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Early Affirm employees raise $70M for SentiLink, an identity verification startup

by Mary Ann Azevedo

SentiLink, an identity verification technology startup, has raised $70 million in a Series B funding round led by Craft Ventures.

Felicis Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and NYCA also participated in the financing, which brings the company’s total raised to $85 million since its 2017 inception. The company declined to reveal at what valuation the money was raised, saying only it was “at a very high multiple” of its 2019 $15 million Series A led by a16z.

Naftali Harris and Max Blumenfeld founded SentiLink in mid-2017 after their experience working as data scientists at Affirm, where they built out the company’s risk function. At one point during their tenure at the installment loan provider, they came across a “peculiar” fraud case, where 12 identities applied for loans using the same name and date of birth but 12 different Social Security numbers. 

The pair was surprised to discover that all 12 of the identities had real credit reports with 750+ credit scores despite not being real people. It was then they realized how big a problem identity verification was and how poorly it was done, and founded SentiLink with Affirm CEO and founder Max Levchin’s blessing and investment.

San Francisco-based SentiLink aims to help banks, lenders and financial institutions detect fraud at the point of application through a real-time API. Specifically, those APIs detect fake and stolen identities for new account applications. For example, before a bank issues a new credit card, it will send the application information to SentiLink. SentiLink’s (Read more...)

The All In Podcast and Syndicate

by Jason Calacanis
This post is by Jason Calacanis from Jason Calacanis

A couple of months ago my pal Chamath texted me and said “I want to do a podcast with me and you.”

We discussed some names and landed on “All In,” as a tribute to our mutual friendship over poker. This was during the pandemic and in an election year, so there was plenty to talk about above and beyond technology, finance, and entrepreneurship, so we had a full docket of issues to work from.

We invited two other poker buddies to come on the pod, David Sacks and David Friedberg, and got into a quick rhythm given the massive brainpower of the two Davids.

We’ve now done 14 episodes and the podcast quickly went from the top 50 to 25 and then top three technology podcasts on Apple’s quirky podcast rankings.

People have responded in a deep and meaningful way to the podcast, tell us that it’s their favorite listen when we drop an episode every couple of weeks. People say they love the friendship and comradery they feel as we laugh it up while discussing and debating the most important issues of our time.

Fans tell me they wish the rest of the media world was more like the All In podcast, where folks listen and appreciate each other–even when they disagree. In fact, I think we appreciate each other MORE when we disagree, because it feels like we’re learning, evolving or simply getting to some central truths.

Anyway, I’m not sure if many of you come (Read more...)