4 ms·

What did Plaid do that Yodlee/Envestnet didnt? Was there some sort of collective amnesia, where everyone pretended this wasnt a solved problem, and to fund it

by basch 7y ago

What did Plaid do that Yodlee/Envestnet didnt? Was there some sort of collective amnesia, where everyone pretended this wasnt a solved problem, and to fund it being reinvented? What does Plaid do better? Is it just a more modern stable variant, or does the end user experience something more akin to "one plaid account for all my plaid connected services." Do I have to type my bank account number in twice if I sign up for two services that utilize plaid?

parsnips 7y ago
Plaid's execution is much better than yodlees. Dwolla isn't even in the same business as either.
- basch 7y ago
  I guess Im wondering how it was pitched. Was it "yodlee but good" or "hey this new thing nobodys done before."
  - ralph84 7y ago
    "* but good" is the vast majority of successful tech companies. iPhone wasn't the first smartphone. Facebook wasn't the first social network. Google wasn't the first search engine. Etc.
  - GregorStocks 7y ago
    I would assume most of their early customers were not using Plaid exclusively, because they only supported a handful of very big banks. Every company that I've seen select Plaid as a vendor has either done so after considering many alternatives, or used Plaid data alongside data from other providers.
mushufasa 7y ago
I think the dynamics of account aggregation lend themselves to a duopoly, not a monopoly. Account aggregation is an incredibly difficult problem for any startup trying to do something with financial data. It's super hard to a) convince people to sync their accounts, b) get their data correctly, c) at unit economics low enough to enable a business, all while ensuring strong security. Any significant improvement in any one of those areas, and you have a compelling case to switch account aggregation provider contracts. Essentially, the problem is so hard that the quality of the solution really matters. While there are barriers to entry to supplying an account aggregation service (imagine building 15,000 web scrapers), there's a lot of demand for product improvement, which only happens when there's market competition.
CamouflagedKiwi 7y ago
Yodlee is very expensive to get started with, and the API is horrific. They had certainly not solved the problem well.
GregorStocks 7y ago
When Plaid originally launched, their value proposition was much higher-quality connections to the top dozen or so most popular institutions in the United States - fewer data quality issues and better integration with MFA than you could get by screen-scraping. Since those banks have about half the bank accounts in the US, that's pretty nice. They later started supporting long-tail banks (the 15,000 or so other institutions in the United States), although without the same data-quality advantage as they have for the big banks. From the perspective of a new startup, Plaid also has a much more modern API and treats documentation as a much higher priority than most of their competitors - you can get up and running in an afternoon, which is absolutely not the case for every provider in the space. Plaid also had much better support, at least in the early days - level 1 support was a native English speaker with deep technical knowledge of the product, level 2 support was a founder of the company.
- basch 7y ago
  Yodlee had direct data api access to bank databases before Plaid was a sperm in an investors pocket. Its been more than a screen scraper for a long time.
  - GregorStocks 7y ago
    Well, I don't have experience with the quality of Yodlee's data, but I can certainly confirm that around 2014 there were Plaid competitors who had much worse support for big banks than Plaid did. Compared to Yodlee, Plaid might have just been competing on price, developer experience, and support.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
savrajsingh 7y ago
I think plaid allowed anyone to sign up, and had really good Developer docs. I didn’t get this impression from yodlee, though they may have updated their offering.
jamiequint 7y ago
If you ever had to use Yodlee's API you would instantly understand. As late as 2011 they only had a poorly designed SOAP XML API that was a nightmare to deal with.
DeonPenny 7y ago
Built a personal app for my bank and plaid docs and integration were way easier to understand, their pricing wasn't ambiguous, and it just worked out the box with very little work.
dbbk 7y ago
Cost.

by basch 7y ago

parsnips 7y ago

Plaid's execution is much better than yodlees. Dwolla isn't even in the same business as either.

basch 7y ago
I guess Im wondering how it was pitched. Was it "yodlee but good" or "hey this new thing nobodys done before."
- ralph84 7y ago
  "* but good" is the vast majority of successful tech companies. iPhone wasn't the first smartphone. Facebook wasn't the first social network. Google wasn't the first search engine. Etc.
- GregorStocks 7y ago
  I would assume most of their early customers were not using Plaid exclusively, because they only supported a handful of very big banks. Every company that I've seen select Plaid as a vendor has either done so after considering many alternatives, or used Plaid data alongside data from other providers.

mushufasa 7y ago

I think the dynamics of account aggregation lend themselves to a duopoly, not a monopoly. Account aggregation is an incredibly difficult problem for any startup trying to do something with financial data. It's super hard to a) convince people to sync their accounts, b) get their data correctly, c) at unit economics low enough to enable a business, all while ensuring strong security. Any significant improvement in any one of those areas, and you have a compelling case to switch account aggregation provider contracts. Essentially, the problem is so hard that the quality of the solution really matters. While there are barriers to entry to supplying an account aggregation service (imagine building 15,000 web scrapers), there's a lot of demand for product improvement, which only happens when there's market competition.

CamouflagedKiwi 7y ago

Yodlee is very expensive to get started with, and the API is horrific. They had certainly not solved the problem well.

GregorStocks 7y ago

When Plaid originally launched, their value proposition was much higher-quality connections to the top dozen or so most popular institutions in the United States - fewer data quality issues and better integration with MFA than you could get by screen-scraping. Since those banks have about half the bank accounts in the US, that's pretty nice. They later started supporting long-tail banks (the 15,000 or so other institutions in the United States), although without the same data-quality advantage as they have for the big banks. From the perspective of a new startup, Plaid also has a much more modern API and treats documentation as a much higher priority than most of their competitors - you can get up and running in an afternoon, which is absolutely not the case for every provider in the space. Plaid also had much better support, at least in the early days - level 1 support was a native English speaker with deep technical knowledge of the product, level 2 support was a founder of the company.

basch 7y ago
Yodlee had direct data api access to bank databases before Plaid was a sperm in an investors pocket. Its been more than a screen scraper for a long time.
- GregorStocks 7y ago
  Well, I don't have experience with the quality of Yodlee's data, but I can certainly confirm that around 2014 there were Plaid competitors who had much worse support for big banks than Plaid did. Compared to Yodlee, Plaid might have just been competing on price, developer experience, and support.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

savrajsingh 7y ago

I think plaid allowed anyone to sign up, and had really good Developer docs. I didn’t get this impression from yodlee, though they may have updated their offering.

jamiequint 7y ago

If you ever had to use Yodlee's API you would instantly understand. As late as 2011 they only had a poorly designed SOAP XML API that was a nightmare to deal with.

DeonPenny 7y ago

Built a personal app for my bank and plaid docs and integration were way easier to understand, their pricing wasn't ambiguous, and it just worked out the box with very little work.

dbbk 7y ago

Cost.