Fifteen years is a long time in any industry. In fraud prevention, where the threats mutate, the technology turns over, and the stakes keep rising, it’s a lifetime. Sift started in 2011 with a list of five ideas and no background in fraud, and grew into the platform that helps the world’s leading digital businesses earn trust at scale. To mark the milestone, co-founder Jason Tan and CEO Marc Friend sat down to talk about the decisions that shaped Sift, the moments that tested it, and what the next chapter demands.
Q1. You didn’t set out to build a fraud company. How did you end up here?
Jason Tan:
We used a very scientific method when searching for a problem to solve. We had a list of five different potential ideas we could apply machine learning to (this is back in 2011) and as we talked to potential customers, fraud detection came up as something we hadn’t previously considered, because we didn’t know anything about it. But as we dug in, it became obvious that this was an industry stuck in the dinosaur age of rules-based systems, and no one was approaching the problem with machine learning as the core. The big aha was that potential customers consistently said this wasn’t something they’d ever think of as a core competency: “We don’t think of this as a core competency. We never will.” We happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right offering, and we were first.
Q2. What’s the one decision you can’t afford to get wrong?
Jason Tan:
I think a lot about Jeff Bezos’ framework of type one and type two decisions—the one-way door versus the reversible ones. Almost everything in strategy, go-to-market, and product roadmap is type two; you can course-correct. Culture is the exception. I’ve always considered building our culture to be a type one decision, it’s much more difficult to undo later. That’s why when we onboard new hires, I tell them: courage over comfort. There are no sacred cows, and we must be willing to evolve. The culture is the foundation, the bones. It’s the most important product we build and the legacy we should be most paying attention to.
Marc Friend:
The passion inside Sift is palpable in a way I haven’t seen at most companies. One of my first weeks, I visited a customer in Seattle and he nearly jumped across the table: “I love my job. I love working with Sift.” There’s a clear line between the good guys and the bad guys, and the level of care the team brings to that fight is something special, and not found at most companies.
Q3. When did fraud prevention start to feel like something bigger?
Jason Tan:
Back in 2014, a customer told me they’d been using the Sift Score to dynamically change the checkout form in real time, removing the CVV prompt entirely for trusted users. No one had told them to do this. There was just a big light bulb: the thing we’re building has so much more potential. Preventing bad actors is step one. Step two is using trust to reimagine how everyday consumers experience any website, any purchase, each step dynamically powered. In real time we can decide whether to add friction or remove it and delight the customer. That’s the aha from 2014 that’s led us to where we are today. When you go to a neighborhood bar, the bartender knows your name, your drink is already waiting. Why can’t that happen more often on the internet? We have the data. We have the technology. The internet can feel a lot more intimate than it currently does.
Q4. What does it actually mean to be a partner in fraud prevention?
Marc Friend:
One of the first things I noticed about this industry is that customers who are performing well by every metric still don’t feel confident they’re doing it right. Fraud is always evolving. There’s no steady state. It’s not about whether a system works; it’s giving customers the confidence that they’re fighting the fight and winning. If a prospect wants to buy some technology and solve a problem in a black box, they’re probably not for us. If they want someone shoulder to shoulder with them in the trenches—with the platform, the visibility, and a real partner at their side—that’s where we win. Putting education ahead of the pitch. Partnership ahead of the sale. Humanity ahead of the technology.
Jason Tan:
Every single one of our customers wants to do this as a team, compare best practices, and learn from each other. It’s a very lonely job, a very demanding, emotional job. But it doesn’t have to be if there’s a sense of community. And that’s where we’re very different from our competitors.
Q5. 15 years from today, you look back at this moment. Why does what we’re doing right now matter?
Jason Tan:
The table is being flipped on its head. AI is leveling the playing field, whether we want it to or not, every business is scrambling to figure out how it fits into this new world. I would like to say 15 years from now that we were fearless, courageous, decisive, willing to take risks and learn from failures in this pivotal moment for the internet and for our industry. In a world where it’s so easy to build anything, taste and good opinions will matter even more. Our customers will be bombarded by options and choices, they need to hear why this, not that. I’d like to see Sift emerge with a healthy thump in the chest. We have truly arrived as the 800-pound gorilla that I know we are and will continue to be.
Marc Friend:
We need to take on the mantle that we are the experts in this business and be prescriptive when we walk into a customer site. Think about the doctor-patient relationship: you don’t walk into the office and say “I need 50 milligrams of XYZ.” You say “my knee hurts when I do this,” and you trust the doctor to know the patterns, the history, what’s available, and to prescribe. Everyone will have good tools at some level. But if we can be that trusted expert, that’s what differentiates us.
