Ten years of Veriff: from a small island to building global trust

Ten years ago, a young engineer from a small island in Estonia saw something broken and decided to fix it. What began as a curiosity about digital identity has become a global mission: making the internet a safer, more trustworthy place for everyone.

In the first episode of our Veriff 10th Anniversary podcast series, our host Anisah Osman Britton sits down with Kaarel Kotkas, Veriff’s founder and CEO, to look back on how it all began and where trust online is heading next.

Podcast produced by Any Other Business

Solving a problem no one else was fixing

When Kaarel started Veriff in 2015, he wasn’t chasing hype or a business trend. He’d been asked by TransferWise (now Wise) to look into improving their identity verification flow, and what he found was a global weak spot.

Back then, most verification systems relied on a few static photos of an ID. They were slow, inaccurate, and easy to manipulate. “As a kid, I could edit the date of birth on an ID with just a bit of (Microsoft) paint,” Kaarel laughs. By 2015, with Photoshop everywhere, fraudsters were moving money and creating accounts for people who didn’t exist.

The problem was obvious and the solution, equally so. “You can’t only rely on three pictures when the cost of doing fraud is so low,” Kaarel explains. “You need thousands of data points and a video from start to finish. That’s how you build a home for people’s identities.”

It wasn’t a lifelong dream or a childhood passion but simply a broken system that needed fixing; and Kaarel was determined to fix it.

From an Estonian island to the world

Kaarel grew up on Hiiumaa, one of Estonia’s 1,500 islands, larger than Malta but home to only about 10,000 people. It was there he learned to be resourceful and curious. “I had my best childhood there,” he says, “but I moved to Tallinn for windsurfing, which was my first big leap into something bigger.”

That island mentality (small community, global horizon) shaped Veriff’s DNA. Estonia itself provided fertile ground: a country where citizens have had digital IDs for over 20 years and even vote online.

“Estonia gave us an unfair advantage,” Kaarel reflects. “We knew what the future of identity would look like. But it also pushed us to be global from day one. We had no domestic market to rely on.”

From its first engineers in Germany and Georgia to its current global footprint, Veriff has been international in both mindset and mission. “We started in Estonia,” Kaarel says, “but Veriff isn’t an Estonian company. It’s a global team, building global trust.”

Building trust, one verification at a time

The first real test came when Veriff began onboarding customers, including one elderly woman applying for a loan. Someone had convinced her she needed to “verify her identity” so her pension would arrive earlier. Kaarel remembers realizing that fraud wasn’t just about lost money; it was about people being taken advantage of.

“That was the moment I knew why we were doing this,” he says. “To stop people from being exploited. To protect them.”

Veriff’s growth was steady and sustainable. The first investment, €60,000 from an early banking partner, arrived in October 2015, allowing Kaarel to build the first cross-platform prototype. Within seven months, the team went live with three customers and operated profitably for the first three years.

“Every euro mattered,” he says. “It taught us the value of independence and financial discipline. If the math doesn’t work, the mission can’t scale.”

Lessons from YC and beyond

In 2018, Veriff joined Y Combinator (YC), the same accelerator that launched Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. For Kaarel, it wasn’t just validation; it was acceleration.

“YC helped us learn what it really takes to build a global business,” he says. “You can’t take a market as a tourist. You need to live it, breathe it.”

Those three months in Silicon Valley were intense, but transformative. They also marked a turning point: a full reset of early investor timelines, renewed focus on product-market fit, and a sharper sense of mission.

“It showed us we can win any race if we play by the rules and know what it takes,” Kaarel reflects. “Validation doesn’t come from investors, it comes from execution.”

Growing as a founder and as a team

As Veriff scaled, Kaarel learned that growth comes from people first. In the early days, nearly every new hire joined through conversation, not recruitment campaigns. “We didn’t have much to offer except purpose,” he says. “I just talked to people I admired, asked for advice, and told them honestly what we were trying to build.”

That humility still shapes Veriff’s culture today. “I value sincerity, competence, and reliability,” Kaarel explains. “Sincerity means no ego, you’re here for the mission. Competence means knowing how to solve a problem or how to figure it out. Reliability means I can trust you to get it done.”

Now, as Veriff evolves from a single-product company to a multi-product platform, Kaarel’s role has shifted from player to coach. “It’s like football,” he laughs. “Beckham might want to go back on the field, but his real job is to make the team better than he ever was.”

The next ten years: rebuilding digital trust

Looking ahead, Kaarel sees identity as the foundation of a more human internet. He compares it to how platforms like Airbnb and Uber built trust through brand and accountability. But now, with AI blurring the lines between real and synthetic, that trust must be rebuilt at a global level.

“The world is just beginning to understand how critical trust is,” he says. “Technology has globalized everything, but identity has stayed static and political. Our identities are more than government-issued documents. They’re the sum of our trust signals, and that’s where Veriff comes in.”

Kaarel’s vision for the next decade is ambitious: to build a borderless trust network where identity verification empowers people everywhere to access services and opportunities freely. “One day,” he says, “your passport might not be issued by a country, but by Veriff.”

A decade in, the mission continues

From fixing bugs at TransferWise to leading a global identity company, Kaarel’s journey reflects Veriff’s own growth, from a simple idea to a mission that touches millions. And while he’s proud of how far the company has come, he’s far from done.

“The problem is still huge,” he says. “There’s so much to build. But every verification brings us closer to a world where people can truly trust the internet again.”