Why Plaid’s COO cold-calls new hires | Eric Sager (COO of Plaid)

0:04I'm curious to get your perspective on what is unique about leading a company in moments of incredible dynamic change that's very different than leading a company when that's not the case. So you join and it feels like things are relatively ho-hum for maybe 18 months. Then you have the pandemic. Then you have Visa M &A. Then you have fintech is dead market implosion. And then you have AI. What's unique about running a decent portion of the company in the role of COO through those specific times? So I feel at least as far as my journey at Plata is concerned, in a weird way, there's nothing unique about it because at almost every step there was something like that.

0:48We should talk about the three weeks where it wasn't that. There's always been things like that. I think the key is always, you just have to be relentlessly focused on kind of still moving the business itself forward, right? And so I think whether it's in the context of Visa or COVID or anything else, I think one of the things like we've always really been very focused on is like ruthlessly focusing on making sure that we're serving our customers, right? We're serving the ecosystem. We'll continue to move the ball forward irregardless of what happens on something like that. And so there's a couple of tactical ways in which I think we did that.

1:19I think one is just in terms of how we speak to the company. We're very clear that this was just like one potential milestone upon many. It is not the end goal. It is not the finish line. I think that's particularly important, even if you see companies now going public and so forth. I think I learned a lot there from my days at Square, where that's kind of how Sarah and Jack talked about the IPL. It wasn't the finish line. It was just another milestone amongst many milestones. And I think if you take that attitude, it's easier to remain focused. The second is the way you think about the team. And I think we've always tried to kind of minimize the number of folks that are kind of truly actively working on something like that, right?

1:56Like in the case of COVID, obviously, that's a little bit different. That affects everybody. But in the case of Visa, the team that was actively day-to-day working on the transaction was actually quite small. And everyone else was 100 % focused on continuing to grow the business. They were certainly aware of the transaction, aware of what was happening. And obviously, how could you not be, given some of the press at the time? but fundamentally like they were 100 % focused on their day job on you know again serving our customers serving consumers like building the platform and the ecosystem do you think it's mainly sort of a comms kind of a thing where you're just sort of relentlessly landing those messages so is it just narrative and storytelling and and keeping people focused sort of in the way that you communicate or are there other things that you have to do i mean i think it's the substantive as well right i mean in this case i don't know if i would think of it as kind of falling apart.

2:43I mean, certainly the deal didn't go through, but then subsequently, right? Like we raised at a significant upround, we provided liquidity to our team, right? And so suddenly from an employee's perspective, you're actually pretty happy about, right? And so, you know, I think that went a long way to kind of show the intent for what we're trying to build. I think it's about just like the culture and like what you really value at the end of the day, right? And I think if you build a company around like, you know, any given milestone, like an acquisition or an IPO or something like that, I think it's really hard to build like a truly great company versus if you build a company and a culture like focused on actually kind of delivering for your customers, delivering for the, in our case, like the ecosystem that we're building.

3:25Like I genuinely think our teams, certainly I do, believe in that, right? And we believe in that like much more than we believe in like any one of these kind of externalities that might happen. And I think as a result, it makes it easier to kind of stay focused, right? So it doesn't just start when that event happens. It's like you're constantly talking about what you're trying to do for the ecosystem as a whole and for your customers and so forth and so on. And so it's not like it's a new thing versus I think to me, sometimes if you think if you frame it more as like a comms thing, it sounds a little bit more like it was reactive to just that moment, right?

3:57Versus no, this was always the culture that we were building. It never changed, right? And I think the really great companies, they've been able to do that. They've been able to maintain that focus, to maintain that culture over kind of a very long period of time, irregardless of what happens. And I think that's what then builds the resiliency to handle all the ups and downs that you talked about. Like it's very rare that you find a company where it's really just straight up and to the right. So if you pick that apart a little bit, and you talk about sort of building the foundational culture that to the point that you're making kind of becomes that ballast through all the ups and downs of the company's life, how do you think about what it actually means to create or construct or build that, you know the idea of being customer centric sort of all the sort of underpinnings that sort of drive the culture if you pick it apart and it's sort of the you sort of the least generic culturey language how do you actually go about doing it in your eyes so i think the first step is always this is obvious right but you actually have to take the time to think about it and kind of formalize it in a way right i don't think it's something you just want to kind of leave to chance and i think there's a lot to be said for again i think the founders like like zach and others like I think he was very deliberate about the kind of culture that he wanted to build.

5:08And I've seen a lot of founders that they're not. It's just kind of an afterthought, right? It's kind of the result of everything else that's happening around them versus like, no, this is like I'm proactively thinking about what I want it to be and what I'm aiming for. I think once you have that, I think the second piece is you have to hire for it. And so you have to be willing to make actual trade-offs, right? In terms of the kinds of people that you're bringing on board, particularly in leadership positions, but really across the entire organization, right? And then I think you have to build out kind of like a rewards structure around that as well.

5:40So it has to matter for who gets promoted, who doesn't, right? Who gets a raise, who doesn't, who gets more equity, who doesn't. Like those things have to be tied, not just purely to results, but to like an individual's kind of ability to kind of enhance and further and contribute it kind of to the culture as well. What have you found have been the trickiest moments around culture or when it has been the most tested in your eyes? I think the hardest is always when there's a clear kind of conflict between the culture and like some short-term goal. And so where you believe in the culture long-term, you know what's right, but like in the short term, like there's a shortcut, right?

6:22That would clearly maybe lead to like better metrics or a better our operational outcome, that becomes very challenging. And I think that's where, again, I think the really good leaders, like they are able to maintain that discipline and maintain that focus on kind of that long-term North Star vis-a-vis letting themselves, like I said earlier, to get distracted and say, no, no, look, I know I can get to this one specific milestone. It's just a little bit quicker if I just make a few compromises. I don't think that ever ends there, right? Like once you go down that path and you see that and the folks around you see that, you kind of just, there's going to be a second time, there's going to be a third time, there's going to be a fourth time.

6:56And before you know it, like those cultural principles don't really stand for much of anything anymore. It's pretty clear that like the short term has kind of overtaken kind of the long term. What about things like, you know, you have a star employee in some dimension, but they're, they're an asshole or they're violate your culture in some way, but they're really high performing. Do you find like there are those tension points quite often or very rarely. I mean, those happen, right? I think they're the key is you just have to be very open, honest, and direct, right? So you just have to take that on right away.

7:27And I certainly think, I think that's a conversation I've had with a lot of folks over the years. And I think the key there is always to make sure that you're really discerning kind of intent, right? So there's a version of the world where you might be acting in what like I or our culture perceives to be like an asshole, but you're not actually doing it on purpose, right? And so it's simply me coming to you and saying, hey, look, this is really being perceived as you being an asshole. Like maybe if you tried it a little bit differently, we would get to a much better outcome together. Once you say that to people, the vast majority of people I've ever worked with, their reaction to this is hey, Eric, thank you.

8:02I really appreciate you caring about me enough to give me that feedback. And then they do their best to course correct. And it might not be instantaneous, but over a period of time, you know, they evolve in terms of like how they interact with their team and kind of the rest of the organization and that solves. And somebody that was supposed to be an asshole two years ago suddenly is like just crushing it from a culture perspective. And swing your gears a little bit, you know, because you've been at the company for a long time, you've seen it go from a relatively small company to a relatively large company or certainly a larger company.

