Invest Like the Best
William Hockey - Building the Operating System for the Dollar and Silicon Valley Heresy - [Invest Like the Best, EP.463]
March 17, 20261h 10m · 15,302 words
Show notes
William Hockey is the co-founder of Plaid and the founder and CEO of Column, a software company that owns a bank and powers Ramp, Wise, Bilt, Mercury, and others. He funded Column by borrowing against his Plaid shares and has never raised outside capital. William talks about what owning 100% of his company allows him to do that other venture-backed founder cannot and the personal risk he took to do so.
Highlighted moments
I pretty much funded the entire company with debt. Went to a bunch of banks. And I said, here's a bunch of Plaid shares. Please give me money. And the best I got was like a sofa plus 10% loan at 5% LTV. And so I pledged over a billion dollars of stock to get $70 million.
“The value in railroads accrued to the oil companies. That's a little bit hard to fundamentally understand. The standard oil is the biggest beneficiary, biggest boon for railroads by an order of magnitude. What is the equivalent area for AI?”
Transcript
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