“In 2019, William Hockey, the co-founder of fintech business Plaid, announced that he would step down from his position as Plaid’s chief technology officer and president. Having helped to grow Plaid into a multibillion-dollar business with fellow co-founder Zach Perret, Hockey left for other pursuits and to — as he put it in a June 2019 tweet — make room for more “great leaders.” Hockey has kept a low profile since, maintaining a seat on Plaid’s board as the company, now valued at $13.4 billion, builds out its global finance network. But he’s been anything but idle, quietly creating the platform for what he believes is the first bank of its kind: a “financial infrastructure” bank. To rephrase, Hockey founded a bank called Column. “[Column is] a nationally chartered bank but have built every facet of the technology from scratch,” Hockey told TechCrunch in an email interview. “We are both the bank and the technology provider.””