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When Silicon Valley Bank <\/span>collapsed<\/span><\/a> in March, a flurry of startups rushed to step in to help fill a gap in the startup and venture capital community.<\/span><\/p>\n One of those startups, Mercury<\/a>, in particular found itself in the position of trying to meet a sudden surge of demand amidst the panic.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe craziest time was the first five days,\u201d recalls CEO and co-founder Immad Akhund. \u201cIt started Wednesday night \u2014 where it was very stressful and not just from Mercury\u2019s perspective, but all of Silicon Valley was holding their breath. People were worried about what was going to happen next.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Akhund says he spent most of his time those first few days on calls and responding to direct messages from existing and potentially new customers.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPeople were very stressed and saying \u2018I need a bank account now,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cEvery question had this urgency.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In response, Mercury \u2014 working with partner banks Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank & Trust \u2014 upped its FDIC insurance, first from $1 million to $3 million<\/a> and then to $5 million. It also released a new product called Vault, so people could park their cash beyond those amounts into U.S. government treasury bills.<\/span><\/p>\n Still, one of the questions that kept coming up, according to Akhund, was, \u201cIf SVB is failing, why is Mercury safe?\u201d The question was fair, in his view, considering that Mercury itself is a startup.<\/span><\/p>\n In the first few days after the collapse, the company saw more than $2 billion in deposits. And in all of March,\u00a0Mercury saw nearly 8,700 new customers depositing funds into its accounts.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt was by far our biggest month we\u2019ve had at mercury, a huge inflow,\u201d Akhund recalls. \u201cWe tried to prioritize people coming from SVB and even built some tools so they could connect to SVB accounts.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t a short-term boom, something that Akhund was worried about.<\/span><\/p>\n The company claims that 95% of its net new customers have stayed with Mercury nearly 90 days out from the SVB crisis and that those deposits have held steady. Also, that new customer growth has continued even after the SVB crisis has settled, with the company having doubled new signups per month since April \u2014 leading to 17,000 total new customers depositing funds from April to June, a figure that Akhund shared with TechCrunch exclusively. Today, its total customer base includes more than 100,000 businesses such as including Deel, On Deck, Linear, Sprig and Forage. <\/span>This means that Mercury\u2019s customer base grew from 76,000 to 100,000 in a matter of months in the wake of SVB\u2019s collapse.<\/span><\/p>\n That surge of customers has contributed to the company\u2019s annualized revenue run rate growing 4x year-over-year from May 2022 to May 2023, he added. <\/span>Overall, in 2022, Akhund said that Mercury processed $50 billion in transactions. In the first half of 2023 alone, the company has processed more than $42 billion in transactions. Mercury also, he said, has been profitable for the last 12 months.<\/span><\/p>\n Further, according to data obtained from Kruze Consulting, more than 30% of Kruze\u2019s clients now have a Mercury account, up from 17% at the end of February \u2014 the highest share of any neobank or bank, according to Mercury.<\/span><\/p>\n While Mercury is open to any U.S. business, its focus is on startups and e-commerce companies, which make up 70% of its customer base. Startups in particular, Mercury touts, have unique needs that many claim big banks are unable to adequately meet.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe were already growing and we saw an approximately 20% jump because of what happened with SBV,\u201d Akhund said. \u201cIt\u2019s obviously kind of been an inflection point, and we\u2019ve kind of sped up after this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Since its 2017 inception, Mercury has raised over $163 million in funding from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue and CRV as well as angel investors, athletes, entertainers and customers. Its last round was a $120 million Series B<\/a>\u00a0that was announced in July of 2021.<\/p>\n I dug into all these details and much more with Akhund<\/span> on Equity Podcast, which you can listen to here.<\/p>\n Want more fintech news in your inbox? Sign up for The Interchange <\/span><\/i>here<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Got a news tip or inside information about a topic we covered? We\u2019d love to hear from you. You can reach me at maryann@techcrunch.com. Or you can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. Happy to respect anonymity requests.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n