William Hockey | $1B+
Get in touch with William Hockey | William Hockey, cofounder of Plaid, helped build one of the most important financial infrastructure companies powering the modern fintech ecosystem. As an early leader of Plaid, he played a central role in scaling the platform that connects consumer bank accounts to apps and financial services used by millions worldwide. After helping grow Plaid into a core payments and data connectivity layer for fintech, Hockey went on to found Column, a technology-driven banking platform aimed at modernizing financial infrastructure from the ground up. His career reflects deep influence across the architecture of digital finance.
William Hockey (born 1989) is an American entrepreneur and software engineer recognized for his contributions to financial technology infrastructure. He co-founded Plaid Inc. in 2012 while a student at Emory University, where the company developed technology enabling secure connections between financial applications and users' bank accounts, growing to a valuation exceeding $13 billion.[1][2][3]
In 2019, Hockey stepped down from his roles as president and chief technology officer at Plaid to launch Column Tax, Inc., known as Column, a nationally chartered bank designed to provide embedded banking services and APIs for developers building fintech products.[4][3][2] Hockey serves as co-CEO of Column, emphasizing efficient, developer-focused banking solutions amid traditional institutions' technological limitations.[5][6]
Hockey's ventures have positioned him as a self-made billionaire, with Forbes estimating his net worth at over $1 billion derived from fintech successes, and he maintains board roles at Plaid and Scale AI.[1] A graduate of Emory University with degrees in business and history, Hockey previously worked at Bain & Company before entering entrepreneurship.[1][2]
Early Life and Education
Family Background and Upbringing
William Hockey grew up in rural California, where he was immersed in a community of manual laborers including farmers, welders, and craftspeople who earned their livelihoods through hands-on work.[7] His family background emphasized building and practical creation, fostering an environment that valued tangible problem-solving over abstract pursuits.[7]
From an early age, Hockey exhibited a strong interest in constructing objects and disassembling them to comprehend their inner workings, reflecting the maker culture of his surroundings.[7] This upbringing cultivated a mindset oriented toward direct engagement with real-world challenges, which he later channeled into digital innovation and entrepreneurship.[7]
Studies at Emory University
Hockey chose to attend Emory University after visiting its Atlanta campus, which he described as beautiful, and being impressed by the strength of its computer science program alongside the Goizueta Business School.[7] Seeking to leave California for the East Coast, he applied only to Emory and was accepted.[7]
At Emory, Hockey pursued dual degrees in computer science and business, graduating with a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in 2012.[7][8] His coursework emphasized coding and creative problem-solving, allowing him to explore building projects "just for the sake of it" without pragmatic pressures, which refined his passion for software development.[7]
During his senior year, Hockey wrote the initial lines of code for Plaid, the fintech company he would later co-found, integrating his technical education with emerging entrepreneurial interests.[8] This period at Emory laid foundational skills in programming and business principles that informed his subsequent career in technology startups.[7]
Early Career
Role at Bain & Company
William Hockey joined Bain & Company as an associate in 2011, marking the start of his professional career in management consulting.[9] His tenure was brief, consisting primarily of a summer internship that provided early exposure to strategic advisory work in a global consulting firm.[7]
During this period at Bain's offices, Hockey met Zachary Perret, a Duke University graduate and fellow junior consultant, who would become his co-founder at Plaid Inc.[1] This connection, forged amid client projects and internal collaborations, laid the groundwork for their subsequent entrepreneurial partnership, though specific details of Hockey's assignments or contributions at Bain remain undocumented in public records.[10] Hockey departed Bain shortly thereafter to co-found Plaid in 2012.[2]
Plaid Inc.
