In this episode, we speak with Andrew Black, Managing Director of ConnectID, which is part of Australian Payments Plus. Andrew, who is an expert in the convergence of IDtech and open banking, sheds light on a unique approach to building bank-backed digital identity and the user experience that it enables. It was fascinating to unpack the role governance plays in ConnectID with some tangible examples, and analyze how the UX of an identity exchange differs from that of an identity wallet.We also speculate a bit on why both true open banking and true interoperable digital identity have weaker-than-expected adoption, and how to balance solving business problems with building a future we all want to live in.To contact Andrew, you can reach out on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-black-a5118239/. Learn more about ConnectID at https://connectid.com.au/.Reach out to Riley (@rileyphughes) and Trinsic (@trinsic_id) on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you.

Sarah Clark, SVP of Digital Identity at Mastercard, discusses Mastercard's ID network and the challenges and opportunities in the reusable identity space. The conversation includes go-to-market strategies, collaboration for a global ecosystem, use cases of reusable identity, decentralized identity approaches, and the future of digital identity in Web3.

In this episode, we sit down with Keith Uber, VP of Sales Engineering at Ubisecure, to discuss the role of verifiable credentials in identity and access management.Keith shares his insights on Organizational Identity and how vLEIs change the game, create new business opportunities, and unlock efficiencies for representatives of businesses to transact more seamlessly.Keith also shares his perspective on how Ubisecure is engaging with the eIDAS 2.0 and European Identity Wallet initiatives on the consumer identity side.We explore the fascinating overlap between Organizational Identity and Consumer Identity. While Ubisecure’s focus is in the EU market, there are loads of insights that will be helpful to people building IDtech products around the world.To learn more about Ubisecure, visit https://www.ubisecure.com/.Be sure to check out Ubisecure’s podcast titled ‘Let's Talk About Digital Identity’ at https://www.ubisecure.com/lets-talk-about-digital-identity-podcast/.Reach out to Riley (@rileyphughes) and Trinsic (@trinsic_id) on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you.

Today’s guest is Ankur Patel, Head of Product at Entra Verified ID which is Microsoft’s decentralized identity product. We begin the conversation by reviewing Microsoft’s storied history of identity initiatives, and why one of the world’s most valuable companies made decentralized identity one of their major focus areas.We dive into the recent announcement about verifiable credentials on LinkedIn, which allows companies to issue employment credentials, so LinkedIn members can truly prove they actually work at the organization listed on their LinkedIn profile.Ankur is one of the pioneers in decentralized identity and his perspective on why enterprises are adopting decentralized identity is fascinating.Reach out to Ankur on Twitter (@_AnkurPatel) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/4ankurpatel/). To learn more about Microsoft Entra Verified ID visit the following two links:https://aka.ms/verifyoncehttps://aka.ms/didfordevsReach out to Riley (@rileyphughes) and Trinsic (@trinsic_id) on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you.

Today’s guest is Eric Starr, Co-founder & CEO of UltraPass ID—an IDtech product for governments.Eric shares his story trying to solve civic problems through the political system via Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign and how he ended up starting a company to reimagine how citizens interact with government.We go through the problem caused by many government silos of personal data, why Eric landed on verifiable credentials to solve the problem, and why governments are a challenging but super important segment to target because they hold the keys to verifiable credential adoption.Eric is convinced that solving problems for government stakeholders with real solutions, not with technological dogma, is the way verifiable credentials will be adopted.Reach out and connect with Eric and his team at https://www.ultrapassid.com/.Reach out to Riley (@rileyphughes) and Trinsic (@trinsic_id) on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you.

Today’s guest is Timothy Ruff, General Partner at Digital Trust Ventures. Timothy is an early pioneer of self-sovereign identity as a co-founder of Evernym, a co-creator of Sovrin, and an advisor to several IDtech startups. Timothy has countless battle scars from being on the ground floor of so much innovation in the decentralized identity space.In this episode, we discuss the difference between a use case and a business case and how to bridge the gap. We also talk about the humility required to change your mind about your idea when you’re wrong. And one of the most pivotal things Timothy has changed his mind about in recent years is that blockchain isn’t needed for SSI. We close by talking about where Timothy thinks the most ripe path to verifiable credential adoption lies in the near term.Multiple resources for SSI entrepreneurs are recommended within the episode and are listed below:The Cold Start Problem - Andrew Chen (Book)Running Lean by Ash Maurya - (Book)Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet - (Book)Without Their Permission by Alexis Ohanian - (Book)To reach out to Timothy, email him at timothy@digitaltrust.vcReach out to Riley (@rileyphughes) and Trinsic (@trinsic_id) on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you.

