Why great leaders make themselves obsolete | Eric Sager (COO, Plaid)

Eric Sager says Plaid tries to keep most teams focused on serving customers and building the ecosystem, even when major external events (like COVID or the Visa deal) create distraction. He also notes they kept the transaction-focused team small so the rest of the company could stay on their “day job.”

He argues resilient culture requires deliberate design: taking time to formalize it, hiring with trade-offs, and tying promotions/raises/equity to cultural contribution—not just results. He says culture gets most tested when leaders can boost short-term metrics by compromising principles.

As Plaid scaled, Sager says a key anti-bureaucracy tactic is clarity on who the decision maker is—ideally one person—while still encouraging collaboration. He also describes avoiding unnecessary layers and expecting leaders to be able to do IC-level work.

He rejects the idea that “faster is always better,” describing trade-offs among speed/velocity, risk, and cost. He gives an example where accuracy matters because customers and consumers make important decisions based on Plaid’s data, so being methodical is sometimes necessary.

Sager describes evolving go-to-market from generalists to size-based segments, then adding vertical specialization, and later adding horizontal product experts to support vertical “quarterbacks.” He says putting all functions within a segment under one leader improved handoffs, customer satisfaction, implementations, and cross-sell/upsell.