8:32The natural thing that happens when you add more and more people and you grow is you end up with more bureaucratic organizations. But in almost always cases, there's some form of slowness that's introduced into a company. What are some of your observations about that and sort of the organism that is the company as it's evolved? I think there's a few things. I mean, so one, I think generally speaking, I do think it's true that the bigger you get, the harder it gets, right? But at the same time, like the bigger you get, the more assets you have at your disposal to kind of fight that off, right, in a way.

9:05And so I think there's a few kind of core things that I think I and we do. I think one is making sure that even as you get bigger, you're always crystal clear on who the decision maker actually is. And I think you don't want to live in a world where, you know, it's unclear. You have five, six, seven people. They all think they're the ones ultimately kind of making the final decisions. And so I think even on something as mundane as just going through my leadership meetings or going through any meetings, just being crystal clear at the end, like what are the things we're actually going to go do, but also then crucially, way, like who's on point to do it and trying our best to make sure that it's one person.

9:39It's not two people. It's not three people. It's not four people. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be collaboration. That doesn't mean you're not going to kind of go to your colleagues and ask them for input. But I think we try very, very hard to make it clear, like who's ultimately kind of making the call. I also think we've tried to avoid just kind of unnecessary layers. It's funny to me sometimes now reading like what people are saying, like in the context of AI and so forth, because I think we built the organ and everything. Yeah, we built plaid that way from day one. right? And so we never really hired a lot of kind of middle managers, so to speak, right?

10:09The focus was really always on hiring as many frontline folks as we need that are either, you know, building products, developing products, working with our customers, et cetera, or we needed like the right kind of, you know, senior leadership to kind of bring the right subject matter expertise in. But even for those folks, we have an expectation that they can still do their job, like they can still do the job of an IC, right? And so that's just kind of culturally where we're And I think, again, Zach is a wonderful example of like a founder who actually does that, right? Like he really still does like IC level work like every single day.

10:40And I think he expects that of his leadership team. And then we expect that of kind of the rest of the team as well. Do you think about driving pace and velocity in the context of what you're responsible for and that you're kind of a governing force on that or no? I do, but I think there's other dimensions to it as well, right? And so there's a dimension of kind of speed and velocity. There's a dimension of kind of risk, and then there's probably kind of a dimension of cost. And you're trying to optimize like in that kind of three-dimensional space, so to speak. I don't think it's fair to say that, hey, no matter what the decision is or what you're talking about in the context of the business, that faster is always better.

11:21I think that's nonsense, right? And there's plenty of examples where you don't want to do that. Particularly, I think, in a business like ours, where the details really matter, right? I think one of the examples I oftentimes give folks is, you know, in our world, if I tell you there's$101 in your bank account, but it's really$101.10, there's absolutely nothing funny about that. It's not like it's like you're buying gems in a video game or something, right? like my kids do on their iPad. And if they get that wrong by a little bit, is it great? No. Is the world going to go on? Yes. But if you fundamentally as a consumer, as one of our customers can't rely on the data that they're using to make very important recommendations and decisions, right?

12:05This decides like, should you get a mortgage? If so, how big of a mortgage should you get? These are life-changing decisions for you and your family. Like we have an obligation to make that as absolutely right as we possibly can. And if that means that in certain times, in certain pockets, like we move a little bit less fast, so be it, right? That's just one example. And then oftentimes there's a cost dimension to it as well, where it's just a question of like, how much money are you willing to spend, right? To make it go faster. And so sometimes that trade-off doesn't make sense. Do you talk about that in the context of whatever you're working on as a team or an org?

12:41Like we are going to go slow here or we are going to go fast here? I don't know that I would frame it as we go slow. That's not the branding that I think is going to resonate with folks. We need to be methodical and precise here. I think I would frame it more as, look, this is one area where we just absolutely cannot afford to get it wrong. And so that by definition means you're going to have to make some sacrifices when it comes to speed. And so it's just understanding for any given area across those three dimensions, where do we actually want to play? And so we talk about it in that context, right?

13:14And so it's a trade-off. Again, you can't have everything. There's no way. That's not how the world works. And so it's about being honest upfront about the trade-offs that you're making when it comes to this specific decision, this specific project, this specific part of the business, and then executing accordingly. Like, that's the way I would think about it. And so, and that can evolve over time, right? It can evolve as like the technology and our capabilities evolve. It can evolve as like regulation evolves. It can evolve as like the competitive set and other solutions that are out there in the market evolve.

13:45So these things aren't static either, but it's being clear about what they are when you set out. And it's about having the discipline to kind of go back and reevaluate and look at, does that trade-off still make sense? If it does, fantastic. If it doesn't, you need to change it to get it in line, right, with what kind of the current kind of market and opportunity actually demand. Do you find that it's, you often as a team, you know, think this is a time we need to be methodical and actually you rethink it and actually we should sort of err towards speed. Or the easiest thing is figuring out that set of trade-offs.

14:20And then the hard thing is sort of going and actioning sort of on that. For better or worse, I think Zach and I have a fantastic partnership there, right? Like where he tends to be the one that's coming in and saying, like, we should move faster. And then the German in me is a bit more methodical about it, right? And so that's a good tension at the end of the day to make sure that we're actually kind of executing on it in a sustainable way. And I think it's a part of why I think we've been so successful. I think we've had competitors that sacrificed everything at the altar of speed, and it didn't work out, and not at all.

14:53And so again, it's about being smart. And so are there moments where even I find, yeah, we should be going faster? Absolutely. That doesn't happen. But I think we have a lot of folks across the business that probably tend to be more aggressive on the speed side than I naturally am. But it ends up being a really, really good balance, right, to kind of make sure that we're actually getting to the sweet spot for what the situation demands. Maybe you could share a little bit about how you've thought about organizing the company over the company's life. I don't know if there are certain chapters you would break it apart into.

15:22How would you articulate sort of your higher level thinking on how to organize a company? There's so many ways. And you're also a multi-product company now. You have different types of customers, two-person companies, 200 ,000-person companies, different sectors. What are the different incarnations of org design and what have you landed on now? And maybe kind of what are some of the things you've gotten right or wrong? I mean, I'll talk about it more through kind of the go-to-market lens, although on the product lens, it's kind of evolved in similar ways, right? And so in the early days, there was only one flavor.

15:56And so it didn't matter. Like an opportunity would come in and we'd get assigned to an AE and it would get worked. But there was no notion of it. this is a startup or this is an enterprise customer or anything like that. And I think in the very early days, that's actually workable. And I think the general principle there is like, you want to avoid unnecessary complexity, right? And so it's so much when you're first getting started is about finding the right kind of product market fit within the right segment, within the right use case. You can still afford to find like true kind of generalists and your products are probably simpler, right?

16:29Or at least more narrow, right? You're unlikely to start with 15 different products at the same time, you're starting with one thing. And so here in the case of Plaid, that was mainly off, which is just kind of the account and writing number. It's what customers use to be able to kind of initially connect the bank account to then kind of, you know, funded. That's in and of itself, not that difficult to explain to somebody. And it doesn't really matter that much of whether you're talking to an enterprise customer, you're talking to - Like the unit of value they want is very similar. Yeah, it's very similar, right?

