Immad Akhund has now given him a scale AI worth $14 billion because the founder was “very young.”
Miss taught him to reconsider his prejudice towards the young founder.
Mercury’s CEO and founder supports over 350 startups in its early stages.
Immad Akhund, an active angel investor since 2016, received early bets worth nearly $14 billion in last year’s funding round.
“I saw Scale AI, and I was saying, ‘It’s a good idea, but these people are very young,'” he said in an episode of the “20 Minute VC” podcast released Monday.
“I think it was like 19 and 20 back then. If I had done it, I think we could run this company better and I didn’t know how they would understand it,” he added.
Looking back, the serial entrepreneur said he was “just wrong.”
“To be honest, that young man has some powers that are hard to judge. I’m pausing my beliefs and saying this person is trying to find a way to run a huge company,” he said.
Misstep was formative for Akhund, who helped over 350 startups in the early stages, including Rappi, Airtable, Rippling, Decagon and Etched.
Akhund Angel is investing in “what appears to be inevitable in 10 years from now and could become a $10 billion company.”
Akhund is also the founder and CEO of Mercury. Mercury is a bank startup led by Sequoia that recently raised a $300 million Series C round at a $3.5 billion valuation.
Akhund said one of the biggest lessons of his investment journey is to learn to check his ego.
As an entrepreneur, he said he was used to proposing his own ideas when talking to startups.
Founders often agree, especially when they were younger. But “it’s not their idea and it’s not fair to promote the idea to others,” he said.
He learned that it is important to support the founders for their ideas, not for him.
“You really need to delete your ego and your ideas and listen,” he said. “You’ll be with us all the time for their journey, not for the majority of it,” he added.
Akhund said he prefers first-time founders, especially those who have a “tip on the shoulder.”
“I have that bias against them,” he said. “Sequential entrepreneurs know how difficult it is, but they’re willing to do it again.”
