Goodbye, Plaid
As any builder can tell you, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing something you create be used and loved. November 17 will be my last day at Plaid, and it’s been a great 4.5 years. I’ve built so many things, made so many friends, learned so much about being an early-stage builder, and had an incredible front row seat to the transformation of financial services in the US that FinTechs have enabled. There’s so much to unpack about my time at Plaid that I don’t think one post could do it justice — I’ll have more to write over the next few months to crystallize my experiences & learnings before I lose them to the ether.
Reflecting on my relatively short career, I’d say there were 2 really transformational periods that pushed me to grow:
Going to Caltech (the hardest thing I’ve done so far).
Working at Plaid (the most rewarding thing I’ve done so far).
If there is one message I want to send it’s this: thank you to everyone that made it possible. Not just the employees, founders, and investors — but also the early customers that believed in the product and used it during its ups and downs. For my first few months at Plaid, I didn’t always get why customers kept using us despite the frequent breakages… until I spent time looking through what they were building & how important we were to enable it all. So shoutout to the Truebills, Acorns, and Pennys of the world — I’m sure some of your early users appreciated my early mornings & late night bug squashing, even if Wells Fargo was sometimes down for a bit longer than you’d have liked.
As to what’s next, I’ll be taking a short break before diving into my next gig, which (if the internet is to be believed) should be both the hardest and most rewarding thing I’ll do — a startup!
Reflectively,
Omar