The Year AI Got Practical: 2025 Tech Trends with Immad and Raj
Founders in Arms
Ads versus subscription product tradeoffs
The hosts contrast ad-driven scale with premium, ad-free product strategies and long-term pride in product.
Immad Akhund and Raj Suri reunite for a one-on-one conversation covering the biggest tech shifts of 2025, from Mercury's public launch of Personal Banking to the quieting of AGI doom discussions. This wide-ranging episode explores why self-driving cars may matter more than AGI, how vibe coding is changing software development, and the strategic decisions founders make when everyone else disagrees.
What you'll learn:
Why Immad launched Mercury Personal despite investor and team skepticism—and the founder lesson about following conviction
How Mercury Personal brings business-grade financial controls to personal banking (collaboration features, automatic categorization, 3.5% savings rates)
The existential threat facing OpenAI and Anthropic as AI models commoditize and Google leverages distribution advantages
Raj's vibe coding experiment: Building a full-stack app with Postgres backend using just prompts (and why Replit won)
Why Tribe is rejecting the $30/user ad model to build a premium, ad-free group chat platform
The retention metrics showing Tribe's product-market fit (20-40% six-month retention with minimal marketing)
How AI hype shifted from AGI doom conversations to practical commercial applications in 2025
Why self-driving technology (Waymo, Tesla FSD) represents a more immediate transformation than AGI
The best and worst of 2025: renewed tech energy vs. immigration scapegoating and Doge's failure to deliver government efficiency
Why supply constraints (chips, power) signal AI demand is real, not a bubble
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) AGI conversations cooling down in 2025
(01:50) Mercury Personal launch after year-long waitlist
(02:42) Business-grade controls for personal banking
(04:30) 3.5% savings rates and Treasury/Invest products
(06:15) Following founder conviction despite opposition
(07:33) Balancing product shipping with polish
(08:26) OpenAI's Code Red and focus strategy
(09:23) Google's distribution advantage vs. OpenAI
(10:33) The API commoditization threat to Anthropic
(12:34) Why ad economics dominate the internet
(14:58) Facebook's $30/user vs. subscription models
(17:22) Tribe's progress: retention, AI features, monetization plans
(21:42) Vibe coding experiment: Replit vs. Lovable vs. Wix
(26:31) Why Replit might own the vibe coding market
(28:05) Enterprise use cases for AI-generated apps
(33:26) 2025's best: renewed tech energy and deregulation
(34:51) 2025's worst: immigration scapegoating and Doge's failure
(40:48) Self-driving breakthrough: Waymo and Tesla FSD
(42:31) Why AGI talk has quieted down
(43:43) Supply constraints proving AI demand is real
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