Building Trust
Inspct’s Camille Nkodia Tackles Identification in the Digital Age
Establishing identity in the digital age remains a problematic issue. While people now share more of their personal lives than ever through a constantly growing multitude of social networks, actually verifying that someone is who they claim to be when it really counts is almost impossible. Every day, we conduct business on sites like Craigslist and eBay through pseudonymous profiles created with nothing more than a free throwaway email account. We set up dates with only a photo and a short blurb. We search for employees among piles of resumes full of information that can only be verified with lengthy and complicated background checks.
French entrepreneur Camille Nkodia thinks there’s a better way to handle identity. With her company Inspct and Connecticut-based development agency Checkmate Creations, she’s creating a web application called My Background.co. My Background.co will act as an easily-accessible identification card. Users will be able to share their data with the people and organizations that request it, showing them only the information that is relevant for the situation.
Camille hopes to eventually create an API to be used by any number of companies, including Craigslist and Twitter, that would verify users’ identities and increase user confidence. She points out that currently, an app like Tinder, which is meant for adults, can easily be accessed by minors. Part of MyBackground.co will include age verification, and adult-oriented businesses like Tinder will be able to access their API to determine if a given user is actually an adult. Similarly, a buyer or seller on Cragislist will be able to use MyBackground.co to demonstrate that they have good credit and no criminal record, making the transaction more comfortable for everyone involved.
Camille began formulating the idea after an experience her father had. Originally from the Ivory Coast, he lead a successful career as a C-level executive at a variety of NGOs. His career took him and his family around the globe, often into war-torn countries. Now retired, Camille’s father recently sought a small loan, but encountered unexpected difficulties. “He never had a permanent contract in his life,” Camille tells us. “He never took out a loan in his life. Once he retired, he wanted to borrow about $5,000 — but the banks wouldn’t give it to him because he had no records, no credit history, no proper contracts.”
Lacking a simple way to prove his identity and employment history, Camille’s father was unable to get credit from the bank, despite being an ideal candidate with the means to readily pay back the money borrowed. She wondered, if even a man with an extensive professional history like her father could struggle with proving his identity and credentials, how hard might it be for those less fortunate? Camille believes that MyBackground.co will help everyone, regardless of their financial status, to easily produce verified identification, and will also aid businesses and organizations in making critical hiring decisions.
Though this is the first company that she has started on her own, Camille has a wealth of experience in domain of entrepreneurship. She graduated from France’s prestigious Paris Institute of Political Studies (popularly known as “Sciences Po”), where she studied business and entrepreneurship. She describes her education as valuable and experiential, giving her the opportunity to learn in a hands-on way. “I got to make things and see the results. You learn over the 5 years how to build things; how to make things happen and be autonomous.” After university, she began working with entrepreneurs and startups. “I’ve been working in different software startups for the last 10 years as a software business consultant and in customer care. After a decade of working with software companies, I decided it was time to start my own.”
Camille understands that MyBackground.co will have to maintain a complex balance between providing information that sufficiently verifies someone’s identity and credentials while still allowing them to protect their privacy. To explain how MyBackground.co achieves this critical balance, she walks us through the example of an employer reviewing a potential hire’s resume. In this scenario, the job candidate will have previously submitted their information, including degrees and employment history, to MyBackground.co, who will verify it and then destroy any copies of sensitive documents that they received. Then, the employer will see any information that the candidate chooses to share with them through the application. “You don’t see the actual diploma; we never keep the information, we just verify it,” she says. Theoretically, this will obviate the need for additional background checks on the part of the employer in many cases, all while protecting users’ privacy.
Camille aims to have a smooth launch for MyBackground.co. She recognizes that the nature of her application, which deals with sensitive data, doesn’t allow for the kind of buggy release that many companies put out as a beta release. She wants to foster confidence among her user base from the beginning, and intends to do that with a polished product launch. “We need to build trust, so we need to have a version 1.0 from day one,” she says.
MyBackground.co is currently in development, and is scheduled for release soon.
Co-written with Don Tirea
This piece is part of Checkmate’s “On the Board” series, where we share the stories of the entrepreneurs in our network.
