Startup Spotlight Q&A: Passbase
Identity theft is becoming more common especially as the methods by which people are able to steal your identity are entering the digital realm. Passbase is looking to bring ID security into the 21st century using facial recognition, government databases, and more. Companies who face large risks when scaling their business will be able to rest easy knowing that their customers will be protected from identity theft as they grow. Take a few minutes to dive a bit deeper into Passbase, and the exciting new ground they are breaking by the day.
Founder Bio
Felix Gerlach is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Passbase, a privacy-focused identity verification tool. Launched in 2018, Passbase has since raised over $4 million in funding and now has offices in Berlin and New York.
Felix is leading the meticulous product growth culture of Passbase to foster the company’s competitive edge in the identity space. He worked as a Product Manager in multiple startups in San Francisco and London, and at Rocket Internet in Singapore & Bangkok. He was a guest-lecturer at Stanford CSP and brings a wealth of experience in growth-driven product design. Together with his co-founders, Felix was featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 list.
In a sentence, what does your company do?
Passbase is an identity verification provider that helps companies solve their digital identity challenges in a compliant, privacy-oriented, and user-centric way.
Describe how and when your company came to be?
Starting in 2017, Felix and his partner Mathias began work on a cryptocurrency wallet named Coinance. During this project, they brought in Dave to help with a go-to-market strategy. As they scaled the platform, gaining about 10,000 users over the course of 3 months, KYC, compliance, and identity verification became a requirement for the business. They searched for solutions, and eventually found two things that formed the basis for Passbase.
First, there were no service providers well suited to address the unique needs of fast-growing engineering-driven companies. All existing solutions were clunky to integrate, focused on top-down selling. Second, borrowing from the ideas of decentralization and blockchain, they saw an opportunity to rethink how identity works.
What makes your company/product different in this market?
Established companies in the identity space have designed their services around traditional sectors. Their sales cycles, processes, and product reflect a more traditional approach.
Passbase is building on the strides made in technology in the past ten years to develop consumer-grade user experiences combined with enterprise-grade security. This means that Passbase brings the best of SaaS services to elevate user experiences.
What milestone are you most proud of so far?
Growth throughout 2020 has been fascinating. The team size has doubled and the customer list has grown by multiples.
Have you pursued funding and if so, what steps did you take?
We reached out to investors both in the US and in Europe and today have a big family of investors that we’re happy to have.
What KPIs are you tracking that you think will lead to revenue generation/growth?
Each department contributes differently to this mission so we have both technical, product, and revenue/customer retention KPIs.
How do you build and develop talent?
Being in the rapid growth phase, maintaining a strong company culture has been a priority for us. We owe the success of this to our Head of People and we invite you to read more about this here: https://passbase.com/blog/human-interviews-passbase
