The Future of Finance Compliance | Shiran Weitzman

Shiran Weitzman is the CEO and co-founder at Shield, a regulatory technology software company specializing in eComms record-keeping and compliance data analytics. Shield helps organizations reduce the risks associated with electronic communications and uncover hidden insights, such as inside dealing, unlawful behavior and privacy matters, resulting in greater operational efficiency and reduced costs. The technology is currently being used in top-tier banks, leading tech companies and large organizations, with promising and successful results.

Shiran has over 15 years of technology and management expertise, mainly in the financial services vertical. He was previously the head of sales at TM-Group, where he was in charge of the company's primary tier-one bank accounts. Shiran brings to Shield many years of experience as a trusted advisor and subject matter expert in the financial compliance market. Another testament to his expertise in his field is when he joined the Forbes Finance Council as a member in 2020.

Shiran holds an MBA from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a B.A. in Computer Science from IDC Herzliya. With his deep expertise in financial services and electronic communications in the workplace, Shiran is ready to extend a helping hand and inspire your audience.

Youtube :
https://youtu.be/ul3MO2QJHog

Transcript

osh Bolton  0:00  
I'm just going to turn the recording off, so I don't forget. So what are you? What's your plans this

shiran  0:04  
Monday? What's my plan? Yeah. Well, I was in front of this laptop from the morning until I actually finished one minute ago, the last call.

Josh Bolton  0:19  
I'll just business costs.

shiran  0:21  
All business calls. Mainly external. But yeah, all business calls. And yeah, I'm just finishing with you. And it's there now. Now it's 8pm. Israel time. Finish at nine. And yeah, then I'll go drop dead or something, you know, no, normal thing. normal, normal Monday.

Josh Bolton  0:44  
So it's just nonstop like 1215 hours

shiran  0:46  
a day for you? Yeah, not always, not always. Let's not be let's not mark it as crusade here or? No, no, no, it was a unique day to day. So usually, I'm trying to finish in a normal hour. Six, seven. Yeah. And, and cut off.

Josh Bolton  1:10  
So then what do you do? As for profession, like your I know, you're the CEO of shield, but what is like, what is

shiran  1:17  
all that? What does it mean to be the CEO of shield? Or what does it mean to be a CEO?

Josh Bolton  1:22  
What also like for your the company? What is what is she'll do?

shiran  1:25  
What is she doing? Okay. So, in one sentence, we help financial Institute's manage their electronic communications, data and risks allocated out of this. So we help them manage requirements and regularity constraints, all related to human communication, any sorts and any type of human communication that is done in a digital manner, it can be emailed chat, social media voice, anything in this domain, we are able to, or we are helping them capture and managing it and surveilling or monitoring behaviors and specific behaviors, and we have the capacity to access all of this data on the fly. Plus, to be able to monitor and detect behaviors that can lead or may lead to market manipulation or to a contract situation, conduct situation could be in harassment can be bad language can be given a determined. Market manipulation can be front running, insider dealing, etc. And we're doing that by analyzing and we have a lot of a lot of analytical capabilities, analyzing the content and the sentiment within this communication. And this is a communication between you and me now. Right, right. So, you know, any sort of collaboration of any sort of human communicating with each other in a digital manner, we are able to go and help the financial firms. And for financial institute, it's mandatory to do this. So basically, that's what we that's what we're doing, we develop the platform that is doing that, handling the complete lifecycle of electronic communication compliance, a twosie. Right from the beginning to the end, the full lifecycle of it. And we are helping firms to handle specific use cases around this, you know, this very large scope of the platform. Yeah,

Josh Bolton  3:36  
as I've talked to different guys in the financial industry, it gets a little interesting, they, they smile, and like, well, we can't talk about it in that direct manner that you go in for so we'll go around this way. Kind of thing.

shiran  3:50  
Yeah, and that's absolutely right. You know, and it's becoming more and more, more and more topic these days, right? Because everyone are communicating, especially since the pandemic and since you know, all the acceleration that happened in the last in the in the last couple of years. Communication has become much more it was always there. We are all communicating all day long. But what's happening now is that everything almost moved to a digital to digital communication. The hybrid world you work from home the nowadays people are communicating much more easily via their phones and all kinds of alternative channels. And it's becoming a challenge and a straight an end. I would say it's not a straightforward for for an organization to forbid or to allow something to their employees or to their advisors or traders. So they need the system. They need a tool and these systems and what we're doing, we're trying to do it in a much less a smarter way. of looking on the signals, some some sometimes it's small signals, right? I want to move to Let's Speak online offline. We will talk about it tomorrow. All sorts of signals. Talk to me on my private phone. Remember what we spoke yesterday? Yeah. So this one, just the opposite, all sorts of signals that may indicate for us something is happening that we don't know for sure, like what's happening, but something is happening there, that allows us now to go deeper and look on the some more peripheral aspects of this individuals or people, or the specific conversation or chain of conversations. So, you know, it's a little bit more, I would say, sophisticated than just pointing a term or a lexicon hate or something like that. It's looking a little bit deeper into the, into the processes into the habits of people. Right? How many times are you speaking? Are we speaking to each other? If we're doing you know, usually we are speaking once a day, and suddenly we are speaking 100 times a day, hey, I have a challenge, or something is happening here. Mosque, we are, you know, I am always saying that I believe that all people are honest and decent. Sometimes there's you know, flipping sometimes there are shortcutting. So sometimes perhaps it was this case, and in most cases, our job is to allow the compliance team in the organization to kind of highlights, right, hey, you have this take action, give him give him a visit, or give him a call that what he's doing isn't right, he needs to straight up. So this is the majority of the of the things but the idea behind electronic communication compliance is eventually to maintain a more transparent and clean markets. That's the goal, right? It's investor protection with the end of the day. So we don't, they don't want people that have access to the market and access to data to have better, or ability to influence and to gain profits above their current job. So that's the that's, that's the fundamental behind what we're doing. We are we are considered to be on the on the good side of the business, you know, we're trying to do good, we're trying to maintain clean and trustworthy markets, and help the and help you know, the overall overall firms and the overall market to maintain something a little bit more in a sanity sanitized. Wait. Let's see.

