For the latest instalment in our content series, The Startup Journey, my team sat down with Silicon Valley veteran Garrett Gafke.During the conversation, he recalled talking to people like “Jeff, who was getting the bookstore at the time” and “Peter Thiel & Elon Musk, who were at PayPal.” around the time he was building his startup.However, it wasn't always plain sailing for Garrett.They spent four years in “stealth mode”, building the product and having conversations with the market.Garrett was told “no” countless times.What got him through it, and ultimately led him to success, was the right mindset.He pioneered the Digital Identity space.But when he first started, he struggled to get early adopters.The market simply wasn’t ready to adopt it.Garett could've given up and abandoned his idea. Instead, he took the time to educate the market."We would talk about it with people and they would look at us blank-faced.I’ll give you an example of how far this goes back. I was meeting with people like Jeff Bezos, who was getting the bookstore (Amazon – yes, it started as a simple online bookstore) going at the time.I was speaking to Peter Thiel & Elon Musk, who were at PayPal with another friend of ours Bill Harris. They were just getting that going with Max Levchin.Marc Andreessen was over at Netscape. I was over at Verifone.No one had ever discussed what Digital Identity was. We had to take that time to educate the market."Again, they were pioneering the digital identity market. This meant lots of conversations about things that were unknown and confusing to people.To give you a snap in time for some context, this was around 2008. The iPhone had just been released and the first truly smart devices appeared in the real world for the first time.The usage of smart devices grow rapidly through 2010.However, the concept of a digital identity was very much a foreign thing to people.Fast forward to today and there are billions of dollars going into these markets and everyone understands what it is.But back then, part of the challenge was explaining the concept to people."We were explaining to people that we weren’t a security company. We’re not trying to figure out how to help you log in. We’re an identity company. We’re trying to build people’s identities for overall risk profiles.We were pioneering the digital identity space, and it took time for people to understand that."As smart devices became more popular, fraud exploded. Everyone was coming out with mobile banking apps.Suddenly, the importance of knowing someone’s true identity in the digital world skyrocketed.This lead to his company achieving $21M in funding, securing itself as an industry leader, and completing a successful acquisition. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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