About this episode
Rick Song is the co-founder and CEO of Persona, the identity verification platform used by some of the world’s largest companies. Before starting Persona, Rick worked on identity fraud and risk products at Square, which laid the groundwork for what would become Persona’s highly technical, horizontal platform. Since founding the company, Rick has scaled Persona into a category-defining leader, recently raising a $200M Series D at a $2B valuation.
In today’s episode, we discuss:
How Rick’s skepticism shaped Persona’s early strategy
What it takes to scale a true platform company
Successful execution in hypercompetitive markets
What Rick’s learned from his co-founder, Charles Yeh
and much more…
Referenced:
Accenture: accenture.com
Anthropic: anthropic.com
Braze: braze.com
Bridgewater Associates: bridgewater.com
Charles Yeh: linkedin.com/in/charlesyeh/
Christie Kim: linkedin.com/in/christiekimck/
Clay: clay.com
Kareem Amin: linkedin.com/in/kareemamin/
MIT: mit.edu
Newfront: newfront.com
Palantir: palantir.com/
Persona: withpersona.com
Rippling: rippling.com
Scale AI: scale.com
Snowflake: snowflake.com
Square: squareup.com
Y Combinator: ycombinator.com
Zachary Van Zant: linkedin.com/in/zacharyv/
Where to find Rick:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-song-25198b24/
Where to find Brett:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson
Where to find First Round Capital:
Website: https://firstround.com/
First Round Review:
