Introduction

Mercury kept its simple, smooth design as it grew fast and released new tools. Its CEO shares how they stay focused and quality-driven.

What’s the problem it solves?

Fast-growing companies often lose their simple, clear design and slip on quality as they add features and hire more people.

Quick Summary

Mercury’s founder, Immad Akhund, explains how they scaled from 450 to 950 staff and rolled out many products in one “year of launches.” They added invoicing, bill pay, reimbursements, spend controls, and even a personal account offering-all while keeping a smooth, easy-to-use interface. To do this, they set up small, focused teams like mini startups, each free to move fast but aligned to Mercury’s overall vision.

To keep quality high, Mercury hires people who truly care about craft, shows them examples of top-notch design, and holds regular review sessions. The leadership team stays deeply involved through weekly product workshops, a Slack channel for prerelease feedback, and biannual company-wide retreats to reset on goals and vision.

Immad also outlines his own shift from coder to executive, moving through phases of hands-on work, team scaling, and finally “selective deep involvement” where he tackles only the most critical problems. He shares why they launched Mercury Personal-because of founder intuition, customer requests, a large market, and low extra effort-and how strong results proved the risk worthwhile.

Key Takeaways

• Small, dedicated teams can launch new features quickly without harming the core product.
• Hire people who care about doing work at the highest level and show them your best examples.
• Use regular product workshops and prerelease feedback channels to keep design quality high.
• CEOs must evolve from builders to leaders who choose where to dive deep.
• Trust founder intuition for low-cost experiments, like moving into personal banking.
• Reset company vision and goals every few months so everyone stays aligned and motivated.

What to do

• Form small cross-functional teams tasked with one new feature, free of core product duties.
• During hiring and onboarding, share high-quality past work and explain why it matters.
• Schedule weekly product review sessions and create a Slack channel for prerelease checks.
• Plan biannual offsite meetings to revisit your mission, values, and upcoming roadmap.
• Identify a low-risk experiment driven by customer demand or founder insight and test it quickly.
• Track product debt items, set aside time to fix them, and avoid letting small issues pile up.

‍