16:57And so that's where we started. And then we very quickly realized as we got bigger and bigger, hey, there's actually a real difference now in terms of how big companies are buying our products from how small companies are buying them. And so then we kind of had a t-shirt size that, you know, small, medium, large, we called it something else, but conceptually kind of that's what it was. And then there, you know, and it's kind of, that's kind of at the time that I came in. Was that intuitive, that shift? Like what were the signs that it was the time to do it and it wasn't too early and it wasn't too late if you just had to kind of orient, you really kind of started seeing like a divergence in needs from those customers.

17:37Right. And so it was, we had gone from one product to kind of three products, like the newer products, like were fundamentally different in terms of how they were being sold. And yet all three t-shirt size segments, right? Like our startup segment, kind of our mid-market segment, our enterprise segments were all rapidly grown. Then it's, I think, relatively easy to kind of go down that path of kind of specializing. I think that also - But you're starting to hear different things from the customers. Very different things, right? And that's what it is. Yeah, and it's in all facets, right? It's like, what do you expect from the product?

18:06Like, what do you expect from the sales team? What do you expect from the account management team? What do you expect from your support team? What do you expect from your solutions engineering or sales engineering team? Like, it starts diverging quite a bit, which is intuitive, right? Like, if you've ever tried to get any of these things implemented, you know, how we implement even today with, like, the largest companies in the world to how we implement with a startup is very, very, very different. And so if we're implementing a solution, pick a company like Citibank, right? Or on the one hand, we're implementing a solution with a startup that just got going, that has two people working for it who are like really kind of technical.

18:39It's just a totally different process. And so we started kind of specializing along those dimensions. And at the time, at least, we were still very functionally driven and the functions were separate. So you had a sales team, you had an account management team, you had a customer support team. And I think one of the things that very quickly became clear to me was like those handoffs between kind of sales and account management, like just, they weren't working very well. And I think I've been blessed to have a role at Plaid where I've kind of always generally been able to kind of, you know, oversee all kind of aspects of the business.

19:08So everything from marketing to kind of sales, to account management, to support, et cetera. And so I think it was much easier for me to kind of put myself then in the customer's shoes and say, well, like if I was interacting with Plaid, how would I really want this interaction to go? Right. And so certainly personally, like I've gone through this as a consumer of many products where I call into one person, I tell them my life story, then they eventually connect me to another person or they go away and a new person comes in and then I have to repeat my life story again, right? And I have to repeat it again and again and again.

19:35And honestly, by the fourth time, I'm like, I've had enough of this, okay? Like, I'm done here. Like, how can you not know this stuff by now, right? And there's a technological solution to that, right? To at least partially, but there's also, I think, an organizational kind of structural solution. So one thing that we did is we then created our segments, but then we put all the functions within the segment together so that the person leading the segment owned the entire end-to-end customer relationship, right? And so suddenly, even if it wasn't the exact same person doing it, you had somebody much closer to the customer who was accountable for making sure that like the customer's experience with our sales team smoothly translated into the customer's experience with our account management team, smoothly translated into the experience with our support team and so forth and so on.

20:15And that just dramatically improved both customer satisfaction overall, their ability to implement and scale kind of their initial product and use case, and then our ability to successfully cross sell and upsell them into all these other solutions that we had available. What are the downsides of organizing that way? There's an element of you lose some fungibility, right? And so you just have less generalists, you're starting to go down a more kind of specialized path. So it becomes either more expensive or like more important for you to really have a well-grounded understanding of like how your business is going to evolve.

20:50Otherwise, you know, if you hire too many startup folks and then it ends up being your business actually grows much faster in enterprise, now you're mismatched, right? It's hard to take the startup folks and just now turn them into enterprise folks. In many cases, frankly, vice versa, right? So even if it moves in the other direction, you've got a mismatch there. And so you need to understand your business better. You need to be more thoughtful about kind of like how you get ahead of that. Because in many of these cases, right, it's, Our teams can get up to speed quickly, but it still takes a few months to get them up to speed.

21:21And so if you're not careful, you can really kind of create like a dissonance there. We just don't have the capacity to kind of meet the needs of your customer in a particular segment. Versus if you take a more generalized approach, again, it won't be as good, but it's just more fungible across. It's easier to move them from one part of the business to the other. What else can you share about how the org has evolved in the last handful of years? So it was that we kind of evolved from one size fits all to kind of size based. And then the next step for us was just kind of really adding kind of verticals to that.

21:51And so this is like within enterprise, whether you're in healthcare or in automotive or whether you're in real estate or whatever, like that buying is also different. Right. And so we added another layer of kind of specialization to that. And so for us, obviously, kind of fintech is an important segment, like banking and wealth is an important segment. And so we kind of really actually kind of created segments that were being run as segments where that shared expertise really started to come to bear. And that probably started, you know, three, four years ago. And now suddenly, you know, instead of having somebody who's, yes, only focused on big customers, but it could be any flavor of big customer.

22:27Now it's one specific flavor of big customer where they're getting the experience of being able to do that over and over and over again. And that was really, really helpful. And then the final step now has been with like the proliferation of products that we brought to market kind of successfully, right? So it's no longer just aggregation. It's what we're doing on credit. It's what we're doing on fraud. It's what we're doing on payments. Like in every single one of those cases, we've really built kind of an intelligence layer on top of the cloud network. We have amazing customers that are already operating at scale that's seeing kind of massive benefits.

22:58We've now kind of built horizontal teams that then help support our vertical teams, right? And so the key there is, if you're an enterprise customer in the real estate space, you want to be treated like an enterprise customer in the real estate space. You want one person that can speak to you about everything to do with plan. But at the same time, you still need expertise when you want to help on fraud versus if you want help on payments versus if you want help on credit and so forth and so on. And so the way we've structured that is like if you're on the vertical, like you own it, you're kind of the quarterback.

23:27And there's an expectation that you understand every use case, you know, call it the 80%. But where you need to, you have a team of experts that kind of sit horizontally that bring that kind of that last mile of product. When you think about some of these org decisions, what do you think you did too soon or too late? And maybe it's just, you know, you have the benefit of hindsight. But when you look back at some of these architectural decisions, are there things that if you could have a mulligan and do it over again? I mean, look, I could probably use a thousand mulligans, right? I don't think I've ever been in a situation where you look backwards and you just nailed it, right?

24:03I think anybody that tells you that, they haven't thought enough about the journey that they've been on, even if it's been successful. Look, I think there's definitely pockets where we should have specialized more and faster. I think there's other areas where we probably went too quick, right? We were really still in a zero to one phase, right? We didn't need a whole team of people trying to sell that product. Like what we really needed is a few select relationships with very specific customers to kind of help us co-create and co-develop. And then once we knew we had that product market fit for that particular combination of kind of vertical and use case, then you start ramping it up.

24:41And so I've made both mistakes, frankly, like in either direction. I think the key for us has been to just kind of build the organization in a way that it's resilient enough, it's flexible enough, and it has enough spare capacity. That's the last one, like something I really believe in is like, hey, I really don't ever want to be at like right at 100 % capacity. I'm willing to pay for some inefficiency so that as the market evolves, as our product evolves, et cetera, like I have the capacity to kind of adjust to it in real time much more quickly than I otherwise could. And I think that's worked wonders, right?

