Today’s Talent Pool

Plaid, a 13-year-old San Francisco-based fintech that connects apps to users’ bank accounts for payments and data verification, was valued at $8 billion in an employee share sale, up from $6.1 billion last year but still about 40% below its $13.4 billion 2021 peak. TechCrunch has more here.

  1. John Backus in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: CTO of Cognito @ Plaid (4 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CTO @ Cognito (Khosla, LSVP, YC —> acquired by Plaid for $250M), Stanford CS (dropped out)

    3. Description: Left Plaid on 2/26

    4. Contact: Site, Twitter

  2. Niko Karvounis in NYC (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Head of Developer Platform @ Plaid (3.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CEO @ fabric.ai (First Round Capital, BoxGroup, Abstract), Co-Founder & CPO @ Quovo ($35M from F-Prime, FinTech Collective —> acquired by Plaid for ~$200M), Interim CPO @ Headway ($321M from Spark, a16z, Thrive Capital), MBA @ Harvard, MSc @ Oxford, BA @ Harvard

    3. Description: Left Headway on 2/25

  3. Edmund Loo in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: Early SWE @ Plaid (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Founder @ Vira ($6M raised), Founding SWE @ Neeva ($78M from Sequoia, Greylock —> acquired by Snowflake)

    3. Description: Working on something new per site

    4. Contact: Site

  4. Mike DeFeo & Michael Troute in SF (Co-Founder @ Finform)

    1. Role: PM & SWE @ Plaid (4.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CEO @ Basis (8VC and Menlo); Senior SWE @ Basis, SWE @ Vanta, BS Computer Science @ Stanford

    3. Description: “Your portfolio is worth more. Finform finds the NOI that your property managers won't.”

    4. Contact: [email protected]

  5. Manny Gundampalli in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: SWE @ Plaid (2.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CTO @ Tarsal ($7M from Abstract, YC —> acquired by Monad)

    3. Description: Left Tarsal 12/25

  6. Pete Tiwari in Chicago (Stealth)

    1. Role: Product Lead @ Plaid (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: CPO @ Kin Insurance ($450M+ raised @ $2B from QED, Activate Capital), Head of Digital Product Management @ Marcus by Goldman Sachs, Product Leader @ Amazon

    3. Description: Stealth since 9/25

    4. Contact: [email protected]

  7. Steve Almeida in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Compliance Analyst @ Plaid (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Founder @ Batten, COO @ Skipify ($86M from PayPal Ventures, Synchrony, Samsung NEXT, Amex Ventures), Product Lead @ Bolt, Product Lead @ Adyen, Program Manager @ Stripe, JD @ UC Hastings

    3. Description: Left Batten on 1/26 with no updates

    4. Contact: [email protected]

  8. Royce Kok in NYC (Stealth)

    1. Role: PM @ Plaid (4 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Founding Member & Head of Strategy @ Tabs ($91M from Lightspeed, General Catalyst), Operator in Residence (Fintech) @ Primary Venture Partners, Senior Consultant @ EY

    3. Description: Left Tabs on 12/25

    4. Contact: [email protected]

  9. Amy Tang in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: Staff SWE @ Plaid (3 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: MTS @ OpenAI, Sr SWE @ PlanGrid, SWE @ Facebook, BA Computer Science @ UC Berkeley

    3. Description: Left OpenAI on 6/25

  10. Brendan Regan in Dublin (Co-Founder @ Latinum.ai)

    1. Role: Head of Revenue UK & Europe @ Plaid (5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Distressed Credit Sales @ Bank of America, Citi, and Barclays Capital

    3. Description: "Small reasoning models trained with reinforcement learning from PhD research and formal reasoning. Fast, verifiable, and designed to be printed on hardware.”

