How Plaid Built the Financial Data Rails of the Internet

Episode 38 of Startup Stories with Fexingo unpacks the founding journey of Plaid, the API layer connecting tens of thousands of apps to users' bank accounts. Lucas and Luna walk through the specific insight co-founders Zach Perret and William Hockey had in 2013 while trying to build a personal finance app: connecting to bank data was so broken that the infrastructure itself was the bigger opportunity. They trace Plaid's early scrappy days — cold-calling banks, screen-scraping websites, and convincing developers to trust an unproven middleware. The conversation covers the company's pivotal partnership with Venmo and its role in powering the fintech explosion from Coinbase to Robinhood. They also address the regulatory scrutiny Plaid faced after the Visa acquisition collapsed in 2021, and the quieter, more deliberate path the company has taken since — now valued at over $13 billion. A concrete look at how a startup became the back-end plumbing for modern finance. #Plaid #Fintech #StartupStories #API #ZachPerret #WilliamHockey #Banking #FinancialInfrastructure #VisaAcquisition #Venmo #Robinhood #Coinbase #DeveloperTools #Business #BusinessPodcast #FounderJourney #FexingoBusiness #AdFreeSupport Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo