Keep pulling the thread on William Hockey.
Column was built without raising venture capital, with William Hockey and employees owning 100% of the company, and its growth is funded by its own earnings.
Column acquired a regulated bank, a non-consensus move that required pausing revenue focus for two to three years and would have been unlikely with venture capital funding.
Column uses 25% of its annual earnings to execute a tender offer to buy back shares from its employees, providing them with yearly liquidity.
William Hockey funded the acquisition of Column's bank by pledging over $1 billion of his Plaid stock to secure a $70 million loan.
During the first three years of building Column, William Hockey was margin-called three times and nearly went bankrupt while financing the company with debt.
William Hockey predicts the biggest beneficiaries of AI will be large, inefficient incumbent brands with massive distribution, drawing a parallel to Standard Oil benefiting most from the railroads.
William Hockey is the founder of Column and was the co-founder of Plaid.
Column is a software company that also owns a bank, providing backend infrastructure for companies to offer financial services in the U.S.
Column provides backend infrastructure for payments, deposits, and credit to companies including Built, Wise, Ramp, Brex, and Mercury.
Column is the issuing bank for the Built credit card and handles all interactions with the Federal Reserve, TCH, card networks, and Swift on its behalf.
Column generates over 90% of its revenue from software fees, with a business model based on per-API call pricing.
Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is projected to become the world's largest city within the next five to 10 years.