Co-founding and Early Development
William Hockey co-founded Plaid in 2013 alongside Zachary Perret, whom he had befriended while both worked as consultants at Bain & Company's Atlanta office during Hockey's undergraduate studies at Emory University.[11] Their initial vision centered on creating a consumer-oriented budgeting application to empower users with better insights into their spending patterns and financial health, addressing the cumbersome process of aggregating data from disparate bank accounts.[11] This idea stemmed from personal frustrations with existing tools that required manual data entry or insecure screen-scraping methods to access account information.[7]
In April 2013, shortly after formalizing the company, Hockey and Perret entered the TechCrunch Disrupt NY hackathon with a prototype called Rambler, which secured the grand prize by demonstrating automated transaction categorization and spending analysis.[12] The win provided early validation and publicity, but development soon revealed the core scalability issue: building reliable, direct integrations with thousands of U.S. banks for a consumer product was technically prohibitive due to varying APIs, security protocols, and update frequencies.[11] Hockey, leveraging his technical expertise, led the pivot to a B2B infrastructure model, developing standardized APIs that enabled third-party fintech apps to securely connect to users' bank accounts with user consent, thus commoditizing bank connectivity.[11]
This strategic shift, completed in the company's first year, attracted initial clients seeking efficient verification and data access; Venmo became an early adopter, integrating Plaid's API in 2013 for instant bank balance checks during transfers, which accelerated Plaid's growth by solving a widespread pain point in peer-to-peer payments.[13] To support expansion, Plaid relocated from New York to San Francisco in fall 2013, facilitating recruitment of engineers and proximity to the burgeoning fintech ecosystem.[11] Hockey assumed the role of Chief Technology Officer, directing the engineering team to refine the API's reliability, coverage of over 11,000 U.S. financial institutions by mid-decade, and compliance with standards like OAuth for secure authentication.[11] By emphasizing developer-friendly tools over consumer marketing, Plaid achieved product-market fit, powering integrations for apps handling billions in transactions annually within its first few years.[14]
Expansion and the Visa Acquisition Attempt
Following significant funding, including a $250 million Series C round in April 2018 led by Silver Lake that valued Plaid at over $2 billion, the company accelerated its product development and market penetration. This capital supported enhancements to its API infrastructure, enabling secure connections between over 11,000 U.S. financial institutions and more than 5,000 fintech applications by the end of 2019, facilitating hundreds of millions of consumer-bank linkages for services like account verification and payment initiation.[15] Plaid's growth was driven by increasing adoption among personal finance apps, investment platforms, and payment processors, with its customer base expanding 60% in 2020 amid heightened demand for digital financial tools during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching approximately $170 million in annualized revenue by December of that year.[11]
This rapid scaling positioned Plaid as a key enabler in the fintech ecosystem but also drew attention from established payment networks. On January 13, 2020, Visa announced an agreement to acquire Plaid for $5.3 billion in cash, a deal that valued the startup at roughly double its most recent private funding round valuation.[16] Visa stated the acquisition would integrate Plaid's technology to accelerate innovation in consumer-permissioned data sharing and expand its developer tools, allowing faster onboarding for fintech partners while leveraging Plaid's expertise in bank connectivity to compete in areas like real-time payments.[16] Plaid's co-founders, including William Hockey—who had transitioned from his operational roles as president and CTO in June 2019 but remained on the board—had built the platform to democratize access to financial data, and the deal was seen as a pathway to broader distribution without altering Plaid's core independence initially.[10]
The proposed merger faced immediate antitrust scrutiny from U.S. regulators concerned about reduced competition in online debit transactions and emerging "push-to-card" payment services. The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a civil lawsuit on November 5, 2020, alleging that Visa, which held a monopoly in online debit routing with over 60% market share and charged supracompetitive fees, sought to acquire Plaid to neutralize a nascent threat—Plaid was developing its own Visa Direct competitor for account-to-account transfers.[17] The DOJ argued the deal would eliminate potential innovation in faster, lower-cost alternatives to Visa's network, citing internal Visa documents showing intent to shutter Plaid's independent growth trajectory post-acquisition. Visa contested the suit, asserting the acquisition would enhance competition by combining complementary technologies without overlapping in core markets, and pointed to Plaid's origins as a data aggregator rather than a direct payments rival.[18]
Faced with a federal court likely to rule against the merger following preliminary hearings, Visa and Plaid mutually terminated the agreement on January 12, 2021, avoiding a protracted trial.[17] Plaid received a $400 million termination fee from Visa to cover expenses and foregone opportunities, allowing it to continue independent operations and pursue further product diversification. The episode highlighted regulatory wariness toward "killer acquisitions" in fintech, where incumbents target fast-growing challengers, though critics of the DOJ's intervention noted it preserved Plaid's standalone trajectory amid a booming sector.[19]
Departure and Post-Plaid Outcomes
In June 2019, William Hockey stepped down from his operational roles as co-founder, chief technology officer, and president of Plaid, transitioning to a board member position.[10] This departure followed Plaid's achievement of a $2.65 billion valuation earlier that year, amid the company's expansion in financial data connectivity services.[10] Hockey cited a desire for new challenges after eight years of building the firm from a budgeting app prototype into a key infrastructure provider for fintech applications.
