Meet The Disruptors: How Itay Levy of Identiq Is Shaking Up How We Trust Online
In my case, I’d argue passionately that we need a better way of managing data privacy than we’ve got at the moment. That system needs disrupting. The way I’d like to see things shift — the way Identiq is already doing it — is measurably better, because it dramatically reduces data proliferation, and gives consumers meaningful control over their data. It stays with whichever company they chose to give it to. That’s it. No more third-party sharing.
At Identiq, we’re trying to show people a different way of doing things, where collaboration is powerful yet never requires sharing personal user data. We hope our impact will change things beyond the scope of our own company.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Itay Levy.
Itay Levy is Identiq’s CEO and co-founder. Prior to Identiq, Itay was the CEO of Appoxee, a mobile marketing automation platform designed to increase engagement, which he successfully sold to Teradata (NYSE: TDC) in 2015. Before Appoxee, Itay was a part of the founding team of Buzzmetrics, a Social Media Research company acquired by Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN) for $150M in 2006. Itay holds a BA in Computer Science and an EMBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Oh yes, I certainly can… My first real job was helping my brother, way back in 2001, at a company which started in our basement. We had a room with four PCs in it, and we were looking for a way to find, analyze and report on trends online. We wanted to download pages, work out what people were saying.
Even back then, I turned to Google. But I didn’t realize that there was a right way to do that and a wrong way. I was very young. I didn’t know that too much, too fast, was a problem.
So, I created a network of machines, using ours in the office room, and those of my friends and family. I had them all downloading. (This was well before the cloud — I had to rig it up myself.) It was prone to bugs, so I made a trumpet sound go off whenever there was a problem, so I could fix it.
In the very early hours one morning, I was woken up — there were trumpets in the office! Lots of trumpets. Something was really wrong.
Google had blocked us. And the other machines in the office. I called my mom to ask her to check if it was the same on her computer. Her response was “What’s Google?” Good thing she didn’t rely on it back then, because they’d blocked her too.
It turned out that because of what I’d been doing… Google had blocked Israel. All of Israel. The whole country. For an entire day.
Yes, they fixed it. But that was definitely a memorable experience — and I can finally appreciate how funny it was, now that I’m older! It was also an important life lesson.
Now, even more than then, we’re all working with a lot of companies. Businesses, payments infrastructure, vendors… Everything is interconnected. We’re all interconnected, as people. So be aware of how you’re impacting others.
It’s something I’m aware of every single day at Identiq. The assumptions we’ve all been making about how data needs to be shared, to give us the convenience we want — those are deeply flawed. They’ve led us to an untenable position. That interconnectivity has become a weakness. But it shouldn’t be! Collaboration should be our greatest strength.
At Identiq, we’re trying to show people a different way of doing things, where collaboration is powerful yet never requires sharing personal user data. We hope our impact will change things beyond the scope of our own company.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I’ve been fortunate to have so many inspirational influences and mentors in my life. But the first is also the one with the greatest impact — my father.
When my father grew up, he was one of the poorest kids in Tel Aviv. Aged 13–17, he worked to support his family. He managed to get to school later and finished his degree in 2 years. Following a BA in Israel, he then flew to the US with $100 in his pocket to complete his MA at UCLA. He made that work, and after spending a few years in research firms in the US he came back to Israel to start the market research segment in Israel. He’s living proof that when you know something is the right thing, you can make it happen.
He’s tremendously inspirational and has given me so much practical help and advice, but the reason his impact is so great is that he’s also empowering — he’s given me the strength to keep going. When things are hard, and I need to reach a bit further to succeed, he’s the one I look to.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
Basically, it all comes down to math. Math is extremely disruptive, in the right hands. We’ve taken an approach academics have been familiar with for decades and put it to practical use in the real world.
We’ve created a way for companies to work together directly, so that they can trust good users (and catch bad ones) — without sharing any personal user data at all. That last bit is where the math comes in. (It’s called Multi-Party Computation.)
It means — no need for trusted parties. No go-betweens. Instead, math — and suddenly everyone on the network can leverage trust in individuals.
That’s disruptive for two reasons. Firstly, it’s a new way for businesses to validate identities online — it makes this a collaborative process, rather than each company having to work alone with third party tools and so on.
For the consumer, that’s great news; it means they won’t have to keep proving themselves over and over again. If they’re trusted by various companies on the network, then others can trust them too — even when they’re visiting new sites for the first time. Businesses, on their side, can provide a much better, smoother customer experience, without all that identifying friction.
It’s also great for catching fraud, since fake or fraudulent identities will show up easily. The details won’t match known, trusted identities. Mismatches, when some victim information is combined with fake or fraudster’s details, are suspicious signs.
The second reason it’s disruptive is what we do for data privacy. You might not realize it, but in the current system, every time a company uses a third party to verify your identity, they’re sharing your personal data with that third party. Such as Equifax, for example.
On average, companies share confidential and sensitive information with approximately 583 third parties, so this isn’t a great system.
Identiq has worked out a way for companies to work together, directly, without ever sharing any personal user data. Not with each other, and not with Identiq. No sensitive user data is shared.
We’d like to see this form of disruption ripple far beyond Identiq. Once we’re firmly established, we’re planning to make the source code, this math, open source, so that it can be used in many other contexts. It’s the kind of data privacy we all want to see, everywhere. I’d love to be part of making that happen.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
I think positive disruption is easier to understand than you might think. Just imagine what the world would be like if your vision were fulfilled, and if it would be measurably better, overall, in significant ways.
That’s it.
