Plaid has named Jennifer (Jen) Taylor, who most recently served as Cloudflare's chief product officer, as its first president.
The move is notable in that it comes just months after the fintech startup hired employees.Former Expedia CFO Eric Hart joins the board first chief financial officer. Hiring a CFO is This is typically a step only taken by companies planning to go public.
In announcing Taylor's appointment, San Francisco-based Plaid noted that her nearly seven-year tenure spanned before, during, and after Cloudflare's IPO; Perhaps it's a sign that Plaid itself is inching closer to an initial public offering (IPO).
update:A Plaid spokesperson told TechCrunch after publication: As we continue to grow and evolve, Jen will be a key element in maturing our technology and product strategy. ”
Image credits: Jen Taylor, President / Plaid
on LinkedIn postTaylor writes:I'm very excited to share that I'm joining Plaid as President, overseeing teams across technology and products that are building networks that power the future of finance. ”
Prior to joining Cloudflare, Taylor held high-level leadership positions at Salesforce, Facebook (now Meta), and Adobe, and spent two years as a venture capitalist.
Plaid started as a company that connected consumers' bank accounts to financial applications, but has gradually expanded its services to include lending, fraud prevention, payments, and more. The 11-year-old company was nearly acquired by Visa for $5 billion before antitrust regulators terminated the deal. Plaid continued to raise funds. Valuation is $13.4 billion rear the transaction failedSince then, we have worked to diversify our revenue sources.
Plaid co-founder and CEO Zach Perret wrote in a blog post about Taylor's “experience.”As Plaid continues to expand its platform to “support continued innovation in financial services,” product enhancements to meet growing customer demands will be invaluable.
Plaid has 8,500 customers and more than 1,000 employees. Backers include a16z, Index Ventures, Altimeter, Silver Lake, NEA, Kleiner Perkins, JP Morgan, Citi Ventures, Amex Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Spark Capital, and more.
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