Post-departure, Hockey co-founded Column in 2021 with his wife, Annie Hockey, targeting inefficiencies in legacy banking systems to better support fintech integrations.[20] The venture acquired Northern California National Bank for about $50 million, reorienting it as a digital banking platform that enables non-bank fintechs to issue deposits, loans, and payment products via APIs without traditional regulatory hurdles.[21][22] Column operates without external venture funding, emphasizing self-sustained growth and direct control over banking operations to reduce friction for developer-led financial services.[23]
Hockey has maintained his seat on Plaid's board, providing continuity in strategic oversight while pursuing Column as his primary focus.[23] This shift reflects a pattern among fintech founders moving from data aggregation to core banking infrastructure amid evolving regulatory landscapes post the failed Visa acquisition.[24]
Column
Establishment and Core Operations
Column was established in 2019 by William Hockey, following his departure from Plaid, where he had identified persistent bottlenecks in banking infrastructure impeding financial innovation since 2015.[25] The company was publicly announced on April 21, 2022, as Column N.A., a nationally chartered bank.[25] Hockey serves as CEO, co-founded alongside his wife Annie Hockey, who acts as co-CEO, with the pair acquiring and restructuring Northern California National Bank to form the entity.[20][26]
The founding addressed the need for a developer-centric banking platform, built from the ground up over three years in stealth mode to bypass legacy systems prevalent in traditional sponsorship banking and banking-as-a-service (BaaS) providers.[25][22] Column's charter enables direct Federal Reserve access and a robust balance sheet for capital and lending, positioning it as the first such institution explicitly engineered for builders creating financial products.[25]
Core operations revolve around delivering infrastructure software that allows developers to embed and scale banking functionalities, including accounts, payments, and credit, without middleware or outdated tech stacks.[27][28] The platform features proprietary core banking technology, ledger, and data models optimized for internet-first finance, alongside compliance tools and APIs tailored for fintech integration.[25][27] As a profitable, 100% founder- and employee-owned entity, Column prioritizes long-term stability, powering select enterprise customers while remaining open to broader developer adoption.[27] It emphasizes sponsorship services, enabling non-bank fintechs to offer regulated products efficiently.[22]
Regulatory Milestones and Growth
In 2021, William and Annie Hockey acquired Northern California National Bank for approximately $50 million through its parent company, subsequently rebranding it as Column N.A. and overhauling its infrastructure to support fintech developers.[20][26] The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued conditional approval in 2022 for Column National Association's application to implement operational changes, affirming its status as a nationally chartered bank regulated primarily by the OCC rather than state authorities.[29] Column publicly launched on April 21, 2022, positioning itself as the first such institution explicitly designed to provide banking-as-a-service (BaaS) infrastructure for third-party developers to issue financial products without building from scratch.[25]
Post-launch, Column encountered heightened OCC scrutiny typical of BaaS providers amid broader regulatory concerns over risk management in fintech-bank partnerships, including rumors in late 2022 of mandated customer offboarding, which co-CEO William Hockey publicly refuted as inaccurate while acknowledging adjustments to comply with evolving expectations.[30][31] By 2023, the OCC conducted a Community Reinvestment Act evaluation of Column, rating its small business lending performance as satisfactory in its assessment area.[32] These milestones enabled Column to maintain its national charter while expanding compliant offerings, such as real-time payments introduced in May 2025.[33]
