Four things we learned from speaking to Janer Gorohhov

1. The list of use cases for identity verification is endless

As Janer points out, identity fraud is evolving rapidly both in terms of scale and sophistication, especially with recent developments in AI.

"It’s easy to go online and find a tool to do something bad. So, fraud has grown because the cost of fraud has gone down," he said.

That rapid growth means that identity verification is becoming increasingly important in almost every sector.

"Somebody asked me 'is there any industry that actually doesn’t need identity?', and it was very hard for me to find examples of industries we don’t work with," he added.

As well as bread-and-butter clients such as video gaming companies and growth sectors such as education, Janer highlights some less obvious examples, including the real estate market and even facilitating and securing the democratic process.

"I think it will take some time, but I’ve seen the value of voting online," say Janer. "Being Estonian, we have a digital identity, and for the last few years I’ve voted from my summer cottage, where there’s no electricity, no running water, no anything."

2. With the right people, everything is solvable

Asked for his tips on leading a team, Janer’s response speaks volumes about the culture of collaboration, empowerment and trust at Veriff. He talks about being humble as a leader, and both his words and his actions bear this out.

"Veriff is 500 plus people – I could never do this alone, it’s total teamwork," he comments. "People are so important – you should focus on getting the right people but also make sure that you keep those people." 

To him, it’s all about hiring the right person for the job, then trusting them to do that job.

"You see a problem, you focus on that problem, and you find a person that solves that problem much better – then you move on to the next problem," he says simply.

Janer believes that as a leader you should always focus on solutions, and that having the right team means there’s nothing that can’t ultimately be solved. 

"There’s no such thing as an impossible situation, actually," he says, matter-of-factly. "Sometimes you need to put more energy into it, you need to put more heart into it, and usually the bigger the company gets, the bigger the problems are. But everything is solvable if you believe it is."

3. Customers are the heartbeat of Veriff

When it comes to explaining Veriff’s success, Janer believes that as well as excellent technology and data, customer centricity is key.

"Customers are the heartbeat of Veriff and there needs to be a very strong correlation between our strategy and the problems that they’re seeing. Any idea, any feature, any problem that we’re seeing needs to have a customer voice written into it, because otherwise how can we be sure that we actually solve a problem for the customer?"

"There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in the industry and therefore a lot of companies, they have a partner, but they’ve given up a little bit on what they can trust, and they need to validate everything," he says. "We’ve always served the customer and their products first, and I think that’s a little bit of a beacon in the industry."

As Janer sees it, the secret dream of every product developer is when that product brings value to the customer. That customer can also be the end user – he cites an example from the pandemic when a member of the public got in touch to say thank you because Veriff’s identity verification had enabled them to sell their apartment during lockdown.

"A person actually reached out to us and said, 'thanks for building this'," he says. "And that’s so powerful." 

4. ‘Identity 2.0’ is coming

While he’s clearly proud of what Veriff has already achieved, Janer remains realistic about the task ahead.

"We’re not even close to solving the problem of online fraud," he says frankly. "Identity verification is still such a young industry and there’s a lot to be done in terms of building trust online."

"I think identity will go through a huge, kind of two-point-zero change of how people verify their identities, of how businesses ask users to verify their identities."

"That’s our two-to-three-year focus, how do we build something that’s the two-point-zero of identity verification?"

Asked what that might look like, Janer’s response is characteristically people-focused.

"What’s the most trusted place we have in our lives?" he asks. "It’s our home – and I think trusting people online should be as effortless as knowing whom to invite into your home."