April 2019 Summaries

Kira Booth shares her experience with using retrospectives as a tool for team growth and process improvement at Plaid. The company conducts end-of-sprint retrospectives every other Friday afternoon, discussing what went well, what needs to be improved, and any noteworthy events. These meetings have led to positive changes in the team's processes, such as implementing an onboarding curriculum with a mentorship program and establishing biweekly SLA Days for addressing technical debt. Booth emphasizes that retrospectives should be regular, enjoyable, safe spaces where everyone can contribute openly and honestly. She also highlights the importance of assigning action items and following up on them to ensure progress is made.

Em Minor, a former management consultant with experience in environmental stewardship, has taken on a new role at Plaid, where she leads the FI Partnerships team. In this role, she interfaces with both technical and go-to-market teams to build thriving partnerships with financial institutions. Em's diverse resume, which includes studying economics at Vanderbilt, working at the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, attending business school at Chicago Booth, and managing a cleantech company, has served her well in her new position. Her passion for building complex, externally facing roles and her love for the unconventional have guided her career choices. Em attributes her success to diligently pursuing her passion and having faith in herself and the process. She describes Plaid as galvanizing, both internally and in the marketplace, where she is part of a team that takes action every day to change the world. To gear up for her task, Em starts her day with a morning boot camp session in Golden Gate Park, followed by caffeine and focused work before heading into the office.

Today, Plaid is releasing new Dashboard and API functionality to provide real-time status across bank integrations and Plaid systems. Institution and Item status are now available in the Dashboard for quick debugging, while also providing data programmatically for richer user experiences or analytics infrastructure. Additionally, a new system status page has been launched, displaying the uptime of Plaid's three API environments in beta. These changes aim to provide more transparent insights into Plaid's systems, helping developers deliver great user experiences and debug issues more efficiently.

Alto is a pharmacy designed for the digital age that focuses on same-day medication delivery. Founded in 2015, its goal is to improve patient health by addressing communication challenges among doctors, insurance companies, and patients. To combat high credit card fees, Alto integrated with Plaid Auth for ACH payments, saving an average of $50 per transaction over $1000, which can be reinvested in the business and passed on to customers.

In March 2019, Baker Shogry & Jesse Dhillon made several updates to their system. They added support for Varo Money and over 20 Canadian credit unions such as Coast Capital Savings, Conexus Credit Union, and Assiniboine Credit Union. Additionally, they updated the institutions endpoints to allow retrieval of bank logos, colors, and website URLs for customizing in-app experiences. They also released LinkKit v1.1.17 with support for a new Link country filter, enabling users to specify whether to show only Canadian or US institutions or both when initializing Link. Lastly, they introduced the sandbox/item/fire_webhook endpoint, allowing users to trigger and test webhooks on demand.