25:14And so because what we really allowed us to do is, you know, more recently, like now we've had, you know, hundreds of AI companies signing up and we just announced the OpenAI, we announced Perplexity, we announced Replit. And so all these things, I think, but possible because we saw that opportunity about kind of developing maybe like 18 months ago, and we were very quickly able to kind of marshal folks towards that, you know, across product, engineering, design, and go to market. And that was only possible because we had spare capacity, right? If we had dedicated all those folks at 100 % to all these other opportunities where we were already seeing huge demand from customers and growing, I don't know that we would have been able to react as quickly to what has been obviously a huge opportunity for us in addition to to be able to grow like what we already had.

25:54Something you didn't talk as much about is how product and engineering fits into the org design. And I would assume it gets infinitely more complicated when you have many segments in terms of verticals, many company sizes, and then many products. And you're trying to build a roadmap and this customer wants this and that customer wants this. What's been sort of the high-level path of product and eng as it relates to sort of org design? I mean, there we have what we call like product areas, right? And so your product area dedicated to payments, product area dedicated to fraud, product area dedicated to credit.

26:30And so they're the ones kind of driving that roadmap for that kind of specific area. And in part, it's those solutions are aimed at like even different buyers at the same customer, right? And so I think the key then, like you said, is okay, for any given customer, you know, what do they really want across that whole like spectrum to the extent that they want to buy all of those products. And generally, I think we've been able to manage that quite well, where I think we've just made the decision for credit with an eye towards how do we build the best possible credit solutions for the ecosystem?

27:00We've made the decisions on fraud with an eye towards how can we build the best possible fraud solutions for the ecosystem? I think it's been very rare that customers have essentially said, look, I'm not going to buy your credit solution until you also build a specific feature on fraud, even though from our perspective, that feature would be further down the list. It just truly very rarely happens. But what about the fraud offering for a 10-person company versus a million-person company? That is, I think, fundamentally a decision for our fraud team. I partner with them. Our team's partnering with them from a sales and marketing kind of go-to-market perspective.

27:31But at the end of the day, that's literally the work of our product managers on fraud is to understand the overall market enough to say, okay, well, where do we think relative to alternatives we can build kind of the best possible solutions? If anything, the only other lens for us that's important is, you know, where does it help us grow the network? Because at the end of the day, we're kind of really like a network of networks, right? And so fundamentally, there are pockets where having a new consumer sign up for Plaid benefits all of our products and solutions. Having a new account connect to the ecosystem benefits all of our products and solutions.

28:05So there's a bit of a bias there to say, not just what makes me the most money, but it's first and foremost about what allows us to build the network. Because it's the network that then delivers a better outcome for consumers. It delivers a better outcome for developers, delivers a better outcome for the ecosystem as a whole. And so you think about that in a very specific use case. Like if it's you as a consumer wanting to get a mortgage, and you want to do that in an easy way where you can easily kind of cross shop different opportunities. it's very important for us to obviously have a relationship with you but then also if you have 10 accounts that are relevant to have all 10 of those accounts ideally already connected to plaz so that that becomes a very seamless process versus having to go through and connecting each account you know one at a time now that's gotten a lot faster for us as well but that's obviously more cumbersome than just like hey i already have them all connected let me share it you can literally instantaneously get the offers that you're looking for you're happy as a consumer right, the developer is happy because it's a really tight match between your needs and their product.

29:05And the ecosystem as a whole is improved, right, because it's just a much more efficient way of kind of matching your demand with the right supply. What about pre and post sales and making that as smooth as possible? Do you have traditional account management in each one of these segments? Yeah. And I think, you know, I think there, I think my general philosophy over years has always been like both for support and i think kind of account management engineering solutions engineering sales engineering etc it's always been you know always available never needed is the ideal mantra right so i'm a big believer in like i think we've been really focused on building our products to such an extent to such a level of quality that they could theoretically be self-serve and oftentimes are right and so you know one of the things you see a lot of is you see even very big customers, companies, implement with Plaid and scale to massive use cases without ever having to talk to anybody.

29:59That's incredible. And so we don't hide a customer's ability to contact us or anything like that. We want to make it easy while at the same time making the product so good that that just doesn't happen, you know, as often. And then a customer can choose, right? And they can kind of choose to engage with us whenever they want to. And then obviously, like we're monitoring kind of the health of their integrations, the health of their product, the health of their use case, and where we think we have something to add to kind of meaningfully make it better, then we proactively reach out there to help them, right?

30:27And so if you on your own aren't quite getting to the place that we think you should be, either in terms of how quickly you're moving through the process or in terms of the results that you're seeing, we'll proactively engage to help you with that. What about sort of the expand motion where you're getting people to go multi-product with you? Is that also pretty low touch, no touch? Again, I think it depends on the phase and the kind of customer and the specific use case. I think generally there, the first thing for us is just awareness, right? I think we're lucky that we have a lot of really amazing customers.

31:01We're lucky that a lot of those customers are obviously incredibly satisfied. They've been with us for a very long time, right? They're a really great NRR, et cetera. But I think there's still pockets, particularly with a lot of the kind of intelligent solutions that we've more recently brought to market, where even some of our existing customers aren't yet aware of them, right? And so, you know, that's not true in core aggregation. Like I think if you think about in the US, like building a product where it depends on bank connectivity or open finance connectivity, the odds are just insanely high that you're going to consider plan, right?

31:33It just, I mean, it's like a fireable offense. Like if you have to go explain to your boss that you made a purchase decision in this space and you just never considered us and it doesn't go incredibly well, good luck with that, right? Like that's not going to land well. I think our job is to make sure that when you think about payments, when you think about fraud, when you think about credit, like we end up in that same place. And I think first and foremost, that just starts with awareness. Because once a customer has the awareness, then they always connect that with the experience that they currently have on Plot, which is generally going to be very, very good.

32:05And now they're like, okay, well, let me learn more. And then we give them the path to either do that on their own, or once again, like they can engage with one of our teams. Like I said earlier, like whoever owns that relationship can bring in more expertise from some of our horizontal teams where they're needed. And then we have a whole engine on the back end in terms of account managers, implementation teams, solutions engineering teams, et cetera, that will help you implement the solution and then scale it. But do you ever think about, you know, so much of what you're doing from a product and engineering perspective is you want to deliver on the promise for the customer with very little human intervention.

32:39And so like if the account manager never existed, maybe they have no impact on a given customer. Like, do you think about disambiguating just what the steady state of a customer is going to do without this account management intervention? Do I think about it? Yes. Right. Do I think that there's enough there to throttle it? Right. Or to in any way kind of not be there when they ask for help? Absolutely not. Right. And so, you know, again, like we run a business that at scale is an incredible business. Right. And so the last thing I would want to do is you as a customer had a great experience with our first product.

33:18you know you have an issue with a second product and somehow like there's just no help to be had i think that's crazy right i think given the the product work that we've done over the years i think we've proven time and time again that we're going from strength to strength to strength and you're seeing again not just the nr but also the number of products that our customers are using continue to take up and so you just think about like even if you got that wrong one time like how much potential future right relationship value and even just like hard ltv you're giving up makes no sense whatsoever.

33:49There's just, there's almost no amount of money, right, that I wouldn't reasonably spend to make sure that one of our customers gets to a good outcome. And even if that makes that account unprofitable, that experience will kind of resonate across the rest of the ecosystem, and you'll make it back on other use cases. What are the other ways, if someone were to look at how you run your org, that sort of obsession expresses itself? That's sort of, I'm going to go to the ends of the earth for the customer. Many times it sounds like you're not going to be penny wise, pound foolish. Are there other points or the way that you've oriented the org that sort of flow from that sort of way of thinking about things?

