Go Slow to Grow Fast

About Go Slow to Grow Fast

Explore Mercury's innovative podcast, crafted specifically to guide startups through growth hurdles. Gain practical wisdom from experienced investors, advisors, and accomplished founders customized to your unique path. From surmounting funding hurdles and mastering the product-market fit to broadening your customer reach and fostering a growth-focused mindset, "Go Slow to Grow Fast" addresses the complete spectrum.

Publisher

Mercury Fund

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

25 Aug 2023

Latest episode

25 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

28 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   25 Sept 2026

   AI Product Design and Distribution: Lessons from Building at Scale

   With AI reshaping how software gets built, this session at Mercury Fund Day at The Ion digs into what actually separates a durable product from a disposable feature. Heath Butler moderates a conversation with Mustafa Ali (Twilio), Zafir Khan (Meta), and Salim Gheewalla (utilITise), and they unpack how foundational models are changing the economics of building, why domain expertise and trust remain the real moat, and how pricing, hiring, and product craft are evolving alongside the tools. The conversation moves from AI guardrails and vertical AI defensibility to rethinking legacy processes altogether, offering a grounded look at what it actually takes to build and scale a product in the age of AI. 🎧 Episode Highlights [08:02]: What foundational models change—and what they don't [17:28]: The difference between an AI feature and a real product [27:48]: The key component in AI-fuelled developments [36:54]: Why passing token billing to customers can be a mistake 🔑 Key Takeaways: ● Foundational models are becoming increasingly commoditized, so durable differentiation comes from domain expertise, context, workflows, and the guardrails that make AI useful and trustworthy. ● Adding AI to a product does not automatically create a product. Teams still need to understand the customer problem, the surrounding workflow, and the trust, security, and compliance requirements that come with solving it. ● AI is changing product development by making prototyping and iteration dramatically faster and by allowing more people across an organization to turn ideas into working experiences. ● As the cost of building falls, human judgment becomes more important. Taste, curiosity, customer understanding, and the ability to distinguish useful work from AI-generated noise remain essential. ● Trust, not just capability, wins the customer. A feature built quickly with AI can win a demo, but closing (and keeping) an enterprise customer still requires the documentation, accountability, and track record that only a true domain expert can stand behind. 👤 Guest Spotlight: Heath Butler Heath Butler is a Partner at Mercury Fund, where he invests in Work-Tech, Fin-Tech, and Sports-Tech B2B software, and he hosts Mercury's own podcast, Go Slow to Grow Fast. Before joining Mercury, he founded Gestalt Theory Venture Partners, a venture studio and investment platform for early-stage companies, and held corporate development and fintech division leadership roles at Insperity. He also co-founded Urban Capital Network, an angel investment group focused on expanding access to capital for underrepresented founders. Mustafa Ali Mustafa Ali is Senior Director of Growth at Twilio, the cloud communications company that helps businesses build text, voice, video, and email experiences, including AI-powered solutions. He holds a background from the MIT Sloan School of Management and previously worked at McKinsey & Company, in addition to time at Antler, Castor Ventures, and Digital Lumens. He is also active in Houston's entrepreneurship community as a member of OPEN Houston. Zafir Khan Zafir Khan is Head of Consumer Product at WhatsApp and Director of Product Management at Meta, a role he has held since 2016. Before WhatsApp, he was a software engineer at Google, where he worked on the Google Camera app for Nexus and Pixel devices, and earlier held product marketing and account management roles there. He holds a degree from Rice University, and his tech career traces back to a Venture Fellow stint at Mercury Fund in 2010. Salim Gheewalla Salim Gheewalla is the Founder and CEO of utilITise, an agentic AI company pioneering what he calls the Self-Healing IT category, detecting, troubleshooting, and resolving IT issues automatically, often before anyone notices. He spent more than 15 years leading IT and cybersecurity divisions worth over $200 million, including as VP of Marketing and Alliances at Calian IT & Cyber Solutions, and holds an Executive MBA from Texas A&M's Mays Business School. He is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and Forbes Communications Council, a patent-pending inventor, President of OPEN Houston, and co-host of The MadMen Pod. For More Episodes: Visit www.mercuryfund.com/resources Stay Connected: ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathbutler ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/mustafaalimit ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/zafirkhan ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamsalim

2. 

