[DX Tips] Plaid's $12 Billion UI - William Hockey

<p>Read the article and watch the full interview: <a href="https://dx.tips/plaid-hockey-tips">https://dx.tips/plaid-hockey-tips</a></p><p>---</p><p>SaaS API founders should not miss this week's Cartoon Avatars interview with <strong>William Hockey</strong>, former Plaid cofounder/CTO and now founder of Column.</p><p>He <a href="https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=%22william%20hockey%22&amp;sort_by_date=0&amp;scope=episode&amp;offset=0&amp;language=Any%20language&amp;len_min=0">does not do interviews often</a> and rarely do you get this level of insight into a <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/plaids-425-million-series-d-round-attracts-more-investors-51629217093">$13 billion</a>, fintech category-defining behemoth. What follows is a TL;DR for those who, well, TL;DW.</p><p><strong><br>The $12 Billion UI Decision - Owning the UI<br></strong><br></p><p>Many SaaS API providers take pride in being "behind the scenes", or being "whitelabel" to appeal to as many enterprise customers as possible. Jeff Lawson often proudly talks about how many people use Twilio without realizing it.</p><p><strong><br>TLDR</strong>: Hockey bet the company on going <em>against</em> that received wisdom - <strong>forcing 100% of his customers to </strong><strong><em>migrate</em></strong><strong> to a Plaid hosted UI with Plaid's logo and branding</strong> - over a period of 2 years, with a lot of pushback.</p><p><br>He estimates this decision alone was worth <strong>90% of the company value</strong> today (!)</p><p><br>From the <a href="https://share.descript.com/view/gCzsXFaaxW2">22-26 minute mark</a>:</p><br>I think <strong>the most successful decision we made was actually owning the interface</strong> - the physical design and owning the client side...<p><br>When we first started, we were this transparent infrastructure provider and so <strong>the consumer had no idea who we were</strong>...</p><p><br>...and so what happened is you didn't know, as a consumer, that Plaid existed in that flow. We realized that this was kin