William Hockey - Building the Operating System for the Dollar and Silicon Valley Heresy - [Invest Like the Best, EP.463]
William Hockey is the co-founder of Plaid and the founder and CEO of Column, a software company that owns a bank and powers Ramp, Wise, Bilt, Mercury, and others. He funded Column by borrowing against his Plaid shares and has never raised outside capital.
William talks about what owning 100% of his company allows him to do that other venture-backed founder cannot and the personal risk he took to do so. He shares how Silicon Valley's consensus culture produces consensus founders, and why becoming a founder has become too safe. He believes the best builders are specialists and explains with unusual clarity what it takes to become the best in the world at one specific thing.
William also spends a lot of time in emerging markets which has given him a unique perspective of the power of the US dollar.
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.
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Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus.
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Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Visit vanta.com/invest.
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WorkOS is a developer platform that enables SaaS companies to quickly add enterprise features to their applications. Visit WorkOS.com to transform your application into an enterprise-ready solution in minutes, not months.
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Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest.
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Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgeline.ai.
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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best
(00:02:43) Intro: William Hockey
(00:03:49) Column: A Software Company That Owns a Bank
(00:06:46) Finding Ideas in Emerging Markets
(00:11:58) Why Constrained Societies Are More Innovative
(00:16:02) What’s Wrong With Silicon Valley
(00:19:28) Building a Business Without Raising Money
(00:22:48) What Venture-Backed Companies Can't Do
(00:28:39) Getting Margin Called
(00:31:41) Starting Companies Has Become Too Safe
(00:34:23) Why Employees Take More Risks Than Founders
(00:37:09) A Maniacal Commitment to Research
(00:39:09) Finding Boring Problems to Solve
(00:41:45) Why Building a Second Company is Easier
(00:42:36) Missionary vs. Mercenary
(00:45:49) Funding a Company with Cash Flows
(00:50:04) Perspective on the Venture Ecosystem
(00:52:48) The Dominance of the US Dollar
(00:58:37) The Future of Financial Services
(01:02:06) Why Big, Inefficient Brands Win From AI
(01:06:29) The Opportunity for Non-Consensus Founders
(01:08:03) The Kindest Thing
20VC: Plaid and Column Co-Founder, William Hockey on Why the Brands that Win in Fintech Will Not Be Financial Services Brands, What US Banking Can Learn from China & Why Companies Can Be Built Slower than People Think?
Will Hockey is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO @ Column, the only nationally chartered bank built to enable developers and builders to create new financial products. Before co-founding Column, Will was the Co-Founder, President, and CTO @ Plaid, a world-leading data network and payments platform. In 2020, Visa attempted to acquire Plaid for $5.3BN, however, this was blocked due to regulatory issues and the company went on to raise at a reported $13.4BN valuation just 9 months later. Additionally, Will is on the board of Scale.ai.
In Today's Episode with Will Hockey We Discuss:
1.) The Founding of $13.4BN Plaid:
How did Will make his way into the world of startups and come to found Plaid with Zach?
If we are all a function of our histories, what is Will running from? What is he running toward?
What does Will know now that he wishes he had known when he started Plaid?
2.) Will Hockey: The Makings of a Decacorn Founder:
What does the term "high performance" mean to Will? How has this changed over time?
Having had such a successful time building Plaid to $13.4BN, how does Will assess his own relationship to risk and his relationship to money?
How does Will approach his own personal portfolio planning? Equity, debt, real-estate? How does Will optimize his own personal wealth?
Column is his second time founding a company, what did Will decide to take from Plaid that worked well? What did he decide he would not do having seen it work badly at Plaid?
3.) The Building of Truly Great Teams:
Why does Will believe that companies can be built so much slower than people think?
How does Will determine the decisions that have to be made fast vs those with time?
How does Will ensure the same size of urgency and speed within his team without this time or funding pressure?
What have been Will's single biggest lessons when it comes to people acquisition and retention?
4.) Fintech: The Next 10 Years:
How will the next 10 years look different from the last in fintech? What changes will be better? What will be worse? What is Will worried about? What is he excited about?
What does Will mean when he says, "the US financial system can function like a protocol"? What does Will believe are some of the core myths of the US financial system?
Why does Will believe the current financial system can and will fix a lot of what crypto is trying to solve? What barriers will prevent this from happening?
Items Mentioned in Today's Episode:
Will's Favourite Book: The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources, Merchants of Grain: The Power and Profits of the Five Giant Companies at the Center of the World's Food Supply
EP 30: Conversation with Plaid & Column Founder William Hockey, Covering Adam Neumann with Author Maureen Farrell and Common Founder Brad Hargreaves
In the 30th episode, William Hockey joins for a conversation on founding Plaid, what it’s like running Column with his wife, and the state of startups and fintech. Plus author of “The Cult of We” Maureen Farrell and founder of Common Brad Hargreaves join to discuss Adam Neumann and his latest real estate venture in Flow.
(0:00) Intro
(1:55) Introducing William
(4:48) Kids today
(6:22) William’s first pitch to Zach
(10:44) Data prioritization
(12:21) Providing services others don’t want to do
(21:29) Strategic decisions
(25:48) Organizing a new UI
(31:38) Selling Plaid to Visa
(33:13) Fintech in current market conditions
(38:27) William bought a bank
(44:00) Running Column as a couple
(52:03) Crypto’s role in finance
(59:57) Funding
(1:05:45) A changing path for entrepreneurs
(1:11:21) Neumann and Flow
(1:13:46) Introducing Maureen and Brad
(1:15:30) WeWork recap
(1:22:06) Common vs WeLive
(1:27:23) Community Narrative
(1:33:21) Flow’s potential use cases
(1:36:36) Why Andreessen would back this
(1:42:58) Does it help when founders are crazy?
(1:47:38) What will Neumann need to do?
(1:52:03) Outro
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.
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