34:30Well, so I think, first of all, it's not just the customers, also consumers, right? So I think it's really important for us that consumers, even though they never pay us, that at the end of the day, consumers get a consistently better outcome. And certainly that I think has been true in a massive, massive, massive way at the ecosystem level. For the vast majority of people, the reality is this allows people to make better decisions for themselves, better decisions for their families, better decisions for their small business, and it allows them to get better products for their needs at a lower cost.

35:01That is fantastic, right? And that's the North Star. And I think if you do that through this relationship with developers where like you leave no stone unturned to kind of make their experience as good as you can possibly make it, there's just so much value created in that ecosystem that there's always going to be enough left over for us. Always has been. Right. And so, like, I understand the question, but I think in practice, like I and we have never really been forced into a situation. Right. Like where we had to choose between, well, we don't have enough money to invest to give you this amazing experience.

35:30It's there. And again, I think that's a testament to how good our products are. It's a testament to how easy it is to kind of implement and scale them essentially already. And so we can afford to make sure that if something isn't the way it ought to be, that we can kind of fix that as quickly and as reliably as possible. At this point in your journey with the company and the scale of the company, what is excellence in your role as COO? I'd say there's a few vectors to it. I think the first one is, it's actually not Plaid. It's like, is the ecosystem overall creating more value for consumers than before?

36:06I really think about that quite a bit, right? And so are people writ large better off because of the tools that we brought into the world? our payment solution, making it easier and cheaper and better to buy the things that you want to buy when you want to buy them, how you want to buy them, or our fraud solutions, right? Like eliminating fraud that otherwise would harm the ecosystem, et cetera. I think that's one. Do you think about measuring that in any level of precision or it's just a visceral feel or gut feel? I mean, we do a lot of work to try to kind of measure that, right? And I think, like I said, there's a lot of really tangible things that we can share.

36:41You can look up around like, okay, well what's happened to over limit fees what's happened to trading fees what happened to average aprs and so forth adjusted for obviously kind of base level kind of interest rates etc and you can see all those things improving and the reality is that just even what seemed to be relatively minor improvements are massive right i mean if i told you look like it's like you know for this type of population it went from prime plus seven to prime plus six and a half you just put billions of dollars back into people's pockets. And I think that's a fundamentally good thing for everybody involved, right?

37:15Like I think the institutions agree with that. I think policymakers and regulators agree with that. I think our customers certainly agree with that. And for us, it's an important component of it. And so I think that's the first piece, because I think if you don't do that, right, like then you're just kind of trying to kind of extract rents. You're trying to get people to do things that actually aren't in their best interest. I don't think it's mission aligned with the kind of company that we are and that we want to build. And so that's number one. I think two then is, okay, look, are we kind of getting our fair share of that value, right?

37:43Like we've put all this work in, we've built all these amazing solutions. And I think that's generally measured both in kind of just usage, like there's a network growing, but also revenue. I think the third is, you know, what kind of team am I building, right? Like, is it the kind of organization where like, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, like all kinds of bad things start happening? Or is the reality, like if I do get hit by a bus tomorrow, like, well, my kids will be sad and my wife will be sad and hopefully Zach will be a little bit sad. Like the world will go on, right? For consumers, for our customers, for Plaid because of the kind of the team and the infrastructure and the tools and everything else that we've built, right?

38:19And I think like I take great pride in the idea that I feel like if I left tomorrow, like I think Plaid will be just fine. And I think too often you find situations where that's actually not the case. And in some ways, to me, that's like the ultimate asset test of did you do a good job or not? You know, my own lived experience is like every time I've thought I've made myself useless and obsolete, like there's always been some new opportunity, right? That even at the company that I'm at that came up, we're like, actually, like we could use your skill set to kind of make yourself useless and redundant, like in this particular role as well.

38:50And you just kind of roll it forward. But those are probably kind of the three things, right? There's like, hey, what are we doing at the ecosystem level? Like, are we really kind of growing kind of the network and the business itself? and then you know are you building a team and a structure and an engine that makes all this kind of repeatable and consistent even without you there but do you think in that case that you're trying to build an org so that if you weren't there navigating chase or what you're doing with open ai or whoever that the company would be perfectly well off without you or is there sort of these certain pockets of basically jobs to be done that you know sit in your remit and if you were gone, you'd actually have to go get somebody else.

39:28You probably would have to get somebody else, right? It's also not about me, right? Anybody in a role like this, right? Like, probably shouldn't be in it if you can't add some value at the point of attack. It's just the point of attack ends up evolving, right? Like, I think it's more maybe that. It's like, if I found myself focused on the same point of attack for, like, too long a period of time, my conclusion would be, well, I haven't really done a good enough job to build out like the capabilities that we need to be able to do that in a sustainable kind of long-term way. I can probably do it.

40:01And there's maybe even, I would say like maybe 20 % of my job is just the stuff I really like to do, which I still then do, right? So there's still like certain customers that I go sell with myself, right? Because I love doing it. I probably don't need to, right? It keeps me sharp, right? Like it's fun. And so I think that's another vector, right? Like where like at some point, like if you've done it, like you said, as long as I have, right? Even true for, I think, many founders, like you kind of deserve to take 20 % of the stuff that you just kind of, you like it, right? Like you're good at it, you like it, kind of do that.

40:31But then the 80 % really is, okay, hey, where can I kind of uniquely move the ball forward? But the spirit there is always like, that's probably not a permanent thing. That's something where like, you need to backfill that with like the actual structure to be able to make it. Maybe sort of on a similar thread, you hinted on this just a little while ago. So in your role of CO, how do you think about what is the IC work that you should be doing or you do to this day, even with a large org? I think you've really changed it. So I think so one part is 20 percent of it is like, hey, I just love doing this.

41:00And as long as nobody tells me I'm shit at it, like I'm going to keep doing it. And so for you, you hinted at it, but that's things like. Like some of the big partnerships, right? Some of the big deals like or or some of the small ones that are like very cutting edge, right? Like some of the early kind of ideals and so forth. Like I think that's just super fun. It allows me to learn new things. It allows me to move faster, right? Because I can say yes to things and no to things very rapidly in a way that probably— And so you'll work the deal yourself? I mean, yes, basically. I'm in there negotiating with the right folks, right?

41:32But it's just unique. I've been there for so long. It's like, other than Zach, there's probably nobody else at Vlad that can say yes and no as quickly to certain things as I can. So that's one. I think then it's, what are the things that are kind of important, right? So think of like the importance on one axis. There's an element of, like, is this like a one-way door? So there's some things that are kind of important, but like, look, if it goes wrong, you can kind of hit rewind. And there's things where like, no, you can't fix it. It's just like, this is the new paradigm, right? And then the third is just like more subjective, but it's like, how good is the talent that we have available internally to do this?

42:10And so in certain pockets, we have just incredible people and they have the capacity. And so then the default would be, even if it's important, even if it's a one-way street, I would start with like delegating it first. What about at what altitude you're flying in the org? Do you find in certain areas that go down to the IC that's responsible, you know, maybe multiple layers deep versus, you know, most of the time you'll fly at a certain altitude? Like, what about sort of that question? I think I've inadvertently scared quite a few folks, you know, like who are new to Vlad and I will literally call them.

