On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Eli Farhood, Chief Executive Officer at Katsh Digital ID. Hailing from Greece, Eli is a prior financial services executive and, with Katsh, a second time Founder. After experiencing fraud first hand, he pivoted a business in the making to create Katsh; separating one’s device from the need for authentication. Katsh aspires to democratize identify protection.

For the month of October, they speak about cybersecurity and how to structure resilience into your company.

You can find out more about Eli at:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2228414/episodes/15385106-stop-using-insecure-passwords-with-eli-farhood

https://missionmatters.com/defending-digital-frontiers-meet-the-hosts/

You can subscribe to Next Act Advisors at https://nextactadvisors.com/product/subscriptions/ and be sure to use the special discount code "sandbox25" for friends of The Founder's Sandbox for 25% off your subscription.

Transcription:

00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke

00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors.

01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you.

01:22 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am your host, Brenda McCabe. We're now into our third season and over 38 episodes. This monthly podcast, it reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who like building and learning about resilient, purpose-driven and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance undergirding them. At the Founder's Sandbox and in my work,

01:52 I have a very simple mission, and I want to help build the scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. The guests that come to the podcast are founders, business owners, corporate board directors, investors and professional service providers who, like me, want to use the power of the enterprise, small, medium or large, to effect change for a better world.

02:17 Through storytelling with each of my guests, we're gonna touch on topics on their own journey that includes resilience, purpose-driven enterprises and sustainable growth. And my goal is to provide a fun environment in a sandbox where we can equip one founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Eli Farhoud. Eli is joining the podcast today.

02:47 in many roles, but primarily he is chief executive officer of Catch Digital ID. This is his second company that he's founded. And he also is an immigrant. So we're gonna touch on several of his stories while we go into this podcast. So thank you, Eli, for joining me today. Hi, Brenda, thank you for having me. I'm really glad to be here. Excellent.

03:13 So again, to my guest, you know, you can find this podcast on any major platform. And I do like to choose jointly with my guest a title. And Eli and I settled upon resilience. And it's gonna be about his team, the company, and the resiliency that's necessary when you're building a company. And we're specifically gonna go into what Catch Digital ID does, cybersecurity.

03:42 and democratizing. So I want to go back to my own journey before I get to your tagline, Eli. My work at Next Act Advisors, which is my consulting arm, and the Founder Sandbox is yet another channel to get to my guest and my clients, I was undeniably influenced by a major life change and moving back to the United States after living 25 years or more in Europe.

04:12 And I talk about being really purpose-driven, scalable, and resiliency in my own journey. So what would your tagline, Eli, be? I share that tagline with you. Resilience is everything. If we don't have resilience, we give up quickly. We don't keep pushing. We don't stay on foot. We don't build the foundation that will help us get there. Resilience is, in my view, I put it under,

04:42 know, being tenacious, having that tenacious and being tenacious and not giving up. And yeah, resilience is very, very important, not just in business. I think on a personal level, resilience brings success to your life. And with respect to the current company that you are leading, Catch Digital ID, does it also have a tagline?

05:10 Yeah, I would say resilience also matches. We're purpose-driven, but resilience definitely matches because most of our team members have had fraud in some shape or form in their life. And that was giving us the energy to keep pushing. For example, our marketing manager had her social accounts hacked multiple times. I was a victim for fraud twice, financial fraud. So...

05:36 My team members also, you know, they're coming from multinationals like IBM and the Raytheon and Symantec. And, you know, they've dealt with, you know, all the identity security, and they know the market very well. So they also understand how to be secure, you have to be very careful about yourself, about your information. And they've seen it over and over in those businesses, you know.

06:03 I mean, IBM sells identity products, semantic cells, and a virus, right? And Raytheon also does great weapons and other stuff, but basically they were working on the security, they've seen it all. And so resilience definitely, you know, is, it has to be, every one of us is an entrepreneur, let's put it this way, and you have to be resilient. That really is a great segue to, you touched on the resiliency of the teammates that, you

06:33 come with very large logos where they've served. They've also been as yourself victims of fraud. So what was your mission when you actually established the company Catch? So we want to really democratize access for everyone. This is basically the goal. We want to have Catch IT in the hands of most people for free. Okay.

07:02 the end user, the consumer. And the reason why is, well, A, we're able to do that. And B, that's how you provide or democratize access. If everyone has a digital ID that can protect their sensitive information from abuse, then you're onto a thriving digital economy. And you're able to unlock a lot of value there where people can exchange goods.

07:31 services, send money to each other, share payments, they can do a lot of things. And some of the things that today we have to do in person, because we're concerned that it's not secure to do that online. So how about if we're able to bring that security to the online world, you would think, like we once tried to imagine how people can use our product and it was so many like venues there.

08:01 You know, we're going to get to how you're raising funds right now. And I can't ask you, you want to not only democratize, but actually provide this for free. So we're going to get into this a little bit later. But there are a lot of cybersecurity products out there. Why is your solution different? And is it enterprise grade, or is it really for individuals, right, citizens? And that's that.

08:30 that leads to how you're raising money. Talk to me about how your solution is different. That's a great question. When we first built Catch, it wasn't Catch. Catch became Catch after I fell victim for fraud. But it was an identity solution to the military. So we wanted to build something military-grade, that the military community can use, can rely on, a reliable product.

09:01 And when we looked at biometrics out there today, all the biometric systems that are available, we noticed that the most reliable ones are dependent on a device, like clear at the airport, for example, your face ID on your iPhone, perhaps Amazon one at the Whole Foods and maybe other brands that I maybe don't know of. And that was the handicap, if you want, of biometric technologies.

09:29 is that requirement that hardware need, right? Yes. If you need a special hardware to operate a biometric system, then it's only convenient where the hardware is available. Got it. And not just that, you would still need to have to use passwords. And when I fell victim to fraud, the big lesson I learned is that fraudsters today can leverage data breaches.

09:59 use that information to their advantage, they can hack our devices, they can hack our identities and hack our accounts. So, and history also has shown, you know, when you see the likes of Microsoft being compromised, you know, hundreds of millions of accounts, AT&T just a few weeks ago, 70 million accounts, 3 billion social security numbers. We were talking about large numbers here. It's not a joke.

10:27 when you see those data breaches and cannot be stopped even by Microsoft, then what can the average Joe do here to protect themselves, right? These are 20 dollar companies who keep pockets, they have teams of engineers, I mean, they have all the resources they want and they're still getting compromised. So we came to that conclusion, like it's really hard. Once information is available on the public domain, it cannot be protected.

Resilience: Team and the Company