Jennifer Taylor, Cloudflare’s former CPO, is Plaid’s first president.
The finance firm signed former Expedia CFO Eric Hart as its first CFO months earlier, making the move remarkable. Companies intending to go public frequently hire a CFO.
San Francisco-based Plaid said that Taylor’s roughly seven-year employment included before, during, and after Cloudflare’s IPO, suggesting that Plaid is moving closer to an IPO.
A Plaid spokeswoman told Eltrys after publication: “I can confirm that an eventual IPO is a milestone we’re tracking towards, but we don’t have any details or a timeline to share beyond that. As we develop, Jen will help us mature our tech and product strategy.”
Taylor posted on LinkedIn: “Super excited to share that I’ve joined Plaid as President, where I’ll be overseeing teams across tech and product, building the network that will power the future of finance.”
Taylor was a two-year venture investor and former Salesforce, Facebook (now Meta), and Adobe executive before joining Cloudflare.
Plaid began connecting consumer bank accounts to financial apps but has subsequently expanded into lending, anti-fraud, and payments. Visa nearly bought the 11-year-old firm for $5 billion, but antitrust officials blocked the transaction. After the transaction failed, Plaid raised $13.4 billion and diversified its income sources.
Plaid co-founder and CEO Zach Perret noted in a blog post that Taylor’s “experience scaling products to meet increasing customer demand will be invaluable” as Plaid expands its platform “to support ongoing innovation in financial services.”
Over 1,000 Plaid staff serve 8,500 clients. A16z, Index Ventures, Altimeter, Silver Lake, NEA, Kleiner Perkins, JP Morgan, Citi Ventures, Amex Ventures, Goldman Sachs, and Spark Capital are among its investors.
