Plaid Team Multiplies as Sales Model Comes into Focus

Fintech Plaid is in massive-growth mode. By yearend, the company has plans to get to 600 employees from 300, Charley Ma, general growth manager at Plaid, said at a Meetup last night presented by Bank Innovation and INV Fintech . As a precursor to that expansion, the sales team has expanded exponentially from a two-person team to 30 employees over the last year or so, Ma said. The growth is being fueled by a $250 million Series C round of funding that closed late last year . Plaid, which provides digital applications with connectivity to banks and banking data, also purchased Quovo last month for $200 million. Quovo offers a similar service for investment and brokerage account aggregation and access. Plaid is expanding its sales effort to pursue more non-fintechs with "fintech-like qualities.” Ma pointed to rideshare app Uber as an example. Although not a fintech, Uber has a robust payments operations, which accounts for about 20% of the company’s total employees. Uber has partnerships with at least 15 major banks and operates cross-border payments as well, Ma noted. And while partnerships with banks are desirable as well, Ma noted that sales cycles tend to be long, some lasting two to three years. The cause of the long sales cycles tends to be cumbersome onboarding, complex system integrations and compliance, he said. Pierce Crosby, director of business development at StockTwits, who also spoke at the Meetup, agreed. New York City-based StockTwits is a social media platform for investors, traders and entrepreneurs. <span style="display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; cursor: text; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The sales cycle for StockTwits' largest client, Thomson Reuters <span style="display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; cursor: text; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">, took 1.5 years, Crosby said. That is the case even though, to date, Plaid and StockTwits have generated most of their sales deals through inbound requests, thus far. Beyond the challenges of building a sales team within months, both Plaid and StockTwits have struggled with how to set prices for their products and services. Essentially, both offer application programming interfaces to their data, and pricing dynamics for API are largely new. “How does one price an API?” Ma said. “We’re not a product, we’re not a widget, so our sales model is not typical.” StockTwits has even provided a discount as high as 25% to 30% on deals that would give it significant visibility <span style="display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; cursor: text; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman','Bitstream Charter',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">on an as needed basis , Crosby added. Whether this is an ongoing policy, Crosby did not disclose. "For us, it's getting our foot in the door," Crosby said. Founded in 2008, StockTwits has so far raised $13.2 million in funding. Plaid, based in San Francisco, was mostly recently valued at $2.6 billion. To learn more about payments and fintech, join us for Bank Innovation Ignite 2019 on March 11-12 at the Hyatt Olive 8, Seattle. Early registration ends this Friday, February 1st at midnight. Register here to secure the lowest possible rate!

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Plaid Team Multiplies as Sales Model Comes into Focus

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