Column's growth has been bootstrapped, remaining 100% owned by founders and employees without external venture funding, relying instead on operational profits.[34] Revenue accelerated from $31 million in 2023 to an estimated $100 million in 2024, reflecting expanded adoption by fintech clients for core services like bank accounts, cards, and payments processing. Alternative estimates place 2024 revenue at $55.1 million, with 126% year-over-year growth driven equally by interest income and fees.[35] Strategic partnerships, including with Mercury in October 2024 to bolster its banking network, further supported scalability.[36] In October 2025, Column rolled out three new credit products to enable clients to launch and manage lending programs with streamlined regulatory integration.[37] This trajectory underscores Column's focus on deliberate, regulation-aligned expansion over rapid customer acquisition.[38]
Investments and Advisory Roles
Angel Investing Portfolio
William Hockey has engaged in angel investing since departing Plaid, participating in 38 documented investments as of 2025, with records indicating up to 49 total commitments across early-stage technology companies.[39][40] His portfolio emphasizes fintech, enterprise applications, and software infrastructure, aligning with his expertise in financial technology infrastructure.[41] Typical check sizes range from $5,000 to $50,000, targeting pre-seed and seed rounds to support founders building scalable digital products.[40]
Key investments include a seed VC round in Town on March 14, 2025, for $18 million; Maza's seed VC in June 2023 for $8 million, which culminated in an acquisition on April 24, 2025; and Boom's seed VC-II in May 2023 for $4.5 million.[39] Other notable commitments encompass Northstar, a financial wellness platform, in a recent seed round; and early bets in Ethena, Stytch (identity management), Spenmo (payments), Goldsky (data infrastructure), and TryNow (e-commerce).[2][42] Hockey's portfolio has produced four exits to date, demonstrating returns from select high-growth ventures amid a broader landscape of active holdings.[39]
Company Stage/Year Amount Raised in Round Outcome/Notes
Town Seed VC/2025 $18M Ongoing operations
Maza Seed VC/2023 $8M Acquired April 2025
Boom Seed VC-II/2023 $4.5M Infrastructure focus
Northstar Seed/Recent Undisclosed Financial wellness benefits
Board Positions and Mentorship
Hockey maintains a seat on the board of directors of Plaid Inc., the financial technology company he co-founded in 2012, following his transition from operational roles in June 2019. In this capacity, he provides strategic oversight to the firm, which facilitates connections between fintech applications and users' bank accounts.[3]
In March 2022, Hockey joined the board of directors of Scale AI, a company specializing in data annotation and infrastructure for artificial intelligence models.[43] His involvement supports Scale AI's expansion in AI training data services, drawing on his experience in scaling technology platforms from his time at Plaid.[9] As of 2024, he continues to serve in this role, contributing to governance amid the company's growth to a valuation exceeding $13 billion.[3]
Beyond formal board service, Hockey engages in mentorship and advisory capacities within the fintech and startup ecosystems, including through platforms connecting investors and founders, though specific programs remain informally documented.[44] His advisory input often focuses on infrastructure challenges in financial services and technology scaling, informed by his entrepreneurial track record.
