Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Visa Buys Plaid

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 333 posts

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#81

Post by sithlord »

nikolay wrote: post #48

Plaid is terrible! Both Wells Fargo and Bank of America support API integration, but Plaid chooses to screen-scrape and does not work if you have 2FA enabled. Also, you can't even manually enter your bank information. In other words, even if you pay dearly to Plaid, you may block many users who use some of the top banks in the States! There is a bunch of services I cannot use because they rely solely on Plaid, and I'…

pretty sure this is false, all my accounts are 2FA, and connected to a few different account aggregators (mint, personalcapital, etc) which i am prettty sure all use Plaid. Handles it fine.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#82

Post by awinder »

metalliqaz wrote: post #44
tempsy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amex and Discover are different as those are closed-network. I think it's really hard to argue Visa/MC is not a duopoly. Unfortunately anti-trust enforcement in the US has been more political than anything.

closed network?

You only get discover & Amex cards from those companies whereas Visa & MasterCard are networks that other people can “buy into”, ie your bank card (or credit card offered through a bank).

IMO not super relevant to topic of competition, there’s 4 networks, the fact that two of them are structured differently doesn’t really have impacts on sellers & customers (other than that the two open networks are significant larger, visa & MasterCard)

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#84

Post by maccam94 »

sithlord wrote: post #81
nikolay wrote: post #48

Plaid is terrible! Both Wells Fargo and Bank of America support API integration, but Plaid chooses to screen-scrape and does not work if you have 2FA enabled. Also, you can't even manually enter your bank information. In other words, even if you pay dearly to Plaid, you may block many users who use some of the top banks in the States! There is a bunch of services I cannot use because they rely solely on Plaid, and I'…

pretty sure this is false, all my accounts are 2FA, and connected to a few different account aggregators (mint, personalcapital, etc) which i am prettty sure all use Plaid. Handles it fine.

Mint does not use Plaid, they have an in-house integrations system.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#85

Post by curiousDog »

Curious what happens to options that are yet to vest when a company gets acquired like this? I had a potential offer from them and I'll be losing some sleep tonight :(

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#86

Post by PragmaticPulp »

xj9 wrote: post #70
erikig wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiousity, why would this acquisition be a reason to quit?

to me this move indicates weakness. its a fine exit for the early employees and the executive team, but there's no reason to sell if you have a solid business plan and a realistic vision for future profitability. maybe the only vision for the future they want to pursue involves some expensive investment or the business was built on massive debt that can only be paid of in this way. i want to be a part of building som…

At this point, what difference does it make? Visa can survive as an independent, profitable entity by your criteria.

> but there's no reason to sell if you have a solid business plan and a realistic vision for future profitability.

They had 5.3 billion reasons to sell. With an acquisition offer that high, it's not about the company's ability to survive independently. It's about doing what's in the best financial interests of the company and employees.

> i want to be a part of building something that can survive as an independent entity. selling is an admission that this is either not a goal or not possible given the current position of the company. both of these are against my ethics. why should i stay at a company that has openly admitted that they are incapable or unwilling to pursue independence?

Your distinction is a bit arbitrary. Plaid wasn't a fully independent company after they took significant money. Take a look at their board of directors. Only 2 out of 5 board members were Plaid executives. They had already "sold" part of the company when you applied.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#87

Post by alecbenzer »

ryanSrich wrote: post #39
eerrt wrote: post #24

Do the early employees get a huge payout on their options?

Even if they had really shitty agreements I bet they'll see something substantial. Reports are saying it was a 5.3 billion purchase price. That's a lot of money for 400 employees.

Having 400 employees doesn't say much about how equity is distributed, though. E.g., (made up numbers, I know nothing about Plaid's comp specifically) if an employee gets 1 basis point over 4 years, that's 0.01% * $5.3 billion / 4 = $132,500, which combined with a startup salary might land you at around Google L4.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#88

Post by smeyer »

curiousDog wrote: post #85

Curious what happens to options that are yet to vest when a company gets acquired like this? I had a potential offer from them and I'll be losing some sleep tonight :(

There's some flexibility, but often the unvested options in the acquired company are converted into unvested options in the acquiring company on the same schedule.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#89

Post by jaggederest »

sergiotapia wrote: post #72
xml4eva wrote: post #66

As a former Plaid employee with options that vested after I was shitcanned last year, this is some pretty welcome news.

You’re anon, and I was always curious in terms of $$$ how much did you end up with? At what stage did you join and how many options did you get? Very rare to find real data online about this

I'm happy to post these things, without identifying companies. I'm sure you could find them on my resume or linkedin but there'll still be some ambiguity.

Company A, 0.05% or 9000+ options vested, IPO, post-lockout sale at net ~$300k, was an early engineering employee

Company B, Make sure you do proper tax planning, taxes take an enormous bite, even with long term capital gains.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#90

Post by guynamedloren »

curiousDog wrote: post #85

Curious what happens to options that are yet to vest when a company gets acquired like this? I had a potential offer from them and I'll be losing some sleep tonight :(

It probably depends on the terms of the acquisition, but here's one data point: when the company I work for was acquired, all options were vested immediately and purchased by the acquiring company. So, options => cash.
Post reply on HN