Immad Akhund is the CEO of Mercury, the fintech that provides radically different banking* for over 200,000 ambitious companies and individuals. He co-founded the company in 2017 with the vision that banking should do more than safely hold money — it should help people accomplish everything they want with it. Launched in 2019, Mercury has raised $500M in total funding from Sequoia, Coatue, CRV, Andreessen Horowitz and others. He is a former part-time partner at Y Combinator and is an active early-stage investor, with more than 350 investments in startups including Rippling, AirTable, Rappi, Applied Intuition, and Substack.

*Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC.

Thomas Brown is a senior counsel at Paul Hastings. J.P. Morgan has called him “fintech’s most famous legal mind.” Over three decades, he has represented nearly every major company in the space, as well as their founders and investors. 

This represents his second stint with the firm. Prior to rejoining, Thomas was a partner with and general counsel of NYCA, a leading venture capital firm focused on connecting innovative companies to the global financial system. While previously with Paul Hastings, Thomas' practice was focused primarily on competition law and legal issues affecting the financial services industry. He is a past chair of the firm’s Competition practice and co-chair of the firm’s Fintech practice. In addition to strategically advising payment systems and financial services clients across a broad spectrum of regulatory issues, he has litigated notable antitrust cases, including class actions.

Prior to first joining Paul Hastings, Thomas had served as vice president, senior counsel at Visa U.S.A. Inc. There, he was responsible for managing the aftermath of the settlement in In re Visa Check/MasterMoney Antitrust Litigation, including the dozens of consumer class actions that were filed following the settlement. He was also deeply involved in the company’s transformation from a co-op to a shareholder-owned company. He writes and speaks frequently.