In my case, I’d argue passionately that we need a better way of managing data privacy than we’ve got at the moment. That system needs disrupting. The way I’d like to see things shift — the way Identiq is already doing it — is measurably better, because it dramatically reduces data proliferation, and gives consumers meaningful control over their data. It stays with whichever company they chose to give it to. That’s it. No more third-party sharing.
When it comes to systems which have withstood the test of time… Well, I think the question you need to ask there is, is that a good thing? Are we pleased that this system is still with us? Or is it because of inertia or pressure from important industries, or simple lack of research into alternatives?
Take medicine, for example. Clearly, modern medicine is far better at helping and saving patients. But before modern medicine, the old system hadn’t changed for a remarkably long time. Even 150 years ago physicians were still quoting and using the recommendations of Galen, the Ancient Roman. Galen was a brilliant man, and fascinating to read, but I’d rather my doctor had more up to date research to draw on!
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
During my MBA at Kellogg School of Management, one of the professors Aharon Ofer, had this equation. He said the younger you are, the more bets you need to take. The older you are, the safer you need to play it. I was lucky to be doing the MBA when I was still young — and so I took the leap of starting another company, this time as CEO. And after that was acquired, I started another one…
Phil Jackson wrote a book called “Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success”. He explains that the way to build a team is to have a clear goal, with everyone working to achieve it. That’s what I aimed for when I started Identiq — to build the right team, for the right goal. And that means the goal needs to be a really strong one, a powerful one — one that people will be motivated to achieve. On the other hand, you need the right people — so they can work together for that goal, working past ego or personal priorities, to make everything better for everyone.
One of the investors I’ve worked with for many years now — Yaniv Jacobi from Oryzn Capital — has really taught me to distrust the easy way. What matters is doing things the right way. For example, a shortcut might look really tempting — to signing a customer, to funding, anything — but every time I’ve taken one, I’ve ended up regretting it. Yaniv helped me see that’s a strong pattern, not a coincidence. I’ve learned that lesson. At Identiq, no shortcuts. We do it right.
Lead generation is one of the most important aspects of any business. Can you share some of the strategies you use to generate good, qualified leads?
In our case, word of mouth is a very important factor. I think this is often overlooked when people talk about lead generation.
For us, it makes sense to have this front and center; we’re building a network, and many of the industry leaders who are part of that initiative are passionate about what we’re trying to do. Naturally, they want to encourage others to work with them and make the network stronger.
We make it easy for them to share the word by providing materials that work well as introductory ones, creating simple ways to set up meetings, and emphasizing the collaborative aspect of our work in everything we do.
We are also taking the extra mile with the rest of the industry, running roundtables, and other educational sessions (even if they are not directly connected to our brand or success). Lead generation should be viewed as a long-term relationship building process. It’s time we dropped that short-term blinkered focus.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
I’m only just getting started on data privacy! Identity verification in the context of fraud prevention was the obvious place to start. But the implications are huge for all kinds of ways we interact online. I’d like to put trust back in the center of our interactions online. And I’d like to enable collaboration in many different areas, now that it can be done without sharing personal data.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
I can’t pick just one! I read and listen to podcasts constantly — Audible has changed my life. I discover something new and insightful every two or three weeks and try to make it part of my life and how I think.
There’s one podcast experience that has, in a way, resulted in what I’m doing today — in Identiq.
One of the first podcasts I listened to from Israel is called HaShavua — This Week. It’s about what’s new in hi-tech. One week, a guest talked about credit cards, and how if you buy online, the merchant isn’t covered. It was Michael Reitblat, from Forter. He spoke so compellingly, and the way he described the problem — I was hooked. It was such a complex problem.
Then, when I learned about blockchain and cryptography, I realized that trust and mathematics could be the answer to solving this fraud problem in a new way that no one had thought about before.
Because of that podcast, I looked at credit card fraud. I realized that though the problem was complex, the solution could be simple. And… so, after a long journey, during which I found a better solution than blockchain… Identiq happened.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
If you really want something, nothing can stand in your way.
Ever since I was young, I’ve lived by that. When you know it’s right — you have to make it happen. When I first met my wife, I knew she was the one for me. It took 10 years to convince her, but it was worth it.
The moment I met Uri; I knew he would be my co-founder. It took me 6 months for him to see it too, but we’ve never looked back. Ido, my other co-founder, was the same — I knew as soon as I met him that we had to work together. It took me starting another company to make it happen, but now it has.
I’ve run marathons, and it’s the same principle — it’s all about the mindset.
That said, it’s all about having the right goal. I started one company, before Identiq, and I soon realized it wasn’t right; the industry it was in was moving in a way that made me very uncomfortable, regarding data privacy. I closed it down because it wasn’t right. But when it’s right, you have to make it happen.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I’d actually choose something that sounds very small. But out of the smallest shifts comes the greatest impact.
If I could, I’d create a movement to live a balanced life — one that helps people become centered, rather than one where every moment is used productively. What you need to make that happen varies from person to person. For me, it happens through sports. I need it, day-to-day.
For entrepreneurs especially, with their potentially very stressful career path, it’s crucial to have a way to find balance. But it’s actually vital for other people as well. Running, yoga, swimming — you need something you love. Talking to a therapist, walking on the beach, whatever works.
What’s important to understand is that this isn’t indulgent, it’s essential. It makes you better at what you’re doing, better at seeing what really matters, and better at influencing other people in positive ways. There’s such a strong ripple effect — at home, at work, in our daily interactions.
Personal balance gives you the freedom to find what you really love doing, and do it — and do it well.
How can our readers follow you online?
On Twitter — @ItayLevy
On LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/itaylevy/
Always happy to hear from other people who think it’s time we found a whole new way to trust one another online — while protecting our data privacy at the same time!
