The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 18 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Perret: One in four US consumers have linked an account to Plaid
“It's about one in four people in the US have linked an account with Plaid.”
Perret: Consumer lending should be based on free cash flow
“Our longer term thesis is that you should be lending to a consumer in the way that you lend to a business, which is based on free cash flow”
Perret: Plaid's primary competitor in financial services is paper
“Largely when people ask us who are the competitors you worry the most about the answer is actually paper.”
Perret: Passwords remain the best bank account connection method in fintech
“Right now, in financial services, still the best way to connect your bank account to anything is using your username and password.”
Perret: Plaid got lucky and only drove 1% of fintech growth
“We couldn't predict how, how large FinTech would be, or how fast it would grow. I like to think that Plaid had one percent to do with that growth, because we gave some tools to some people that didn't have tools. But frankly, we got lucky to be in the right pl…”
Perret: A major security failure would likely destroy Plaid
“If we mess up security that is, you know, potentially company ending or likely company ending.”
Perret: Data engineering is significantly harder than data science at Plaid
“We see ourselves very much as a data company, and we thought that data science in the early days would be a really key part of our strategy, and it is, but the data engineering challenge is so immensely harder that kind of data science kind of, in terms of tea…”
Perret: Plaid's developer sales process is completely inbound
“Developers sales, If you could even call it that. It's completely inbound.”
Perret: Banks are buying security software products developed by Plaid
“We've actually built a number of software packages now that we're starting to externalize to kind of not just do the basics, but To validate against some of the larger threat factors that we're seeing in the ecosystem. And now some of the banks are actually st…”
Perret: Plaid's early thesis of avoiding product managers failed to scale
“And we had this thesis early on, which did not play out, by the way. We had a thesis that we never needed to hire PMs, because the developers knew how to build an API for themselves. It kind of worked, but it didn't scale.”
Perret: Plaid powers about 3,500 to 4,000 financial products
“So we power about, ah, I think it's 3504 thousand financial products on the other side.”
Perret: Most of the largest banks are Plaid customers
“Actually most of the biggest banks are our customers.”
Perret: Plaid built five or six failed consumer apps before pivoting
“We actually built, I think, five or six of them.”
Perret: Plaid has integrated with about 15,000 banks in US and Canada
“So our backend, we've integrated with about 15,000 banks in the US, Canada and soon a bit further.”
Perret: Plaid spends 80% of its time on B2B products
“So we spend about 80% of our time building towards the business to business side.”
Perret: Plaid has six active developers in early 2013
“So we have six people kind of actively in development and a big list of people that we're trying to add to it as we deal with scaling right now, which is all of our time.”