Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation • Hacker News Board

Re: Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation

#141

Post by rco8786 » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #72

rco8786 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What write access would there be? Obviously this is a hugely sensitive service, I’m not denying that. But there’s a way to do it right and it seems that Plaid is attempting to do that. So I’m not ready to declare them evil before they actually do anything evil.

> it _seems_ that Plaid is attempting to do that Isn't this a clear parallel to the Google "Don't be evil" approach that gets discarded as soon as the opportunity cost becomes too large to ignore?

Sure, but what do we do? No company should ever be allowed access to data?

Re: Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation

#142

Post by SquishyPanda23 » Thu, Dec 13, 2018, 1:42 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #140

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're so confident, go survey Plaid users and find what percentage are aware that Plaid makes money selling their financial transaction history to developers. Then ask yourself why the founding team goes around and tells people they don't do that.

That'd be a very misleading survey question, as it heavily implies they're selling it to other developers the user didn't engage with at all. "Are you aware that connecting app Foo to your bank account gives app Foo access to your transactions?" is likely to be met with a resounding "no shit, that's the point..."

So your claim is that the average person on the street understands that if they send someone money on Venmo once, then Venmo gets 24 months of their bank account history?

And your claim is that the point of the user signing up to Robinhood or Venmo is to give Robinhood or Venmo their entire bank account history for the last two years?

I find this implausible. You have an empirical claim. You're welcome to test it.

Re: Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation

#143

Post by darkerside » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

rco8786 wrote: post #141

darkerside wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it _seems_ that Plaid is attempting to do that Isn't this a clear parallel to the Google "Don't be evil" approach that gets discarded as soon as the opportunity cost becomes too large to ignore?

Sure, but what do we do? No company should ever be allowed access to data?

It's a big question that I don't have the answer to. I'd prefer we trade off on some innovation on features in exchange for innovating the way we segment and communicate our data. But the market is speaking and it has a different opinion...