Tommy Nicholas is the Co-founder and CEO of Alloy, the identity and fraud prevention platform trusted by over 700 financial service companies.
Our conversation explores the early days of fintech, why more consumer financial protections actually lead to more fraud, and gets into the weeds of various tactics he’s learned building a technical platform company like Alloy.
We talk about embracing that the hard parts of company building are actually the best parts, why you’re most likely to give up when things first start getting better, using hands-on sales implementations in the early days to gave Alloy product market fit on steroids, how hiring changes as you scale, getting 100’s of no’s over 20 months raising their Seed round, and why TAM doesn’t matter.
Thanks to Charley Ma for his help brainstorming topics for Tommy!
Thanks to Numeral for supporting this episode, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try them here: https://bit.ly/NumeralThePeel
Timestamps:
(3:56) The platform to manage fraud
(5:48) What fintech risk was like in the early 2010’s
(14:34) Why company building never gets easier
(19:30) Reasons the hard stuff is actually the good stuff
(24:00) You’re most likely to give up when things start getting better
(33:47) Doing hands-on sales implementation to get PMF on steroids
(42:26) Deciding when PLG or hands-on sales will work best
(52:33) Why more consumer financial protections leads to more fraud
(58:14) 20 months to raise $2m vs $200m from a spreadsheet
(1:06:32) “Make yourself look like a good investment”
(1:10:14) Why TAM doesn’t matter
(1:14:35) How to hire collaborative problem solvers
(1:24:38) Why Alloy didn’t do much marketing early on
Referenced
Try Alloy: https://www.alloy.com/
Charley Ma’s Pod Episode: https://youtu.be/5cxgB1_q2lw
Try Artie: https://www.artie.com/
Follow Tommy
Twitter: https://x.com/tommyrva
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommynicholas
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
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