Zach Perret: The Survival Story of a Fintech Giant

Long before Plaid became a $13.4 billion fintech juggernaut, it was just another struggling startup. Co-founders Zach Perret and William Hockey burned through cash and pivoted from one failed idea to the next, ultimately getting turned away by roughly 100 VCs during seed round funding. But Plaid persevered, and eventually revolutionized how financial data moved through the internet, eventually boasting customers like Robinhood, Coinbase and Venmo. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate speaks with Perret about the company’s austere early days, convincing the banking industry to change its legacy ways, the concept of lighthouse customers, and why every day your startup lives, you get another chance to find greatness. Check out the Pattern Breakers Blog at patternbreakers.substack.com for even more Pattern Breaking content from Mike. Mike's book Pattern Breakers is available now wherever you buy books. Follow Mike on X!

You can listen to Zach Perret: The Survival Story of a Fintech Giant online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Zach Perret: The Survival Story of a Fintech Giant is an episode from Starting Greatness by Mike Maples.

This episode is 00:38:17 long.

This episode was published on Feb 25, 2025.

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