Meet Jeff Guy, Veriff's President & COO
We are thrilled to announce Jeffrey Guy as Veriff's President and Chief Operational Officer. Jeff brings more than 25 years of experience to help Veriff meet the growing demand for its identity verification solution amid increasing global online fraud.
Karita Sall
Jeffrey brings a wealth of leadership experience at technology companies in driving profitable growth and expanding product portfolio. Before joining the Veriff team, he was Chief Operating Officer at DigitalOcean, a publicly traded cloud computing platform provider. In this role, Jeff built and led a global team of 1,100 – scaling and maturing the business from $180M of revenue to $800M while simultaneously turning around the free cash flow of the company. Before DigitalOcean, he held similar leadership roles at DigitalGlobe (Satellite and Earth Observation) and Trimble (GPS Technologies).
We had a chat with Jeff to find out more about what drew him to Veriff.
Welcome to the team, Jeff! Could you please share what drew you to Veriff and its mission?
After the last 4 years in the cloud market space, you get a strong appreciation for fraud and your obligation to a “better and safer” e-commerce experience for all. Veriff has access to a large $20B+ and growing identity market with product market fit in the core IDV product. Everyone I met during the interview process was values-based and mission-driven which are attributes that demonstrate a winning culture. Lastly, my profitable growth-oriented, maturing of businesses over the last few decades are a complementary skill to Kaarel, the Veriff founder, and the broader leadership team.
Jeff has an incredible track record of scaling businesses, and having someone of his caliber on board is a real coup for Veriff as we are on our journey of becoming the global source of truth for identity online.
You have 25+ years of leadership experience, what are you most proud of in your career so far?
I am proud of being a leader in profitable growth companies with great purpose, vision, and values growing from a few hundred million to billions of revenue dollars. Veriff now becomes the fourth in my career journey. I am proud of being part of management teams that take companies public and provide career milestones for all team members along for the ride.
What are some of the takeaways from previous roles that contribute to your work at Veriff?
Many of those companies were a few hundred million dollars in revenue when I started, and with great engineering, product, and marketing leadership, grew quickly in a complex global tech market space. You learn a lot through those tough times and crazy macroeconomic conditions like the dot.com bubble, COVID crisis, political unrest, crypto winter, etc. Most valuable is balancing the needs of your primary three stakeholders: Customers, Team members, and Investors. Unfortunately, they are seldom in equilibrium. Focus on simplicity and speed of execution and always pay attention to competitive threats.
Jeff's enthusiasm, drive, and determination will strengthen our position in providing the most accurate global identity verification online.
What excites you most about your role at Veriff?
- Enthusiasm (mission focus), talent, and ambition of the Veriff team members.
- Large, virtually untapped $20B addressable market
- Ability to develop game-changing solutions for a transforming identity marketplace
- The challenge of simplifying and focusing the organization on the critical few initiatives that will make “step function” improvements to revenue growth and profitability.
I am excited to join Veriff at this pivotal time and have the ability to develop game-changing solutions for a transforming identity marketplace while also having fun and enjoying the culture of being part of a winning team.
Aside from your work at Veriff, what are some of your other commitments and passion projects you are currently working on? Any hobbies?
With a demanding role at Veriff, five children, an awesome wife, and now one grandchild, there are not a lot of free calories left for other commitments. We are also in the middle of a move from Denver to Austin, including getting my 13-year-old into football and school. Relocation, including designing our new home in Austin, could be categorized as my “current project”.
As for hobbies, I love boating, golfing, cycling, and attending sporting events with my kids. I also used to play rugby, but I retired when I turned 50.
Onto some rapid-fire questions
What is a must-read book?
"Die with zero" by Bill Perkins
Favorite podcast?
Ted Talks Daily
One word to describe Veriff?
Limitless
One piece of advice to someone starting their career in tech now?
Seek to understand the disparate needs and how to create a balance between your customers, fellow team members, and investors.
