Episode
William Hockey - Building the Operating System for the Dollar and Silicon Valley Heresy - [Invest Like the Best, EP.463]
- Published
- Mar 17, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4250
- Processing state
failed- Canonical source
- https://colossus.com/episode/playing-a-different-game/
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Summary
William Hockey is the co-founder of Plaid and the founder and CEO of Column, a software company that owns a bank and powers Ramp, Wise, Bilt, Mercury, and others. He funded Column by borrowing against his Plaid shares and has never raised outside capital. William talks about what owning 100% of his company allows him to do that other venture-backed founder cannot and the personal risk he took to do so. He shares how Silicon Valley's consensus culture produces consensus founders, and why becoming a founder has become too safe. He believes the best builders are specialists and explains with unusual clarity what it takes to become the best in the world at one specific thing. William also spends a lot of time in emerging markets which has given him a unique perspective of the power of the US dollar. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe. ----- Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Visit vanta.com/invest. ----- WorkOS is a developer platform that enables SaaS companies to quickly add enterprise features to their applications. Visit WorkOS.com to transform your application int…