Onfido £650m exit founder stories & IDV products...

Hi folks, It’s me, your product queen! I missed a week of tech and tea fun, mainly as writing is hard when the emotions of that week are heightened. I’m not one to wallow on a series of unfortunate events for too long, but I navigated the stress to also connect with some great product & tech people and feel a sense of inspiration in many directions.

Surround yourself with great thought leaders who can really shape things continuously in your life & find your champions. Ask those around you for feedback too. The currency in this economy is all about great connections & remaining introspective.

So shout out to Ali Abdul Kadir - VP of Product, Aamna Hussain - Senior PM, Humayra Hanif - Founder/Engineer & Mirela Mus - Founder for providing wise words of wisdom around all things product, career focuses & tips on introductions. You helped me to make some key moves <3

For my new subscribers, a little about me:

1. So what’s the product goss this week (& last)?

Airbnb got tech bro summer hench…

Ha firstly, Brian C paving the way for tech bro gym buffs is a vibe. Secondly, Airbnb have launched their summer release. So I am an Airbnb fan as a product thinker and while it’s probably quite basic now, they know the art of product marketing. As a creative & someone who started out in marketing, I think consumer type product managers need to have this eye. Brian is a designer, he thinks about how products make people feel, which is natural to him as a leader.

Icons, the feature they have released is genius in an era of social content economy. It’s elevating community into the platform which if you’re not doing as a very socially friendly platform, you’re probably in trouble. While Airbnb has multiple types of guests, whether looking for convenience travel vs luxury, this is something you can’t quite get elsewhere.

Wishlists are also great for planning. Annoying if you using a combination of sites as a consumer, great if the entire itinerary is on Airbnb.

WhatsApp communities has events…

As someone who is now part of a lot of WhatsApp communities, this is incredibly useful. I imagine for schools, local community groups etc you can start to be way more organised. Will it rival Meetup?. I still hate that your phone number is visible though which makes the whole thing too personal. Small feature updates like this can create huge realms of consumer loyalty, but timing these releases is incredibly important. However, we hate the Matrix green switch Meta. Make it stop.

2. Product things I procrastinated with…

IDV (identity verification) is an interesting space. It’s come a long way in the last 10 years given the way the realms of open data has increased which has made the possibilities bigger. So I wanted to talk a little about this space as a week or so ago, I went to Onfidos £650m exit party. It made me think about 1) The possibilities of a great Startup company turned tech giant 2) The IDV space

Onfido uses AI to verify customer identities and started by three great founders back at Oxford uni. Husayn Kassai, Eamon Jubbawy & Ruhul Amin. They originally started their journey at Oxford Unis Innovation Incubator in 2012 & received £20K as early stage funding. It went onto sell this year to Entrust at £650m. Not a bad way to spend 12 years of your career.

Husayn talked about one of his worst times while building Onfido. A day where he got some news around not being able to integrate with a database because of privacy issues, which underpinned the fundamentals of Onfidos checks. He also showed his resistance, to continuously find solutions & that the key to success was consistency, even when it all got really tough.

It also made me think about the power of a great leadership team. The 3 of them stuck together in the years building so the power of solid cofounders is key. Husayn and their investors mentioned how all 3 of them are quite different in psychometric testing. In DiSC, they were all very complimentary which allowed them to bring different aspects to the product & company. All 3 had different motivations. Often businesses fail when the leadership team is poor, even if your product might be shit hot. The sentiment in that room really showed what great leadership had created. A huge congratulations to them all. Also gutted I didn’t join them back in the day ha.

IDV products in the age of AI will see a shift. While ‘AI’ technically has been present for a long time, we’ll see smarter shifts. The rise of AI technology has created a shift in trust. Deep fake videos, voice replication & so on. It means the challenges will need solid tech innovation and products for very sensitive industries, like banking.

If you’re building in this space, I would love to hear from you.

3. Product gems that made me howl…

Thank you Farhana Fatima Khan, (An awesome software engineer over at Prolific) for sharing this haha <3

and what I’m I up too? apart from writing and waffling in this newsletter?…

I had a week a lot of reflection & less ‘doing stuff’ but as I have said, connecting with lots of people & planning better content for my future newsletters. Although I hope you enjoy these!

I made some waves on creating videos on the gram. Getting camera confident is a goal and it actually wasn’t too bad. Or all my 5 friends are lying to me.

There is a project I am working and building a prototype for. Look forward to sharing more of that in the next newsletter(s) <3

I would also love to connect with more of you, hit me up if we can get a call in to connect, share & learn!

& that’s all folks! Please share this to a friend or to all your friends, anyone! & if you haven’t subscribed yet, then like my fave ASOS push notification for when an item is back in stock, GO GO GO! Subscribe & until next time <3…

& feedback is a gift, please drop me some on the socials!