell" book is "Never Split the Difference" by @VossNegotiation

One particular technique in it has come in super useful as an entrepreneur. It basically talks about never accepting the first "No" you get and ask 4 times in different ways

amazon.com/Never-Split-Di…

2/ As an entrepreneur you hear "No" a lot. From sales, investors, potential recruits. You have to come up with good mental models on how to handle it.

This technique is helpful because it helps you think of "No" as a point of learning and gives you concrete steps to take.

3/ The way I utilize it is to try to understand why we are hitting a particular roadblock and how to get across it. An example interaction:

potential client: sorry we aren't interested
me: why not?
potential client: we are busy
me: Its really easy, we could set it up for you

Read 5 tweets

immad

@immad

9 Sep

@eladgil

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

@BankMercury

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.

Read 7 tweets

immad

@immad

28 Aug

1/ One of the trickiest parts in a fundraising pitch is what to say when investors bring up an issue that is about a fundamental, unavoidable risks.

Every business at every stage has them, things like “what if Google enters your market?”, “what if CAC goes up”.

2/ My initial instinct is to turn these into discussions. “Great question, that would be bad, what do you think we should do?”.

I have noticed that devolves into a long, negative conversation that doesn’t resolve the issue and makes it seem like an even bigger deal than it is.

3/ What works is to have strong counter arguments that don’t leave too much room for discussion.

Question: what if Google enters the market?
Answer: Google has shown they don’t care about this market, the last 5 products they launched were a flop and it’s a huge market anyway.

Read 5 tweets

immad

@immad

18 Aug

@naval

1/ Back in Feb @naval pitched me AngelList Rolling Funds.

Initially I was skeptical, but over time I have realized that this opens up a new class of LPs and GPs.

We will see a rise of active founders like @shl and simultaneously running rolling funds.

@BankMercury

2/ I have been investing for 4 yrs. I have invested in more than 150 companies, including 3 unicorns (Rappi, Airtable, Rippling) and have an IRR of 50%

I am v. busy with @BankMercury but love investing and supporting entrepreneurs, that's why I started Mercury in the first place

3/ Rolling funds make it so I don't have to spend 6+ months raising money and I can avoid time on back office work. I can do the thing I love, which is investing.

It also means LPs that wouldn't have access to the tech startup asset class can back me and be part of the upside.

Read 7 tweets

immad

@immad

12 Jun

1/ Every 2 months I do detailed investor updates. It allows me to get out of a tactical day to day mindset and think at a high level.

An entrepreneur asked me what format they should use so I thought I would share mine here with wider community.

2/

1. Company mission 1 liner: Just to remind everyone what we are about.

2. Investor asks: investors are sometimes busy so its nice to have your asks upfront just in case they can easily help.

3/

3. Key metrics:

Do as much work as possible for the investors. a) 4-6 months on KPIs (include revenue) b) month to month change %. c) graph for the most important metric.

Most important metric should be an early indicating metric for future net revenue or net revenue.

Read 8 tweets

immad

@immad

8 May

1/ I often think about the subjects that middle/high schools don’t cover that are essential to:

A) making good life decisions.
B) making informed decisions as a voter.
C) being productive at work.

The pandemic highlights some of these gaps. So I thought I would make a list.

2/

Understanding ethics and ethical trade offs.

What is right and wrong and why?

There is a rich set of ways of thinking on this that are not touched on in normal education.

3/

Statistics and understanding probability.

This is touched on a little in maths but often not related to reality and mostly as an elective.

Read 10 tweets

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