Background

Questions

1. How should startups think about treasury management at various stages: the $1 million seed stage, the $10 million Series A, and the $100 million Series C type company?
2. How does a sweep network work, and what are the similarities and differences between using a sweep network and manually diversifying your funds across multiple banks?
3. There's this perspective out there like, "Hey, don't open a bank account at Mercury or another neobank—use one of these ‘too big to fail’ banks." What does this perspective get wrong about Mercury?
4. Let's assume that it is good risk mitigation practice to make sure you have one bank account open with a G-SIB bank, but you want to use Mercury on a day-to-day basis. Is there a product concept where Mercury facilitates you having an account with an underlying type bank like that without having to actually use it?
5. When SVB failed, there were multi-day delays in accessing funds due to FDIC insurance, causing issues with meeting payroll on time. If Evolve or another partner bank were to fail for Mercury, what would that experience be like?
6. Can you discuss Mercury's business model as a tech layer compared to SVB as a bank? How does your business model differ in terms of robustness and how do you think about it?
7. Can you speak about Mercury's revenue mix and future revenue streams?
8. SVB was heavily indexed on the startup ecosystem. How have you thought about and diversified the customer base to create more resilience? On the flip, do you think you want to double down on the ecosystem and go after VCs and other ecosystem participants as well?
9. Partner banks like Evolve tend to work with other fintechs. How important is it to grow and diversify the partner bank network? And do you think that's actually some defensible moat against competition? And on the flip, should depositors be actually looking and scrutinizing the underlying bank partners of a neobank?