Rick Song is the co-founder and CEO of Persona, the identity verification platform used by some of the world’s largest companies. Before starting Persona, Rick worked on identity fraud and risk products at Square, which laid the groundwork for what would become Persona’s highly technical, horizontal platform. Since founding the company, Rick has scaled Persona into a category-defining leader, recently raising a $200M Series D at a $2B valuation.

In today’s episode, we discuss:

How Rick’s skepticism shaped Persona’s early strategy
What it takes to scale a true platform company
Successful execution in hypercompetitive markets
What Rick’s learned from his co-founder, Charles Yeh
and much more…

Referenced:

Where to find Rick:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-song-25198b24/

Where to find Brett:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson

Where to find First Round Capital:

Website: https://firstround.com/
First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast

Timestamps:

(0:05) Life before Persona

(2:11) The push from Charles

(3:09) Early reluctance and low expectations

(9:50) Winning the first $50 customer

(13:08)“Invalidating” Persona

(16:43) How Persona found their edge

(19:35) Transitioning from MVP to platform

(24:18) Turning down a $5K deal on principle

(26:47) Generalizing bespoke solutions

(28:28) Finding product-market fit

(33:51) Founder-led sales and consultative approach

(39:30) Building a culture of reactivity

(45:47) Landing the first enterprise customers

(51:34) Silicon Valley’s obsession with frameworks

(58:17) Developing first principles thinking

(1:00:24) Stay competitor-informed

Envisioning an Energy Efficient Tech Future