42:41Like, I will just like get there. And they're not excited to hear from you? And they're just like, what? They're just like, the first time it happens. They're not thinking this is a great reason that you're reaching out to tell you what a great job they're doing. What is happening? And you can tell, like, they realize, like, you know, I'm calling them and they're just like, wait, wait, what? Like, what do you mean? Is everything okay? It's like, no, don't worry. I just have a couple of questions, you know? And you can almost hear them slacking their manager in the background, you know? But I think that's a feature, right?

43:07I think Zach operates it a way. I think all good founders, I think at the end of the day, like if you allow yourself to just be so far away from the point of attack, I think it's really hard to be good or great. I also think it's really hard to kind of earn the respect of your teams. I think so many of those stories that will end up making the rounds applied. And it's like, oh, Eric came in. He actually like talked to me about it. He actually helped me. He actually joined the call. And we got to a better outcome. Right. And it's not that's not why I do it. But I think it's a feature, kind of not a bug.

43:42But so sometimes it just happens. Sometimes there's just a lot of relationships that I've had over the years, right? Where we have a customer that I've literally worked with for eight years, where I have the relationship with the founder or the CEO and the CPO and so forth and so on. And so sometimes it's just easier for us to kind of have that conversation. And again, I have the advantage of in those moments being able to say yes and no instantaneously. And that goes a long way. But the framing all tends to come back to those three dimensions, right? Is it how important is it? Is it a one-way door or not?

44:15And then do we have the kind of the talent slash the capacity internally for somebody to kind of really nail it? And then I go from there. And like when times are good, you know, I have a lot of free time on my hands, which Zach's not always. Zach's always like, hey, what are you doing? You know, but the reality is like if you've built a really kick-ass team and they're doing a great job and they're on top of it, like in a role like mine, like you actually do have that spare capacity again, right? But that is, to me, it's a feature, right? Because if something goes wrong, it's not only that we have capacity at the organizational level, like I have capacity and I don't have to take from something else.

44:50Like I can immediately kind of lead the charge, whether that's a unique opportunity or a unique threat. At the org level, this sort of idea of not redlining at all times so that you can go after emergent things that present itself. Have you found there are downsides? Like I find every decision, there's positives and negatives. Is, is slack in the system? Are there things you have to manage around or it can create lack of intensity or I don't know? Look, I think you could make that argument, right? Like, I mean, particularly like with you, if you, if you hear the whole, like, you know, what is it?

45:25Like every day, everyone's working like 14 hours a day or whatever it is, like seven days a week. Like the truth is, look, if you are so on top of it that you are perfect about how you're allocating your seven days a week, 14 hours a day, then that is better than what I'm describing. It's just flat out better, right? Like you're able to do more. You're never making mistakes. You're always doing the right thing. The problem becomes, if you're ever wrong, your ability to course correct, and then your ability to quickly course correct, because now you're going to get stuck at, well, what am I going to take from?

45:56That's the challenge. And so I think more realistically, most businesses operate in a world where they do make mistakes, right? And unforeseen opportunities and threats do come their way. In those moments, like that spare capacity is an absolute godsend in terms of your ability to kind of react and to tackle that. And that's no different than sports or anything else, right? Like if you play basketball and every minute of the game, you're going 100 % red line to where you just got absolutely nothing left. And then suddenly, like at the end of the the game, like you have to make a play. I don't like your odds, right?

46:31Versus if I was just a little bit smarter and like a few times here and there, like I just walked to the sideline instead of sprinting to the sideline, et cetera. And I've just got a little bit more energy left. This has nothing to do with how you practice leading up to it, right? It's like how you're playing the actual game. I think I'll win. What about as the business evolves? How do you build sort of your feel for the business? You know, you sort of hinted on this a little bit, but like, I assume when you first joined the company's much smaller, single product company, your kind of feel for the business and the customer, what's going on kind of comes very naturally.

47:05You might be all in one room or one floor plate or whatever. The business expands, you know, you start to look at dashboards, you have staff meetings, you have, but it's harder, I think, to sort of have that feel. And I think that feel matters a lot because that sort of drives your judgment and instinct and sort of, what sort of have you noticed in that dimension? I think you cannot get yourself separated from the point of attack. It's as simple as that, right? So that means like talking to ICs directly, talking to, and I look, I go spend time with everyone. Like, like we hire somebody like straight out of undergrad, right?

47:39Like starts with Vlad. I will go spend time with them like a month in, two months in, just kind of understanding what are you doing? What are you doing? What's working for you? What's your, like, that is all so valuable, right? It's not, there's not rocket science, right? I don't think it's particularly clever it's just like hey like go spend time with your team go spend time with customers go spend time with partners like like be at the front lines and i think the more of my time i can spend on that and the less i spend it on and kind of strategy and like kind of internal stuff i think the more effective i think i am and the more i think effective ultimately like plat is but i think that takes like energy it takes passion right like you have to really care about what you're doing your customers, right?

48:21Like the use cases. I think it's hard to do if you're working on a business where like you don't care about the business, if that makes sense, right? And so I think that's sometimes I see that, right? Where folks are joining companies where like they don't really care about it. They just think it's going to do well financially. And then you find those executives have a very hard time motivating themselves like day in and day out to be at the front lines. But that's not why they're doing it, right? Like it's not the reason. And so for me, like I really I really believe, like I said, like in the products and solutions that we're bringing in the market and the ecosystem that we're trying to build and the benefit that, you know, consumers derive from it and our customers derive from it.

48:59So I love talking to them about, okay, but like, how are you building or how are we using our credit solutions? Like, what are you even trying to solve in the place? Like, where do you think that's going? Like, what would you want to see in the future that would put you in an even better position to serve your customers, our consumers overall, like even better? And I just spend a lot of time on that. And so, yeah, I don't think there's anything hugely insightful there. It's just the discipline of being able to do that day in and day out, I think is the trick. And I think a lot of - You have to be close to the front lines is the big takeaway.

49:28But every day, right? Because it's not static. It's not like a thing you can do like once a month, like undercover boss for show, right? And then you don't do it anymore. You're going to lose touch. There's just no two ways about it. Either you have to be incredibly disciplined about it, like that'll work, or you just have to be really passionate about it, right? And probably ideally both. but that's the way to be in a situation where like if you looked at my calendar, you probably wouldn't find many days, if any, where I'm not directly talking to customers or directly talking to kind of somebody on the front lines of our teams.

50:00And so that's the trick. I mean, it's almost like I talk to my kids, like if you want to get good at something, the way to get good at it isn't to spend like 10 hours one day, it's to spend half an hour or one hour, like every single day, right? For 10 days or 20 days to develop it. And ultimately like those longer periods of time of shorter, more intense kind of interactions is what builds skill way more efficiently and to a much greater extent than if you just like try to pack it all in. Maybe sort of on a similar line on your calendar, if you go back to what you were talking about, which is like your core mandate, which you sort of outlined, I think is sort of like ecosystem health, business health, and sort of the people on the field.

50:37How does that map to actually how you spend a week? I'd say I probably spend like 25 % of the time on like ecosystem health, probably 50 % of the time on like business health, like again, working with customers and so forth, and then 25 % on team. And on the team side, I think that varies. I've just been lucky that at this point, I have an amazing leadership team. I think a lot of those folks have been with me for a very long period of time as well. Right. And so it's not like I'm, you know, we just hired a fantastic CMO, for example, but that's like the only role that was really left of my leadership team.

