Plaid is approaching a billion-dollar valuation by building the pipes that connect your apps to your checking account. Will the big banks try to snuff it?
In San Francisco, a city known for its startup office perks, Plaid’s signature amenity requires a safety waiver. Zach Perret and William Hockey, Plaid’s founders, love rock climbing, so on the second floor of their office, employees tackle a vertical treadmill that offers endless handholds and footholds, much to the chagrin of their general counsel.
Climbing isn’t just an office perk— it’s part of company lore. On one of their first outings together, Perret dropped his co-founder 15 feet. They laugh about it now: Six years after the company’s founding in 2012, Plaid is exploding in lockstep with the fintech sector it helps power. Its software acts as a kind of plumbing, connecting apps to each new user’s bank to quickly confirm an account holder, without any penny deposits or paperwork. If online financial planning, stock picking and bitcoin trading are in gold rush mode, Perret and Hockey have the surefire business: The shovels and pans.
Look under the hood at startups like Acorns, Betterment, Coinbase and Clarity Money, and you’ll find Plaid humming away. Developers love Plaid’s fast tech; founders and their investors like saving money by not having to build their own connections. “We built this for ourselves,” Hockey says, “solving problems that were incredibly hard to do.”
Plaid hooks into around 10,000 banks. It’s internal fortunes have improved, with $59 million in funding from investors such as Spark Capital, NEA and the venture arms of Citi and American Express. In 2016, its $44-million Goldman-led series B valued the company at $250 million. Today, with sales quadrupled, the company has recently received funding interest valuing the company at $1 billion, according to a source with knowledge of its finances. Perret and Hockey employ 130 people out of a spacious two-storey office in the South of Market area of San Francisco.
This story is from the May 25, 2018 edition of Forbes India.
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This story is from the May 25, 2018 edition of Forbes India.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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