At age 23, William Hockey and Zach Perret co-founded Plaid (a fintech startup). The beginning was very difficult. They were rejected by 70 investors. The breakthrough came when the pair won a Hackathon coding contest in Disrupt 2013 Manhattan New York. Will Hockey thinks in the near future, every company will be a fintech and every company will also be in financial services. Their first business model was a mistake. They were trying to build personal financial applications, but soon they realize there was a huge market for building financial infrastructure. So Plaid pivoted and changed its business model. In 2021, DOJ and SEC Blocked $5.3B Sales of Plaid to Visa after a prolonged battle. In 2019, William Hockey split from Plaid and Zach Perret, stayed on as director, and gave no reason for the split. In 2022, William Hockey and his wife co-founded Column, which is a fintech with a chartered bank they bought for $50 million. The bank is in northern California and has one branch. He says the revenue model of fintech is not working and he is stepping back and starting from first principle, i.e. how to do it to benefit the consumers and themselves. Finally, one of his starting point is trying to address the supply chain pain of banking and fintech today.