For eight years, Mercy has engineered distribution - the highways that move attention and capital to day 0, the earliest and riskiest stage of building.
He founded XCohost, a podcast/livestream SaaS that organized 20,000 episodes and put founders in rooms with guests like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen - and he built that first software product with no technical background, which is exactly why he keeps betting on the first-time builder.
That instinct became infrastructure. Through ICM.RUN, the first on-chain incubator, he's raised $1M+ for early teams and incubated 10+ companies. Now he's building Ally with co-founder Jake Frey - turning "having an idea" into day 0 of a fundable company.
8 yrs
Building distribution highways
0
Episodes organized at XCohost
0+
Projects applied to ICM.RUN
$1M+
Raised for early-stage teams
Selected work
The first on-chain incubator - capitalize, build, and accelerate 0→1 crypto-rails companies.
1,000+ applied · 138 contributors · $250K+ AUM
A podcast/livestream SaaS that turned live audio into a distribution engine.
20,000 episodes · Elon Musk & Marc Andreessen
Day 0 for creator-led startups - post an idea, build a taste-based reputation, earn a grant to build it in public.
Pre-seed · iOS beta · Backed by the Solana Foundation
Contributions
Developer relations & community
2015 - 2019
Lead, Viral Music Marketing Department
Columbia Records / UMG
Developer relations, docs & fundraising
Early user 2021 · Investor & contributor 2025
Timeline
The early internet · 2007-2015
Grew up inside online gaming, then reverse engineering, modding, and white-hat hacking - curiosity-driven experiments across communities like seven7sins, BlackHatWorld, and HackForums that taught him how platforms, incentives, and online communities actually work.
Growth engineering
Turned social platforms into systems - automation, viral mechanics, audience psychology. Co-founded an Instagram marketing agency growing brands and creators, and ran viral campaigns for artists connected to Columbia Records.
Real estate / short-term rentals · 2018-2020
Bought, owned, operated, and managed 31 short-term rentals between late 2018 and early 2020. Unglamorous, but where the operator instincts - customer communication, execution, running a real business - got built.
XCohost
One of the earliest to build infrastructure around Twitter Spaces - which became XCohost. 20,000 episodes, guests from Elon Musk to Marc Andreessen, a $5M–$10M creator-rewards campaign, all shipped as a non-technical founder.
ICM.RUN
Founded ICM.RUN, the first on-chain incubator - 1,000+ applications, 138 contributors, $1M+ raised, 10+ companies incubated. Turned distribution instinct into a launch machine.
~Feb 2026
Co-founded Ally with Jake Frey. Building day 0 for creator-led startups; backed by a ~$85K Solana Foundation grant; iOS beta live.
Proof
13K+ following the ICM Guy on X (@7VoMercy)
The first on-chain incubator - 1,000+ applied, 138 contributors
20,000 episodes at XCohost - from Elon Musk to Marc Andreessen
Backed by the Solana Foundation for Ally (~$85K, no equity)
Ex-advisor to a co-founder of Animoca Brands
$1M+ raised for early-stage teams via ICM.RUN
Off the record
Unmistakably internet-native, and blunt about it.
He calls himself the "ICM Guy" and treats making money online as the defining skill of the moment: "The wealth of the world is at your fingertips - all you need to do is press the right keys."
His half-joking wishlist tells the real story - dirt bikes, quads, boats, cabins, a gigantic coworking space, an on-site chef. The builder-commune fantasy of someone who genuinely wants to build alongside other people.
Right now
Building Ally full-time with Jake Frey and incubating internet capital markets through ICM.RUN - getting capital and distribution to first-time builders faster than the current system allows.
Press and builders working on day 0, the creator economy, or on-chain capital should reach out. The best way to follow along is X.
A note for Ploy
Ploy becomes the largest CLI web platform. Hundreds of thousands scan the Ploybook charts for the latest ecom, email, and SEO methods. Not creators selling courses. Founders monetizing their own outcomes.
Recruit world-class marketers to build complete end to end go-to-market Ploybooks, live. The competition is the content, and the content is the acquisition.
The Ploybook that keeps your app from getting hacked, leaked, or ripped offline. Skip it and you find out the expensive way, live in front of your users.
Clone Ploybooks built by founders who have done it. Earn every time someone runs yours.
Ploy sees a founder running the same flow on repeat. It prompts them to publish it, and shows the credit cost against the returns. The best taste rises. The author gets paid on every run.
It stops selling hours. It publishes the flows it already ran, and every founder who runs one pays it.
A startup runs it and goes platinum on X. The creator monetizes the outcome, not a course.
The best taste in the world becomes a Ploybook anyone can clone and run in minutes.
Download the Ally AppGet paid for your ideas