Marathon

1/ Today @Mercury received conditional approval from the OCC to establish Mercury Bank, N.A. I started Mercury in 2017 to build the bank I wish had existed as a founder. Nearly a decade later, we’re getting there. 🧵

Pre-IPO Stock Secondary Market Performance | as of Apr 13, 2026 | Download full report = agdillon.com/reports

Trend ✅ TAM ✅ Business Model ✅ Excited to work with @eladgil and Co @MarathonMP @gokulr @AlexGorgoni @ChaseAPackard @gggeverettt

NEW: Four years ago, fintech startup Atlas looked like it was on the brink of collapse. Today, tech billionaires are lining up to pay $1,000 a year for its card: forbes.com/sites/jeffkauf….

insane that a farmers bank powers ramp, affirm, revolut, and bridge > Garden City Bank > founded in 1928 to bank farmers > quiet business for 100 years > enter disgruntled @Square execs > what are they scheming??? > bought out for $56 million > renamed to @Lead_Bank > time to engineermaxx > api integrations > algorithmic compliance flagging > verticalization of services > everything in real time > fintechs can finally scale > square, ramp, affirm, revolut, bridge become customers > raise from a16z & khosla > valuation skyrockets from 56m to 1.47b > 180m revenue in 2024 > mfw a farmer bank is powering silicon valley seeing a pattern: the biggest fintechs are started by someone addressing their own pain

You don’t need to advertise your business when you’re 10x better than the status quo. @atlascardhq is the 1st consumer fintech I’ve ever seen to reach $1B in total processing volume w/o running a single ad. These emails are a weekly occurrence at this point. The Marathon Continues @patrickmro @gokulr @krisfredrickson

Why Smart, Repeat Founders Are Less Likely to Raise from Mega Funds: "Smart founders look beyond just getting $10M quickly from a mega fund and ask what they are actually getting. We see many cases where the partner who backed the company leaves and the founder is suddenly orphaned inside the fund. Repeat founders especially understand this risk and look past the glitz of mega fund money." @gokulr Love to hear your thoughts on this @rabois @PalmerLuckey @tjparker @ilyasu @typesfast

Most podcasts are BS because they are fluffy and lack substance. This is the densest, most insightful episode you will listen to this year. @gokulr breaks down the 8 defensible moats you need for your company to be successful in a world of AI. 1. Data (Proprietary and inaccessible) 2. Workflow (Deeply embedded operations) 3. Regulatory (Licenses and contracts) 4. Distribution (Exclusive proprietary channels) 5. Ecosystem (Third-party platform reliance) 6. Network (Marketplace liquidity density) 7. Physical (Infrastructure and atoms) 8. Scale (Low cost through volume) (Links below)

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company. #### today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone. first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay. we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly. i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures. a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers. we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold. to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward. to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow. jack