51:12So I'm hiring like one person a year kind of thing. If you were to go a click deeper, what are some of the rituals or the way that you run your staff meeting? Like what are the touchstones of a week? That's not just important things like I met with this customer or, you know, I had lunch with a skip level or sort of that. I get my leadership team together like every Monday, right? I think we very openly talk about actually the first bullet point is like, what have you learned from a customer in the last week? even there, right? Like, because I want my team to have the same thing. Like, let's talk about, you know, what's new.

51:46So I benefit from hearing their stories. They benefit from hearing each other's. But we kind of, we start there. We talk about like, what are just like important things that people need to know? And then we talk about like follow-ups and then we talk about like actual new topics, kind of decisions that we need to make. So you have that. And then you have, there's a whole host of cadence around like, we'll do like, look at our pipeline, look at our forecast, like do a deal review. Like there's a whole host of things like that, that are like that second category of kind of running, running the business.

52:15And then the rest of it is like really spent like, you know, kind of one-on-ones like developing. When you think about your direct reports underneath you, is there anything differential that you look for across every single person that's very important to you? That's not just what most high functioning COOs would want in their execs? I don't know how unique it is, to be honest, right? I think for me, I really care that they believe and are aligned to the mission, right? So back to, I want folks, right, that are going to have the passion about what we're doing to actually want to get on the front lines themselves and be at the point of attack.

52:50And I just, I've just found over the years in every place I've been that if you bring somebody in and they don't actually care about what you're doing, they're there because they think you're going to go public next or whatever else. I think it's just a matter of time. They can fake it for a certain period of time, but eventually that edge wears off, right? And they end up not, I think, being as involved in the business as they could be and should be. And that ends up translating to like, you know, like a lack of kind of performance. How easy is that to figure out in an interview context? Because there's so much, you know, salesmanship that's going on.

53:31Some simple things are just like, What other roles are you looking at? And like, why? Like, what connects all of them? And I think if you get an answer to that, that's like, well, I'm looking at this company over here, like in AI, and then I'm looking at this other thing. It's like, it's just all over the place. And the only thing that really reasonably would ever connect them is like, you read somewhere an article that says that they're doing well. The odds are that whatever they tell you next about their affinity for your product and solutions isn't quite as generous as it is, right? Just the odds dictate that.

54:02because otherwise, why would you be looking at 10 different things? And so there's things like that. And there's a lot that you can do through references by asking kind of the right questions. And even just like referencing, like in my world, like I oftentimes will talk to people that they sold to, right? So like you worked for X, you're coming to join Plaid, but I know people that you sold to. I'll go call them. I'll be like, hey, what was your experience? right like have do you ever meet them right and the number of times we're like you're the cro or a ceo and they're like i have no idea who that person even is right and so there's a sampling bias there right i think for better or worse right like if you called a lot of our top tier customers like you called like the co's etc like the folks that are working on that like i think a reasonably high percentage of them would know who i am what do you think when you when you think about all the people you've hired and all the people that haven't worked out or the small subset that haven't worked out.

54:59Is there a thread that ties it together? I think it's two. One is what we just talked about, which is like, they never really fully bought into the culture and like, they didn't have the excitement for what we're trying to do. And then the second, I and we, we got enthralled by the expertise. And so it's what I said earlier, like so much of what we're building, it's new. It actually hasn't existed before. But I think there's pockets where you could talk yourself into thinking that, hey, this person actually has done it before. And in a world, right, where like you're constantly navigating like a certain uncertainty, like it's always very appealing to be like, you know what, I'd love to have somebody on my team, right?

55:40That is better than me at looking around corners because they've kind of done it before. And that can be at any level, right? It can be very specific on like, how do I build an enterprise sales team? It can be broader and so forth and so on but i think if that's the main reason you hire someone i think that oftentimes doesn't work out because you end up overlooking like all these other things that are far more important in terms of like what that person's ceiling is you know i was a consultant myself so i don't mean this as a diss but it's i think it's like they're more suited to be like a good consultant for a short period of time to kind of help you deliver like than somebody who's actually going to help you build the business.

56:20Because again, anybody that you put into that situation for the next 18 months is going to end up sounding just like that person at the end of that 18-month period, except now they have all these other amazing qualities, right, that make them awesome. Versus this person, it's like if they don't have the rest, that advantage that you perceived when you first made the hire erodes actually over time because it gets replicated by whoever's in the role anyway. What's been your observation is the difference between a very senior exec and a founder, like not just the role, obviously the difference between a CEO and a COO, but is it there's some moral authority that comes with being a founder that's just different?

57:02Is it there's an inherent risk appetite and a willingness to bet the business that is different? Or do you think that people over rotate on sort of what it is to be a founder versus a CEO or COO? Well, no, I definitely think there's a difference. I think it can cut both ways, right? I mean, I think there's founders for whom it's the first thing they ever did, right? They get to a certain threshold, but like all their net worth is locked in in the company. And like suddenly I don't think they're particularly risk-taking at all versus I might be coming in as an executive. I've had a lot of exits.

57:34Like I'm totally free to actually take much better risk. So I don't think it's as simple as it's always good. And I think sometimes it can be bad. The good founders, right? I think the one thing that they have, which is impossible to replicate, is truly fundamentally their baby. And so in the same way that like, look, I love my kids in a certain way. You love your kids in a certain way. You will never love my kids the way you love your own. And I will never love your kids the way. No matter how awesome they are, no matter how much time I spend with them, no matter how well-intentioned I am, it's almost impossible to do that, right?

58:08And so, like Zach, I love plan, love the team, love the mission, love the company. I will never love it as much as Zach does. I may never even love it as much as Williams still does. That's a testament to them, but it's also just born out of the situation. If our roles were reversed, if I had started a company and then Zach was working there, I don't think Zach would love it as much as I did. It just allows you to do things that just become incredibly difficult to do over and over every single day if you don't have that. And I really think that it is a crazy analogy in a way, right? But I really do think, what would you not do for your kids?

58:48And so that, I think, is the number one thing. And the good founders, that's the mentality. And so there's nothing that they're not willing to do. Yeah, what I'm curious, if you distill it down to that, what is the so what about that? Like, if you want to take advantage of that, or just the organic nature of the company takes advantage of it, what is it all about? It gives you a level of resilience that nobody you ever hire is ever going to have. through all the ups and downs and twists and turns. Through all the ups and downs, right? Like I think we're lucky it went well, but like I think for most companies, they've gone through so many ups and downs and such significant downs that if you actually generally ask those founders, hey, if you were just a hired CEO, would you still be here?

59:34And the answer would be no, right? I think one thing I hear a lot from my friends that have started companies, like the one advice, like my wife just started another company of her own. And like the one thing you kind of tell her, and it's easy to say, even in that relationship, like where she started, is look, there's kind of two outcomes that are great if you start a company, right? One is you retain control of it and it becomes huge. The second is it fails quickly. Everything in the middle, right? Which is the most likely outcome. Is like a terrible outcome in a way, right? But yet most companies go through phases where it sure as hell feels like you're in the middle.

1:00:11It's the founders that never quit, right like zach never quit like like there there would have been a thousand reasons to quit along the way and he never quit he never even thought about quitting and so he's like the only person that could have made it through all those trials and tribulations to develop the skills that he now has because he's the only person that loved the thing like enough to where like none of that like ever made him question for even a second like whether or not like it's worth it right And I think people innately see that in great founders, and they deeply, deeply respect it.

