William Hockey

William Hockey (born 1989) is an American engineer and entrepreneur from San Luis Obispo, California. He is best known for having co-founded financial services company Plaid which he started with co-founder Zachary Perret.[1] In January 2020 they sold Plaid to Visa for $5.3 billion.[2]

William Hockey
Hockey in 2018
Born (1989-09-21) September 21, 1989
San Luis Obispo, California
EducationThe Thacher School
Alma materEmory University
Known forPlaid

Biography

Hockey was born in San Luis Obispo, California. He attended the Thacher School and Emory University where he majored in computer science and ISOM. He spent a summer interning at Bain & Co. where he met his future co-founder Zachary Perret.[3]

When he was 21, Hockey founded Plaid with Perret in New York City, initially focusing on consumer financial services. They moved into financial infrastructure after being frustrated with the difficulty of building in financial services. After a year they moved to San Francisco after raising seed money from Spark Capital, NEA and Google Ventures.[4] Plaid subsequently raised over $300 million additional investors including Goldman Sachs, Mary Meeker at KPCB,[5] American Express, Visa and Mastercard.[6]

Upon selling Plaid to Visa for $5.3 billion, Hockey became the youngest individual to sell a company for more than $5 billion.[7][8]

References
  1. "Plaid: Fintech's Happy Plumbers". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-01-27.
  2. "Visa To Acquire Plaid". www.businesswire.com. 2020-01-13. Retrieved 2020-01-27.
  3. "Goizueta Beyond". Retrieved 2020-01-27.
  4. Rooney, Kate (2018-10-04). "Meet the start-up you've never heard of that powers Venmo, Robinhood and other big consumer apps". CNBC. Retrieved 2020-01-27.
  5. Chapman, Lizette (December 11, 2018). "Mary Meeker Leads Funding Said to Value Plaid at $2.7 Billion". Bloomberg.
  6. "Visa and Mastercard Sign Up for Investments in Fintech Unicorn Plaid". Fortune. Retrieved 2020-01-27.
  7. Verhage, Julie (January 14, 2020). "Plaid's Founders Are Latest Fintech Royalty With Visa Deal". Bloomberg.
  8. Kauflin, Jeff. "Meet The Four Under 30s Behind Visa's $5.3 Billion Acquisition Of Plaid". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-01-27.
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