   24 Sept 2026

   The Future of Product Development

   With AI reshaping how software gets built, this session at Mercury Fund Day at The Ion digs into what actually separates a durable product from a disposable feature. Heath Butler moderates a conversation with Mustafa Ali (Twilio), Zafir Khan (Meta), and Salim Gheewalla (utilITise) and they unpack how foundational models are changing the economics of building, why domain expertise and trust remain the real moat, and how pricing, hiring, and product craft are evolving alongside the tools. The conversation moves from AI guardrails and vertical AI defensibility to rethinking legacy processes altogether, offering a grounded look at what it actually takes to build, and scale, a product in the age of AI. 🎧 Episode Highlights [08:02]: What foundational models change—and what they don't [17:28]: The difference between an AI feature and a real product [27:48]: The key component in AI-fuelled developments [36:54]: Why passing token billing to customers can be a mistake 🔑 Key Takeaways: ● Foundational models are becoming increasingly commoditized, so durable differentiation comes from domain expertise, context, workflows, and the guardrails that make AI useful and trustworthy. ● Adding AI to a product does not automatically create a product. Teams still need to understand the customer problem, the surrounding workflow, and the trust, security, and compliance requirements that come with solving it. ● AI is changing product development by making prototyping and iteration dramatically faster and by allowing more people across an organization to turn ideas into working experiences. ● As the cost of building falls, human judgment becomes more important. Taste, curiosity, customer understanding, and the ability to distinguish useful work from AI-generated noise remain essential. ● Trust, not just capability, wins the customer. A feature built quickly with AI can win a demo, but closing (and keeping) an enterprise customer still requires the documentation, accountability, and track record that only a true domain expert can stand behind. 👤 Guest Spotlight: Heath Butler Heath Butler is a Partner at Mercury Fund, where he invests in Work-Tech, Fin-Tech, and Sports-Tech B2B software, and he hosts Mercury's own podcast, Go Slow to Grow Fast. Before joining Mercury, he founded Gestalt Theory Venture Partners, a venture studio and investment platform for early-stage companies, and held corporate development and fintech division leadership roles at Insperity. He also co-founded Urban Capital Network, an angel investment group focused on expanding access to capital for underrepresented founders. Mustafa Ali Mustafa Ali is Senior Director of Growth at Twilio, the cloud communications company that helps businesses build text, voice, video, and email experiences, including AI-powered solutions. He holds a background from the MIT Sloan School of Management and previously worked at McKinsey & Company, in addition to time at Antler, Castor Ventures, and Digital Lumens. He is also active in Houston's entrepreneurship community as a member of OPEN Houston. Zafir Khan Zafir Khan is Head of Consumer Product at WhatsApp and Director of Product Management at Meta, a role he has held since 2016. Before WhatsApp, he was a software engineer at Google, where he worked on the Google Camera app for Nexus and Pixel devices, and earlier held product marketing and account management roles there. He holds a degree from Rice University, and his tech career traces back to a Venture Fellow stint at Mercury Fund in 2010. Salim Gheewalla Salim Gheewalla is the Founder and CEO of utilITise, an agentic AI company pioneering what he calls the Self-Healing IT category, detecting, troubleshooting, and resolving IT issues automatically, often before anyone notices. He spent more than 15 years leading IT and cybersecurity divisions worth over $200 million, including as VP of Marketing and Alliances at Calian IT & Cyber Solutions, and holds an Executive MBA from Texas A&M's Mays Business School. He is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and Forbes Communications Council, a patent-pending inventor, President of OPEN Houston, and co-host of The MadMen Pod. For More Information: Produced by Speakerbox Media. For more episodes, visit Mercuryfund.com/content/ Stay Connected: ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathbutler ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/mustafaalimit ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/zafirkhan ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamsalim

3. 

   5 May 2026

   Building The Future of Agentic Commerce

   As AI becomes a bigger part of everyday life, we take a look at how it can be applied in commerce, where software agents can search, decide, and complete transactions on a user’s behalf. Moderated by Blair Garrou, this session at Mercury Fund Day at The Ion breaks down the shift from real-time, user-driven checkouts to systems based on ongoing permissions and delegation. The panel features Matt Bouchner (Satsuma.ai), Coert Voorhees (LISNR), and Aileen Allen (Mercury Fund), who discuss how new payment rails and machine-readable systems are making this possible and where the biggest opportunities will be as this new model of commerce takes shape. 🎧 Episode Highlights [08:17]: Building the infrastructure layer powering agentic commerce across retailers [15:53]: From “bot equals bad” to “bot equals customer” in retail adoption [23:38]: The gap between payment protocols and real merchant adoption [28:20]: Why retailers are still in experimentation, not full-scale deployment [47:01]: The tipping point: when consumers get used to buying through agents Key Takeaways: ● Agentic commerce is shifting transactions from user-driven sessions to delegated, always-on workflows. Instead of actively browsing and checking out, users will set preferences and let software agents discover, compare, and act on their behalf. ● The biggest bottleneck isn’t the idea, it’s the infrastructure. Reliable product data, merchant readiness, payment rails, and trust layers all need to align before agentic commerce can move from experimentation to real adoption. ● Control and trust will define winners in this new model. Retailers and brands want visibility into how their products are presented and sold, while both merchants and consumers need confidence that agents are acting accurately, securely, and in their best interest. Guest Spotlight: Blair Garrou Blair Garrou is the Managing Partner at Mercury Fund, where he has built his career around backing and advising tech entrepreneurs and scaling disruptive startups beyond Silicon Valley. Matt Bouchner Matt Bouchner is the founder and CEO of Satsuma.ai, where he helps retailers and brands make their products discoverable and purchasable across emerging AI-driven channels. He started the company while in college, originally building a consumer app that scaled to over a million users before pivoting to infrastructure powering agentic commerce. Coert Voorhees Coert Voorhees, VP Commercial at LISNR, leads go-to-market efforts for a platform that enables secure, proximity-based data exchange through sound. He joined LISNR following its acquisition of Arden, the web3 loyalty startup he co-founded. Coert’s work centers on how information moves between people and how technology can make those interactions more seamless and impactful. Aileen Allen Aileen Allen is a Partner at Mercury Fund, where she focuses on agentic commerce and the future of buying behavior. With over 15 years of experience in B2B software across marketing, growth, and go-to-market strategy, she works closely with founders to scale revenue and bring new products to market. For More Information: Produced by Speakerbox Media. For more episodes, visit Mercuryfund.com/content Stay Connected: ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/bgarrou ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattsuma ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/coert-voorhees ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/aileen-allen

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Contact Go Slow to Grow Fast

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.