Going back to the future with TechCrunch

Yesterday, Somesh Dash, a Pindrop Security board member and investor and general partner at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), wrote an article in TechCrunch on why it’s important for entrepreneurs to strike a balance between old and new when developing technology. In the article, Somesh uses the example of how Beats by Dre capitalized on seemingly old audio technology to provide listeners with an entirely new listening experience.
While headphones may not be the “sexy” tech that comes to mind when thinking of Silicon Valley, this idea is one example of reimagining the possibilities of what an antiquated product could be. To a similar degree, Pindrop created its industry leading fraud prevention and authentication platform on the phone channel. Phone fraud may not be as headline grabbing as cyber crime, but security on the phone channel has remained static for nearly 40 years, and we’re solving a huge problem for companies that rely on call centers for customer transactions.
Somesh mentioned Pindrop within his article as an example of a company that is not only addressing an issue with a traditional model, but also issues that will arise in the future. As consumers are moving to voice as their preferred interface with the advent of technology like that seen in Siri, Cortana and Amazon Echo, companies that handle mobile transactions will now be tasked with securing voice-authorized requests. Identity and security becomes even harder with the massive proliferation of IoT devices.
We recently solidified a patent for our Phoneprinting technology, which can dissect audio and identify indicators of fraud. The implications of this technology are already being seen in the call centers of the largest financial and retail institutions in the U.S. Looking forward, this same technology that determines the legitimacy of a customer can be used to determine whether the content transferred during the transaction has been manipulated in flight in real time.
Pindrop is ensuring the security of the smart homes and devices of the future. Millions of citizen’s can sleep soundly knowing that their financial assets are safe, which is truly a cause Somesh and IVP support backing over the long run.
We wanted to take this time to congratulate Somesh on his great article and for recognizing that he must not overlook those innovators that look back to the future – reimagining how an old technology can address new problems for the consumers or enterprises.
Read Somesh’s article here: https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/14/how-entrepreneurs-can-strike-a-balance-between-old-and-new/