1:00:45And so, because I believe that that's how he thinks about it, I afford him a level of, I don't know what you want to call it, respect, grace, whatever, on anything. Because I believe fundamentally he would never do anything that's bad for plan, that he believes to be bad for plan. So like there's just like everyone else, myself included, I could make the argument that in pockets, maybe we would have done something that's like more selfishly oriented to what's I want versus what's best for plan. I have zero doubt that everything he's done, he might be wrong, right? Like he might be wrong. But the fact that like he puts that first and foremost goes a long way.

1:01:21And I think all the really, really great founders, they have that in common. What about just wrapping up? If you think about yourself seven and a half years ago and you think about yourself today, what's the most different? What have you figured out? I'm sure there's a lot as, you know, as we're having this conversation, it seems like you're very driven by values and very align your own values to your values at work. I guess those things probably haven't changed very much in seven and a half years. But are there a few really important things if you were to compare your previous version of yourself to today that would be sort of most striking?

1:01:55I think that there's one thing that comes with like perspective, age, whatever you want to call it, right? Like it's, if you had told me, not even just seven years ago, right? But if you told me when I was like 15, 16, like growing up in Germany, I said this earlier, like that my life would turn out this way, I'd be like, it's amazing, right? It's just a fantastic outcome. But at the same time, like every single day, like I'm like, oh, I could just be a little bit better. right? Or like a plan could be better. And so it's trying to kind of balance those two things. That's the challenge, right?

1:02:29And so I think for most people that are out there that have been really successful, that have helped build these kinds of businesses, I think like realistically for the vast majority of them, it's like, hey, look, this has gone way better than you ever had any reason to believe that it would go, right? Or should go. But then the best ones are still have that fire to kind of keep going. And in a weird way, like I was talking to somebody about this the other day. I was like, I don't know whether I would wish that on my kids, right? Like in a way, like you want your kids to just be like, look, I achieved this thing and I'm now super happy.

1:03:00Very tiring. And I don't know that I will ever feel that, right? Like, I don't think there's ever going to be a day where I'm like, hey, mission accomplished. Because I think there's always something that we can do, again, in the context of Plaid, but I think in the context of any role I would take on, there's always something that we can do that's better for the consumers, better for the customers, better for the company, better for the people that put their trust in me to kind of join my team, et cetera. Better, better, better, better, better. And on the one hand, I love that. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

1:03:28But on the other, like there is like, you have to be kind of crazy, I think a bit, right? To be that relentless about it, no matter what. Do you think it makes you less happy on a regular basis? I don't know that it makes me less, maybe in a way, right? But then like, there's so many other things in my life where like I made very good choices, right? I think on this one, it's like sports is the same, right? Like it's like, who are the people that end up being really good. It's not the people that won one championship and then were like, wow, like I never... There's a dissatisfaction that goes along with it.

1:03:58You have to be like... It was a great game, but I could have done this, this, and this. Exactly. Yeah. Like I think Goku, who I worked with at Square, I think he said this somewhere, like it's like perpetual dissatisfaction. Like that's in some ways like the secret and that comes with a burden and so you shouldn't... But so then what are the, what is the result of that on you as a COO? Meaning you compound that over seven and a half years. And I look at you seven and a half years ago and today, every day trying to get a little bit better. Like, where is it most substantially expressed? I think that the biggest area is probably like in like how I try to show up for my team.

1:04:35Right. I think that's where I've grown a lot. Like, I don't know that I've gotten that much better at like selling to customers or doing some of like the tactical things of the job. But I think, you know, how I show up for my team, like how I try to put them in a position to succeed. Share more. Like, what does that look like? I think that's where those folks would say I've come the furthest, right? I mean, it's the things we talked about, right? It's like, hey, like how much time are we really kind of spending for those folks that really need it? How far ahead are we thinking in terms of putting these folks in a position to succeed?

1:05:05And we have so many people at Plaid, right, that have internally kind of shot through the ranks that have gone from like IC roles to now running$100 million businesses. And so I could literally name seven or eight people on my team that have kind of followed that path. And it's not like every single person kind of always works out, but they've worked out to a phenomenal kind of percentage, right? And they themselves are like so much of the reason for why we've had the success that we've had. And so it's like, you know, it's picking the right people, but then also then like really kind of being committed to investing in them and then giving them that confidence to like say, hey, like, I'm not going to just turn around and take you out of the game, right?

1:05:42Like if you miss one shot, like that's not how this is going to go down, right? Like I generally believe in you, right? like you can absolutely do this. I'm going to put the team around you to kind of make you shine and then let's go. And I think if you stick with that for long enough, you know, you're just going to be right a high percentage of the time that you're going to end up with like these amazing outcomes, right? And they deserve really all the credit for that. But that again is like, there's lots of sports analogies in there like where you too oftentimes you'll see coaches, right? Like yank a player, like after the first battle and then surprise, surprise, like they're not going to be very good.

1:06:14And then everyone else, right? It's just never going to work. Or the next time even they get in, they're just panicked about doing the same thing that just got them yanked the first time. And then they go to a different team and a different coach, and that coach is just like, hey, you got this. I'll leave you in. You make a couple mistakes. And then a quarter of the season in, they're suddenly killing it. I think you see that over and over and over again. And so I think tied to that probably also is this notion of I just have very little FOMO. Once I make a decision that somebody is the person I'm going to invest in, Like, I'm not that worried about what the other option is or the other option is or the other option is.

1:06:47Like, I'm then dedicated to kind of seeing it through. Unless they give me some really clear reason for saying, hey, like, this just isn't going to work. And then obviously, like, you know, Plaid as a whole comes first. But the bar for that is, like, pretty high. To wrap up, at some point when you're retired or you're not at Plaid or doing something else, what is it you want the people that you worked most closely to say about you? I think one that we really try to do our very best to serve consumers and our customers. I think that's really important to me, right? This notion that like the work we did actually in many, many, many small ways, in some medium ways, and maybe in fewer big ways, like helped move things forward to be better.

1:07:31right and so by that i mean there's there's literally going to be millions and millions of consumers that will never know my name but their life will just be a little bit better because of the products and solutions that we brought to market because of the ecosystem that we built and that goes a long way right i think there's a lot of things you can do in life where like at the end of the day you look back and it didn't really leave much of a dent and so i think that's the first one and then the second one is that i think the people that worked with me but particularly I think the people that worked for me, right?

1:08:03Like feel like a God is close to their full potential as they could have gotten to. Right. I think that's the second one. It's, it's not that they loved it every minute of every day or anything like that. It's just like, if they really think back and they're like, Hey, could I have gone somewhere else? And that kind of achieved more. And like in their minds, like the answer is no. It's like Eric and Plaid helped me get to a place that like, otherwise I would have gotten to. And I feel like I've always had like folks like that in my life right like whether it's like you know like folks like like michael mankins at bain or like francois at square or a all at blue mine and now zach and and others at square like i've always really really been lucky i mean at the plaid i've always really been lucky that i've been surrounded by people like that where like you know did i enjoy every single moment like no right but do i believe like they helped me get as close to like my full potential as I probably gotten to.

1:08:56Yeah, right? And I think that would mean a lot. Beautiful place to end. Thank you so much for the time. Thank you, appreciate it. I really appreciate it. That was wonderful.