  11. Nonso Maduka in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: GM & Head of Product, Financial Management @ Plaid (3 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Head of Product @ Invisible, Director of PM @ Glassdoor, Sr PM & Vertical Lead @ NerdWallet, VP Mortgage Trading @ Citi. MBA @ HBS

    3. Description: "Rearchitecting a major financial services segment."

  12. Umang Jaipuria in SF (Founder @ Stealth)

    1. Role: Head of Product, Developer & Consumer @ Plaid (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: VP APIs @ Alchemy, Product Head @ Twitter, Co-Founder & CEO @ Lattice Labs, Sr PM @ Zynga, PM @ A9/Amazon

    3. Description: "Building something new that is actually something old — about 250 years old."

  13. Eric Sprauve in SF (Co-Founder & CTO @ Strama)

    1. Role: Head of Credit Engineering @ Plaid (5.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Engineering Manager @ Dropbox, SDE II @ Microsoft. BS CS & Engineering @ Santa Clara

    3. Description: "AI that solves sales teams' biggest challenge: personalized outreach that scales."

  14. Rron Rexha (Stealth)

    1. Role: Product Team Lead @ Plaid (2.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Product Lead @ Cadre

    3. Description: "Building a fully integrated, AI-native platform to transform one of the largest fintech sectors."

  15. Ryan Surveski in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Product Manager @ Plaid (4 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Director of Product @ Headway, PM @ Cruise, Senior Associate @ Silver Lake, MEng @ MIT

    3. Description: Left Headway in 2025

  16. Luigi Balbo Bertone di Sambuy in NYC (Stealth)

    1. Role: Founding Solutions Engineer @ Plaid (3 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: TPM, Strategic Projects @ Scale AI, Developer Success @ Finch, MS CS (HCI) & BA Symbolic Systems @ Stanford, Philosophy @ Oxford

    3. Description: Advisor at Revelo since 2025. Left Scale AI in 2024

  17. Naren Yenuganti in SF (Co-Founder & CTO @ Polymath)

    1. Role: SWE @ Plaid (1.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: SWE @ Amazon. BS EECS @ UC Berkeley

    3. Description: "Automating environment generation for training and evaluating AI agents."

    4. Funding: Backed by YC W26

  18. Stephen Tsai in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: SWE @ Plaid (6 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Engineering @ Descript, Engineering @ Included Health, SWE @ Okta, Technology Analyst @ Goldman Sachs, BS/BA Economics & CS @ UPenn

    3. Description: Left Descript on 11/25

  19. Kevin D. in SF (Co-Founder @ Odva AI)

    1. Role: Sales Engineer @ Plaid (4 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Solutions Architect @ Stripe

    3. Description: “Protect. Control. Test. AI security that learns and adapts.”

  20. Zach Gardner in NYC (Co-Founder & CEO @ ClaimsFlow)

    1. Role: Product Partnerships @ Plaid (2.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Product @ Modern Treasury, Corporate Dev & Strategy @ Asurion, BA History & CS @ Harvard

    3. Description: "Speeds up the property claims cycle by automating inefficient workflows."

  21. Aaron Daub in Toronto (Co-Founder @ Labyrinthine Software)

    1. Role: Staff (E6) SWE @ Plaid (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Staff SWE @ Google, Senior SWE @ Facebook, iOS Engineer @ Google

    3. Description: "The best tools for all builders, human or agentic."

  22. Vivek Gandhi in NYC (Stealth)

    1. Role: Product Lead @ Plaid (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Sr. Director of Product @ Visa, Director of Product @ BillionToOne, PM @ Google, Technical PM @ Qualcomm, MBA @ Haas Berkeley

    3. Description: Left Visa on 8/24

  23. Rifath Rashid in NYC (Stealth)

    1. Role: Product Manager @ Plaid (2.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Member & Founder Fellow @ SPC, MS AI & BS CS @ Stanford

    3. Description: Building since 2/25

  24. Jason Xue in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: Head of Data Science and Machine Learning @ Plaid (3 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Group Manager AI/ML @ Intuit, Senior Analytics Lead @ StubHub, Credit Risk Analytics @ Wells Fargo

    3. Description: “Building AI and Data Driven Solutions”

  25. Madeleine Nakada in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: SWE @ Plaid (3 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Engineering Manager @ Motion (YC W20), SWE @ Motion. BA CS & Statistics @ Harvard

    3. Description: SPC Member since 9/25

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