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Conversation
Highlights

 

Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech’s most innovative B2B founders. In today’s episode, we’re speaking with Naftali Harris, Co-Founder & CEO of SentiLink, an identity verification platform that’s raised $85 Million in funding.

Here are the most interesting points from our conversation:

  • Founding Story: Naftali and his co-founder Max discovered a massive fraud problem while working at Affirm, leading them to create SentiLink to solve identity verification issues.
  • Initial Insight: They encountered multiple fraudulent credit applications with the same name and birthdate but different SSNs, highlighting a gap in existing identity verification systems.
  • Market Impact: SentiLink works with seven of the top 15 US banks, five of the ten largest credit unions, and over 300 financial institutions, processing over a million identity verifications daily.
  • Core Values: The company’s core values, especially “follow through,” play a critical role in building trust with partners and ensuring operational excellence.
  • Long-Term Vision: SentiLink aims to be the default solution for identity verification, similar to how CRMs are used in sales, addressing the fundamental question of “Who are you?”
  • Fraud Evolution: Identity fraud evolves in waves, presenting both challenges and opportunities for SentiLink to continuously innovate and adapt their solutions.

 

Actionable
Takeaways

Build Trust with Follow Through:

Establish trust by consistently delivering on promises. This is crucial in conservative industries like financial services.

Adapt to Market Needs:

Stay ahead of market changes by monitoring trends and evolving your product roadmap to address new forms of fraud.

Operationalize Core Values:

Integrate core values into hiring, onboarding, and daily operations to create a strong, cohesive company culture.

Focus on Long-Term Goals:

Align with investors and stakeholders who support long-term vision over short-term gains to maintain strategic focus.

Leverage Deep Understanding:

Combine automated processes with manual reviews to maintain a deep understanding of evolving fraud tactics and improve detection accuracy.

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