Economic Philosophy and Public Commentary
Stance on Fiat Currency and Fintech Innovation
William Hockey has positioned himself as a proponent of the U.S. dollar, self-identifying as a "defender of the dollar" in his X (formerly Twitter) profile.[45] This reflects a commitment to preserving the currency's role as the world's reserve, contrasting with voices in tech circles advocating decentralized alternatives. In a May 20, 2025, address at Newcomer's Breaking the Bank Summit, Hockey argued that fintech advancements are essential for sustaining dollar supremacy amid global competition, emphasizing how efficient U.S. financial infrastructure—bolstered by private-sector innovation—underpins economic dominance.[46][47][48]
Hockey's views on fiat currency align with pragmatic acceptance of its stability when supported by robust technology and regulation, rather than ideological opposition. He has not publicly critiqued fiat systems or endorsed cryptocurrencies as superior, despite tangential connections through Plaid's integrations with crypto platforms like Coinbase. Instead, his work underscores fiat's resilience, as evidenced by Column's focus on providing banking-as-a-service rails that enable fintechs to scale within the existing dollar-based ecosystem, avoiding the volatility of alternatives.[49]
On fintech innovation, Hockey advocates for developer-centric tools that integrate seamlessly with traditional banking, drawing lessons from China's rapid digitization of payments while adapting to U.S. regulatory constraints. Co-founding Plaid in 2013, he aimed to "drive innovation in financial services" by simplifying bank data access for apps like Venmo and Robinhood, handling over 12 million connections by 2018.[49][13] With Column, launched publicly in April 2022 after acquiring Northern California National Bank for $50 million, Hockey targets "rickety banking tech" by offering APIs for custom financial products, achieving profitability on transaction fees while prioritizing compliance over disruption.[21][22] This approach favors incremental, regulated progress—building "slower than people think"—to foster competition without undermining fiat stability.[50]
Critiques of Antitrust and Regulation in Tech Mergers
William Hockey has expressed skepticism toward aggressive antitrust enforcement in tech mergers, drawing from the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) blockage of Visa's proposed $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid, where he served as co-founder and CTO. The DOJ filed suit on November 5, 2020, alleging the deal would eliminate nascent competition in online debit payments by neutralizing Plaid's potential to develop a rival platform, Visa Direct.[51] Hockey later described the intervention as unfair and incorrect, stating in a 2022 interview, "I don’t think it was fair, don’t think it was correct," while acknowledging the government's decisive authority despite his disagreement.[4] The merger was mutually terminated on January 12, 2021, with Visa paying Plaid a $400 million termination fee, allowing Plaid to secure subsequent funding rounds that valued it at $13.4 billion by April 2021.[52]
Hockey's critique highlights concerns over regulatory overreach based on speculative "potential competition" theories, which he implied undervalued the complementary nature of Plaid's data aggregation services to Visa's payment infrastructure. In the same discussion, he emphasized the need for regulators to foster innovation within boundaries rather than impose blanket restrictions that deter mergers enhancing efficiency in fintech ecosystems.[4] This aligns with broader arguments that such interventions, often rooted in protecting hypothetical future rivals, can stifle synergies and consumer benefits, as evidenced by Plaid's post-blockade expansion without disrupting Visa's market position—Visa maintained over 60% share in U.S. online debit transactions as of 2020.[51]
In reflecting on fintech regulation more generally, Hockey advocates a balanced approach that avoids the "wild west" of zero oversight—citing the 2022 FTX collapse as a cautionary example of unchecked risks—but critiques excessive hurdles that slow builder-friendly infrastructure.[4] He has since channeled this perspective into Column, a developer-focused bank he co-founded in 2021, prioritizing compliance-built tech to enable fintechs to innovate without merger dependencies, underscoring his view that heavy-handed antitrust can compel self-reliance but at the cost of foregone efficiencies in dynamic sectors like tech. This stance contrasts with DOJ assertions of monopoly preservation, prioritizing empirical outcomes like Plaid's independent growth over preemptive blocks, though Hockey concedes governmental decisions override private assessments of competitive harm.
Disclaimer: This profile is based on publicly available information. No endorsement or affiliation is implied.
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