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My First 16: Creating a Supportive Builder Community with Plaid's Zach Perret
Dec 5, 2023
In this podcast, Zach Perret, Co-founder of Plaid, discusses the early days of Plaid and how they built a supportive builder community. Topics include targeting initial customers, pricing philosophy, creating personal relationships, and the importance of feedback.
33:01
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Quick takeaways
- Plaid focused on building relationships and fostering a sense of community with its early customers, which resulted in valuable insights and established a trusted brand.
- Plaid optimized for speed in customer acquisition by targeting customers who could launch quickly, leveraging the product as a distribution strategy and incorporating viral loops into their product.
Deep dives
Plaid's Founding Story and Initial Product Vision
Zach Parre, the co-founder and CEO of Plaid, shares the company's founding story. In 2012, Parre and his co-founder identified frustration among consumers with their financial products and a lack of trust in the financial system. They initially focused on building direct-to-consumer tools to help people analyze their finances. However, they soon realized their product was more appealing to developers in the fintech community. This led them to pivot the business and start selling their data integration services to other software businesses.
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