What's the secret to the $ 3 billion startup's success? - Walla! TECH

2021-05-26T17:27:20.347Z

Liron Damari, the founder of Porter, which is worth over $ 3 billion, was a guest on the "Taktuk" podcast and revealed all the secrets

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What's the secret to the $ 3 billion startup's success?

The three founders of Porter are not software people, even though the company they founded implements artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms to prevent fraud automatically.

Liron Damari, founder and president of Forter, is a guest on the Tech Talk podcast

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When you think of successful start-ups, and especially unicorns, you usually think of terms like 8200, programmers, and computer science graduates, and in some cases, even those born to the right families.

In this sense Forter is a slightly different animal, mainly and since its founders do not really meet any of these definitions.

Already worth $ 3 billion (Photo: Avi Raul)

"Mistake is something we embrace"

The largest companies on the Fortune 500 list rely on Forter as their main anti-fraud platform, with the company reporting that it defends transactions worth more than $ 250 billion annually that are carried out on the world's largest trading and banking platforms. Its clients include seven of the world's largest travel companies, such as Priceline, and Kiwi, leading brands such as Ray-Ban, Ralph Lauren, and Calvin Klein, and technology companies such as Fiverr, Instacart, HoneyBook and hundreds of other leading companies. In January 2020, the company was ranked as the market leader in online fraud prevention in a Frost Radar report produced by leading analyst firm Frost & Sullivan.

But all of these are the starting point for our conversation with Liron Damari, founder and president of Porter who told us about the journey to founding the company, the difficulties, the challenges and the most interesting fact that as mentioned, none of the company's founders are programmers.

"We are talking today about the order of $ 250 billion in transactions a year. It is definitely a very big responsibility, and I think one way, it is acceptance and understanding that we are improving as we go along, and we are doing the best we can, but a built-in part of risk management is the mistake. Something we embrace, even if it's the key, even if it's the analyst, and actually caused some error of judgment, but we know we're in a system where we're chasing someone smart. "A bit, we just have to make sure it does not happen again, that we are driven in the significant big places."

Our secret weapon

Especially in the days when faculties of humanities are closing and it seems that the value of arts and studies that are not significant high-tech professions, Porter is proof of the importance of these faculties, and shows that even from there, a startup worth more than $ 1 billion can be established.

Porter was founded by Liron Damari, Michael Wrightblatt, and Alon Shemesh.

Liron and Michael met at a high school in Jerusalem, and then met Alon.

In a basement in the center of the country, Porter, the world leader in e-commerce fraud prevention, has begun to develop.

The company's solution is embedded in the online retail sites of the world's largest retailers and handles a turnover of over $ 200 billion and protects over 750 million consumers worldwide from credit card fraud, identity theft, account theft and more.

The technological power was brought with him by VP of Technology Yiftach Gideoni, who joined the company 7 years ago.

Liron Damari, one of the company's three founders (Photo: Victor Levy)

"Porter's story is atypical. These are not founders who came from Tel Aviv and made 8200. I grew up in Hatzor HaGlilit. Alon Shemesh grew up in the village of Yona and Michael is an immigrant who came from Siberia at the age of 9 in Ma'ale Adumim. It's a rude word, but I believe in the fact that people who actually study the humanities have a lot to contribute to the high-tech world and Porter is characterized by the fact that a very large percentage of those who work in Porter are filmmakers, designers, artists, teachers and lawyers They have made the conversion and what they bring is the secret weapon, it's really the ability to come and break patterns. Of course we have the developers who write code, but the ability to come and understand what a person wants or what the development of the world means is a much broader concept. Non-programmers have a lot to contribute in high-tech. "