Mercury

Pulling back the Mercury curtain: How our engineering team documents our database schema. 🧑💻 As Mercury scales, written documentation has become essential for efficiently sharing knowledge. Database schema documentation is especially crucial as it forms the core data structures a typical web app interacts with and is read by employees outside of engineering. Here’s a quick breakdown from our CTO, Maximilian Tagher, on how we document the schema 👇 𝗧𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘀: - Each table’s documentation begins with a one-line sentence explaining the table. It should answer the question, “What does one row of this table represent?” - Follow the opening with a summary of the most notable aspects of the table, including the product/business context, the lifecycle of the table, its relationship to other tables, and links to related code, documentation, product specs, etc. 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗻𝘀: - Each column should cover when to expect a given value and the implications of that value. - Explain if and why a column can change, and what causes it. - Include the history of the column. - Provide the distribution of values in the underlying data (only if the underlying values are unexpected). For a deeper dive, guidance on implementation, and further examples, read our latest engineering blog post at the link in our comments.

You can now keep track of account logins in real time. 👨💻 Get ahead of unusual or suspicious sign-in activity with your new Company Security log, which tracks all login events — complete with the time, date, IP address, and the device used — with the option to export them as a CSV.

Founders, you no longer have to wait until Winter to apply for the next YC batch. Applications for Fall 2024 are now open 👇

Who said summer was over? Last week, we spent an evening with our current and previous batches of 500 Global Flagship Accelerator, sailing through the Bay and across the Golden Gate Bridge on a typical Fogust sunset. Special thanks to our global partner Mercury for the continued partnership and support to our portfolio companies. Want to board our sailing ship? Learn more about 500 Global’s Flagship Accelerator program: https://lnkd.in/g6sHSwS5 Balint Pasztor | Yersain "Zayn" Makazhanov | Arslan B. | Laura Lynn Gonzalez | Lin Htet Kyaw | Emilie Ho | Saranga Pagadala | Elizabeth Clark | Annalece Mark | Marcos Gaspar Brisson | Thomas Rossi| Nodira Khoussainova | Theren Moodley | Niamh O'Donnell | Helen Hyungmin P. | Anand Deshpande | Madison Brelsford | Iris Sun | Jordan Sawadogo

📑 Access all your company docs from one place Stop sifting through your records for your important documents — find them all in your new Documents & Data page. Download your company’s formation docs, contractor W-9s, and monthly statements whenever you need them, as well as upload any other documents you’d like to store in the same place. All documents are protected with our multi-layered approach to data protection, including data encryption protocols, threat detection systems, and stringent access controls.

It was wonderful to partner with Pilot.com, Vouch Insurance, Fidelity Private Shares & Gunderson Dettmer on our YC S24 picture day. It’s great to connect with the founders, learn more about what they’re working on, and how the batch is going. As ever a ton of exciting startups working across a range of industries, who are hungry to build the next great company. Mercury is proud to support YC founders on that journey!

This was one of those weeks that is hard as a founder, and it was harder on some of our customers. We made the difficult decision to add to the list of countries Mercury can’t support if founders reside or their businesses are headquartered there, including: Ukraine, Nigeria, Pakistan, Croatia, and the Philippines. Impacted customers were notified on Monday that they would be offboarded. To give more context: the number of customers in these countries is very small (<1% of Mercury deposits), but it was putting a lot of strain on our operational teams and all of our financial partners (partner banks, treasury, payments, etc). We’ve seen the regulatory environment become stricter recently, which has made us change our approach to certain situations. Ukraine in particular was a tough one. There are a lot of great startups in Ukraine, but about 20% of Ukraine is sanctioned. Verifying and monitoring which part of a country someone lives in to a high standard becomes highly complex at scale and the penalty for making even one mistake is large. While this week’s decision was hard, we also know that this is a decision which will help Mercury move our compliance program forward and enable us to better support founders in these regions in the future.  As an immigrant from Pakistan myself, I have a lot of empathy for international founders and sincerely apologize to the founders impacted by this decision. While we aim to eventually solve all complex problems related to banking, this is unfortunately not one we can solve overnight. We will continue to revisit this policy and hope that we can change this in the future.

📣 Want to give a quick shoutout to a great Mercury perk partner, Pipedrive! Pipedrive lets you track your sales pipeline, optimize leads, manage deals with AI and automate your entire sales process so you can focus on selling. Mercury users get 30 days free + 50% off for 1 year! Sign up with Mercury here https://lnkd.in/ef9pekvN to access this perk on our perks page within your Mercury account.

Founders, builders, and startup people... check out these upcoming events that Mercury is hosting: 💰 7/23 - Expert Session: Fundraising and managing VC relationships w/ the CEO of Visible VC RSVP: https://lu.ma/vm5ooevm 🚀 8/1 - Accelerator Program Managers' Forum RSVP: https://lnkd.in/ghYu8_cd 🗒 8/14 - VC Pitch Review: NYCA & OneValley Ventures RSVP: https://lu.ma/0xw6rtbt

Five early-stage fundraising mistakes — and how you can avoid them ⤵️ → Not Knowing Your Audience: Tailoring your pitch to the right investors is crucial. Make sure you research and approach those who align with your startup's vision and values. → Lack of Preparation: Investors expect you to be well-prepared. Ensure you have a solid business plan, detailed financials, and comprehensive market research to back up your pitch. → Overpromising: While it's important to be optimistic, overpromising can backfire. Stay realistic with your projections and promises to build trust and credibility with prospective investors. → Ignoring Feedback: Investor feedback is invaluable. Be open to listening, learning, and adapting your approach based on the insights and advice you receive. → Rushing the Process: Fundraising is a marathon, not a sprint. Take your time to build genuine relationships and find the right investors who are a good fit for your startup’s long-term goals. Have any fundraising tips for early-stage founders? Share them below!