- Plaid has more than doubled its valuation since Visa ended its bid to buy the startup.
- The fintech company has gone on a hiring spree as it aims to offer more consumer-facing services.
- Insider looked through filings to find out how much Plaid pays for certain job roles.
A failed acquisition turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Plaid.
After Visa ended its bid to buy the fintech startup following an antitrust suit from the US Department of Justice, Plaid went on to command a much larger valuation than what the credit-card company offered.
In April, the company, which makes technology that enables apps such as Venmo and Chime to connect with their customers’ financial accounts, announced that it had raised $425 million in Series D funding. After the funding round, Plaid’s valuation jumped to $13.4 billion — more than twice the $5.3 billion Visa would have paid for the startup.
Plaid, cofounded by CEO Zach Perret and William Hockey, has since had a banner year: It acquired a payments-tech startup and launched a portal where consumers can see how the financial apps powered by the company are accessing their data.
Those recent moves are signs of Plaid’s ambitions not to be just a background player in the fintech industry, but to provide services that are more visible to consumers. Payments, in particular, are a growing area of focus for the company — which is one reason the Department of Justice intervened when Visa sought to buy the startup.
To support its lofty goals, Plaid has gone on a hiring spree. At the beginning of this year, the company said it expected to add 300 new employees in 2021. It has since surpassed that number: Its global headcount is now around 1,000, up from about 600 at the start of the year.
For many of those positions, the company is willing to pay handsome sums.
Insider looked through public data released this year on the positions Plaid filled through work visas to gain some insight on what the company pays for certain roles, including engineers, data scientists, and risk managers.
Corporations have to disclose to the US government how much they pay employees through the H-1B visa program, which is a major part of Silicon Valley’s workforce. The Office of Foreign Labor Certification makes that information public annually.
Most of the roles Plaid sought to fill were based in California and New York, the sites of its two largest offices. It also hired for positions in Indiana, Massachusetts, Utah, and Washington state.
This is annual salary information only and does not include other compensation such as stocks or bonuses. Though it’s not a complete picture, the information still represents a rare window into how much the company pays its employees.
Take a look at what Plaid pays its employees:
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-fintech-unicorn-plaid-pays-employees-salary-job-listings-2021-11