Today’s guest is Manny Nijjar, co-founder and CEO of Truu, which is a healthcare-focused IDtech product that’s been involved in one of the most impressive production verifiable credentials rollouts to date. Their platform, alongside a handful of other vendors, helped the largest health system in the world respond to the COVID-19 pandemic—all while Manny was also serving on the front lines as an infectious disease doctor, leading his hospital’s COVID-19 response.The main takeaway from this episode is that involving end-users in your product development is key. You’ll hear how the biggest barriers for the NHS staff passport were not technology problems but user experience and adoption problems. And as an end-user of his own product, nobody can speak better about these points than Manny. He then breaks down those learnings and how he’s applied them to adjust both the product and go-to-market approaches he’s taking at Truu.This is an amazing opportunity for IDtech builders to shortcut the trial-and-error process of launching a product, by hearing what worked, what didn’t, and what Truu is doing about it next.To learn more about Truu or to contact Manny, email manreet@truu.id. Visit Truu’s website at https://www.truu.id/.Reach out to Riley (@rileyphughes) and Trinsic (@trinsic_id) on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you.

Today’s guest is Evin McMullen, co-founder and CEO of Disco.xyz.We start and end this episode with Evin framing identity as the coolest, most interesting thing people should be working on. She paints such a compelling picture in language that’s so accessible, and she shares tips on how the rest of us can level up our messaging to attract more users as well.We break down Disco’s product and the origin of their term of choice—the “data backpack”. We go into some of the choices they made in their journey, including how NFTs and verifiable credentials relate in web3, and how they’ve tackled the 3-sided cold-start problem most IDtech businesses face. We also spent some time talking about the factors that make now such a compelling moment in time for digital identity and IDtech product builders.Evin is easily one of the most fun people in the digital identity world. She has such a way of taking complex things and turning them into snack-able bits of content. If you don’t come out of this episode with a new pithy way to describe digital identity, you should probably go back and listen again because there are so many useful takeaways.To get your very first data backpack, visit app.disco.xyz. Learn more about Disco at disco.xyz, and follow Disco on Twitter @discxoxyz. Follow Evin on Twitter at @provenauthority. And feel free to join Disco's Discord community.Reach out to Riley (@rileyphughes) and Trinsic (@trinsic_id) on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you.

Today’s guest is Paul Ashley, CTO and co-CEO of Anonyome Labs. Paul starts by talking about how the erosion of privacy online and the rise of data brokers and surveillance capitalism led them to create their IDtech product MySudo. MySudo is a privacy application that allows users to create secure digital profiles, or personas, with unique disposable phone numbers, emails, credit cards, and other identifiers to use across the internet.With hundreds of thousands of users, MySudo has defied conventional wisdom that consumers won’t pay for identity services, making it among a handful of successful, sustainable IDtech businesses. Paul breaks down how they’ve succeeded by taking a practical product approach and by talking about use cases rather than features.Our conversation naturally led to a discussion about how decentralized identity fits into their roadmap, which Paul called the biggest privacy breakthrough of the next decade. We talk about some of the opportunities and challenges in this nascent space, including navigating the complex technology landscape, how to find good problems for decentralized identity to solve first, and how their experience building what some would call a “web2” identity product is informing the way they tackle the UX of verifiable credentials.This is a conversation that will interest anyone who has a passion for privacy and safety online and will be very insightful for anyone building a consumer identity product.To learn more about MySudo and Anonyome Labs or to get in contact with a team member, visit https://anonyome.com/.Download MySudo on the Apple Store. Download MySudo on Google Play.Reach out to Riley (@rileyphughes) and Trinsic (@trinsic_id) on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you.

Today’s guest is Sebastian Mellen, Co-founder and CEO of Cerebrum. His team is building an IDtech product called vID, tackling data and compliance problems in healthcare, HR systems, and even youth sports teams.In this conversation, we cut right to some meaty topics, including some of the biggest challenges that IDtech products tend to face. Sebastian gives insight into Cerebrum’s trojan horse go-to-market strategy into large corporates, how they’ve translated self-sovereign identity language into “enterprise speak”, how they’ve addressed the chicken-and-egg problem that exists in many IDtech ecosystems, and much more.Sebastian’s perspective on the importance of forming strategic partnerships to break into regulated industries will be super useful to other IDtech product builders.Learn more about Cerebrum at https://www.cerebrum.com/. Reach out to Sebastian on Twitter.Reach out to Riley (@rileyphughes) and Trinsic (@trinsic_id). We’d love to hear from you.