Albert Malikov is the founder and CEO of Stacks, a London-based startup building agentic AI for enterprise accounting and the month-end financial close. A former Head of International Product at Plaid and a product lead on Uber's Money team, he raised a $23M Series A led by Lightspeed in February 2026, less than a year after emerging from stealth, with customers including Epidemic Sound, Pleo and Bloom & Wild closing their books 50-60% faster.
Arpan Shah is a General Partner at Spark Capital in San Francisco, where he leads early-stage investments in AI, fintech, and data infrastructure. A Stanford-trained engineer from Kolkata, he was on the founding team at Robinhood, later founded Flannel (acquired by Plaid in 2021), and was a partner at Pear VC and a Sequoia Scout before joining Spark in November 2024.
Jean-Denis Greze is the Co-Founder and CEO of Town, an AI-powered tax platform for small businesses that raised an $18M seed round led by First Round Capital in March 2025. Previously, he served as CTO of Plaid, where he scaled the engineering team from 20 to 350 people, and before that as Director of Engineering at Dropbox. A Columbia CS grad and Harvard Law JD, he brings an unusually cross-disciplinary approach to building technology companies at the intersection of finance, law, and software.
David Haber is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), based in New York City - the firm's first full-time GP in Manhattan. A Harvard-trained biochemist turned fintech operator-investor, Haber founded Bond Street (acquired by Goldman Sachs in 2017), seeded Plaid at Spark Capital, and now co-leads a16z's AI Apps fund with a focus on vertical AI, enterprise software, and financial services. Known as the 'super-connector' who bridges Wall Street and Silicon Valley, he sits on the boards of Camber, Crux, Eve, Moment, Rutter, Setpoint, and Tennr.
Satya Patel is the co-founder and Partner at Homebrew VC, the San Francisco-based seed fund he launched in 2013 alongside Hunter Walk. A dual-degree Wharton graduate, Satya spent formative years building AdSense at Google (2003) and then leading product at Twitter as VP of Product before pivoting to investing. Homebrew has backed some of the most consequential startups of the past decade - Plaid, Chime, Cruise, Anchor, Mercury - and Satya has developed a reputation as a founder-first investor who takes a hands-on, process-driven approach to helping portfolio companies nail their first hire, first product, and first fundraise. In 2021, he co-launched Screendoor, a $50M+ initiative to back underrepresented emerging fund managers. He is known for his blunt, practical writing on venture-generated content and his deep belief that great companies are built by founders who learn to say no.
The Tesla Model S is a battery-electric full-size luxury sedan produced by Tesla, Inc. from 2012 to 2026. Widely credited with proving electric vehicles could outperform combustion-engine rivals, it introduced features like over-the-air updates, a minimalist touchscreen dashboard, and Autopilot.
The Tesla Model X is a battery electric mid-size luxury crossover SUV produced by Tesla, Inc. from 2015 to 2026. Known for its distinctive falcon wing doors, panoramic windshield, and blistering acceleration, it was the world's first all-electric luxury SUV and remains one of the quickest production SUVs ever built.
William Hockey co-founded Plaid - the invisible rails that power Venmo, Coinbase, and thousands of fintech apps - then quietly bought a bank. As co-founder and co-CEO of Column, he built the only nationally chartered bank designed for developers, processing 40% of Bay Area fintech money movement with a 110-person team generating $200M in revenue and $100M+ in free cash flow. No outside investors, no VC dilution, just a former farm kid from Central California who learned that the best way to fix broken financial infrastructure is to own it.
Zach Perret is the co-founder and CEO of Plaid, the financial infrastructure company that quietly powers the apps half of America uses every day. He and co-founder William Hockey built Plaid from a hackathon project in 2013 into a $8B+ company connecting over 500 million bank accounts to thousands of financial apps - including Venmo, Robinhood, and Coinbase. After famously walking away from a $5.3B Visa acquisition in 2021 (called a 'blessing in disguise'), Perret rebuilt Plaid as an independent company, reaching $546M ARR and profitability before raising a $575M Series E in 2025. A symphony conductor's son from North Carolina, he runs Plaid like he leads: with timing, rhythm, and an eye on what everyone else is missing.
Nik Milanović is the founder of This Week in Fintech (TWIF), the 200,000+ subscriber global fintech newsletter and community he built from a zero-subscriber internal team email in 2019 and sold to Plaid in March 2026. He is also General Partner of The Fintech Fund, a $10M pre-seed/seed fintech fund backed by 120 operators and founders, and founder of Stablecon, which became the world's leading stablecoin conference within its first year. A Stanford philosophy graduate with deep roots in financial inclusion research, Nik has organized fintech community events in 84 cities across 6 continents and connected tens of thousands of fintech professionals worldwide.