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Plaid

model for country-by-country infrastructure

13 transcript mentions
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’19’201’211’223’231’24’253’264
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  • Tactic1 · 50%
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  • Shaan1 · 50%
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In the moments

2 linked receipts
Idea

The 'Plaid for International Hiring' (a.k.a. Deel)

Elaine describes the idea behind Deel: every startup with 10+ employees was hiring internationally with no good way to manage payroll and compliance, all stuck on a hated incumbent called ShieldGeo. The play was to build a better back-end, going country-by-country like Plaid.

“I started seeing every startup that had 10 employees was starting to hire internationally, and they had to treat them as contractors, and there was no way to manage it. And if I looked under the hood, most companies were using ShieldGeo as the PEO, and everyone hated it— super old school. So I was like, okay, somebody needs to go and build a better ShieldGeo under the hood, do kind of the Plaid model of building the nitty-gritty, going into each country that people in the US hire remotely with and build out the, you know, infrastructure”

Steal thisFind a hated, old-school incumbent that everyone uses 'under the hood' and rebuild it country-by-country, Plaid-style.

EP 175 · 9:46 · ELAINE ZELBY
Read at 9:46
mfmindex.com№ 0175-586
Tactic

Your tuition bought a network you've never tapped: cold-email the alumni

Prompted by Plaid selling to Visa for $6.5B (founder is a Duke undergrad), Shaan argues that almost no one taps the real value they paid college for - a free intro and foot in the door with any successful person from that school.

“I paid all this money to go to school and I don't care what school you went to. Like, I think Duke's got a pretty big alumni network that's doing things, but really any school, I guarantee if you're listening to this, you've not tapped into the value you paid for, which was to get the stamp and get basically a free intro, a free foot in the door. With anybody who's successful and from that school.”

Steal thisTreat your alma mater as a free intro engine - cold-email successful alumni; the shared school is your foot in the door.

EP 36 · 30:35 · SHAAN
Read at 30:35
mfmindex.com№ 0036-1835