Rick Song's guest appearances

Rick Song

Growth Investor with GrowthCap‘s RJ Lumba

In Depth

Fintech One•On•One

OwlTail

In this episode, we speak with Rick Song, Co-Founder &amp; CEO of Persona, a company that enables businesses to seamlessly verify customer identities with a drop-in widget that can be integrated in less than 10 lines of code. Persona is backed by Founders Fund, Index Ventures, and Coatue among other investors.  The company has raised over $200 million since its founding in 2018. Prior to founding Persona, Rick was an engineer at Square and during college was a  KPCB Engineering Fellow.  I am your host RJ Lumba.  We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode, we speak with Rick Song, Co-Founder &amp; CEO of Persona, a company that enables businesses to seamlessly verify customer identities with a drop-in widget that can be integrated in less than 10 lines of code. Persona is backed by Founders Fund, Index Ventures, and Coatue among other investors.  The company has raised over $200 million since its founding in 2018. Prior to founding Persona, Rick was an engineer at Square and during college was a  KPCB Engineering Fellow.  I am your host RJ Lumba.  We hope you enjoy the show.

Securing Your Identity: Persona CEO Rick Song

One of the most dynamic spaces in fintech today is identity verification. The way we verify ourselves online keeps changing as the tools improve and we try to stay ahead of the fraudsters.   Our next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Rick Song. He is the CEO and Co-Founder of Persona. Again and again on the show, Rick talked about the importance of customization for the way identity is verified. There should be no one-size-fits-all approach today as companies need to change their approach depending on the risk factors being presented by the user.

One of the most dynamic spaces in fintech today is identity verification. The way we verify ourselves online keeps changing as the tools improve and we try to stay ahead of the fraudsters. Our next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Rick Song. He is the CEO and Co-Founder of <a href="https://withpersona.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Persona</a>. Again and again on the show, Rick talked about the importance of customization for the way identity is verified. There should be no one-size-fits-all approach today as companies need to change their approach depending on the risk factors being presented by the user.

#344: Rick Song of Persona

Today’s episode is with Rick Song, the co-founder and CEO of Persona, a platform that enables companies to create the ideal identity verification experience for their customers. Before founding Persona in 2018, Rick was an engineer at Square for 5 years, and an early team member at Square Capital.  Rick is at an exciting inflection point in his journey of building from zero to one — just last week, Persona shared that they’ve raised a $50 million Series B round. The company plans to double the team this year to keep up with revenue that’s surged more than 10x and a customer base that’s grown to include big logos like Square, Postmates, and Gusto. In today’s conversation, one theme stands out: Rick is somewhat obsessed with the idea of pre-mortems, or figuring out why things might not work out. From all the ways a candidate might fail, to why a customer won’t want a product, to how a commonly-used framework might not be a good fit, Rick brings this mindset to every aspect of running Persona.  From hiring lessons to go-to-market strategies, Rick offers up some counterintuitive thinking, including why his engineers sell and cold-email prospects, and why he doesn’t try to convince candidates that Persona is a company that will change the world. Today’s episode holds tons of insights for anyone who’s a founder or thinking about starting a company one day, but there’s also plenty in here for engineering leaders and hiring managers. You can follow Rick on Twitter at @rickcsong and learn more about Persona at https://withpersona.com/  You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson

Today’s episode is with Rick Song, the co-founder and CEO of Persona, a platform that enables companies to create the ideal identity verification experience for their customers. Before founding Persona in 2018, Rick was an engineer at Square for 5 years, and an early team member at Square Capital.  Rick is at an exciting inflection point in his journey of building from zero to one — just last week, Persona shared that they’ve raised a $50 million Series B round. The company plans to double the team this year to keep up with revenue that’s surged more than 10x and a customer base that’s grown to include big logos like Square, Postmates, and Gusto. In today’s conversation, one theme stands out: Rick is somewhat obsessed with the idea of pre-mortems, or figuring out why things might not work out. From all the ways a candidate might fail, to why a customer won’t want a product, to how a commonly-used framework might not be a good fit, Rick brings this mindset to every aspect of running Persona.  From hiring lessons to go-to-market strategies, Rick offers up some counterintuitive thinking, including why his engineers sell and cold-email prospects, and why he doesn’t try to convince candidates that Persona is a company that will change the world. Today’s episode holds tons of insights for anyone who’s a founder or thinking about starting a company one day, but there’s also plenty in here for engineering leaders and hiring managers. You can follow Rick on Twitter at @rickcsong and learn more about Persona at <a href="https://withpersona.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://withpersona.com/</a> You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ <a href="http://twitter.com/firstround" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">twitter.com/firstround</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/brettberson" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">twitter.com/brettberson</a>