Josh Bolton  7:45  
Yeah. And as I was just thinking, and you touched on it halfway through, which was brilliant, because I didn't say, Yeah, I could talk perfect. Whatever the algorithm needs to hear to know trigger events, but you're not monitoring my personal phone. How are you going to stop me on that?

shiran  8:01  
So that's true. That's true. We are not. We are not the CIA surveillance or, or here in Israel, we are not doing any kind of any kind of that. We are a platform that should help the firm itself. Let's say it's, it's a bank, right? We need to help them or we are helping them maintaining their processes and policies, right. So if the policy says that I'm allowed to communicate via my whatsapp, or iMessage, but I'm not allowed to communicate via telegram or signal, right. Okay, then I will monitor their WhatsApp. And I will monitor the iMessage. And I will monitor the zoom, but I will not monitor the signals, right? Because that's not what we're doing. Then, first of all, the organization is clear is on the good side, right? Because if something happens, and the and there is an investigation going on, and eventually there was no signal happening in the monitor channels, the film, isn't it, if they have done the best they could in order to maintain compliance with the regulation. So that's the primary goal. But what we also have is the understanding that in any case, we are not speaking about or the people that we are dealing with, they are not spies, they are not a perfect criminals. No one is a criminal here, right. We so the baseline is people are flipping from time to time, people are slipping aside from time to time, so people are not doing or not trying to build the perfect crime and to you know, to to conceal everything that they're doing. And within this, there probably will be some evidence and some signals happening in the monitor channels. And if there will be, we will be able to catch them. And then under explain, look, we don't know what's happening there. But something is happening there because we see a gap in the communication. And he's telling him that, you know, we spoke yesterday, but I don't see the conversation from yesterday. So something happened. And please, a human being a compliance officer, go and try to try to understand what's happening behind the scenes. Right. So that's, that's basically the the idea behind what we are able to provide the team there. Yeah,

Josh Bolton  10:38  
that's very good. So then, what inspired you to start shield? Was it just you kept getting approached by people? When you started one endeavor and turned into this?

shiran  10:51  
It's a it's a good, it's a good question. So first of all, I was personally, I was around this, this domain, my entire career, right, I was a software developer. And early in my career, I was developing in the area of voice communications, right, that's what I was doing. And afterward, I moved to sales. And then I sold to financial services, or to financial Institute's both in the, in the compliance and the, and the, I would say, more analytical views their customer experience. But it was still a monitoring and analyzing electronic communications. And then a few years ago, I would say, almost seven, eight years ago, I, I ran into a customer that had a specific requirements. And, you know, that's something that was triggering me right to keep on investigating it, because it was, it was combining everything that I know and everything that I was studying in the past, and I was certain I was certain 100%, that there is a solution in place that is already resolving it. And I kept on investigating, I reviewed everyone in the market, I couldn't see. And I couldn't find a proper solution that is having the technological depth to handle this requirements, but also the future. And that was when was that 2014, before teams become became, you know, so popular before WhatsApp was allowed in financial services, prior to zoom becoming so popular, you know, but it was clear that the digital adoption is here to stay is evolving all the time. And it requires some modern architecture and modern technology to handle everything plus the the solution that I've seen, and the and the organizations that I saw are, were implementing all sorts of different points, solutions, a solution for audio, and a solution for audio analytics, a solution for email and solution for email analytics. So you can find it in Romanisation. Everything between four to 10 different systems that handles electronic communications. And now imagine that there is a compliance team that there is an investigation team, there are people that are sitting, and each one of them is looking on one or two system, but they are not sitting and having the in the entire picture. They don't see the entire flow of data, they don't see and able to focus on on a physical entity on an on an employee or individual. They see pieces of the puzzle, right? And these pieces are also very expensive. Because you have to pay licenses, and hosting and maintenance. And you know, it's an old technology. So you have challenges. There's one on each one of these platforms. Plus it's not accurate. So it was a lot of things happens. Then I saw Okay, let's go and see the what's happening with the other regulators. I saw the US regulations right in place, then the European regulation, you know, Imia, or the Europe, European regulation came into place with the massive regulation that kind of, you know, put in place the standard in the market. And all of that combined, convinced me that I have to do this stupid thing and open and start a company. And yeah, it's a journey. What a journey.

Josh Bolton  14:36  
So were you coding Iran in the beginning, or did you have some developers join on with you to

shiran  14:40  
know so I so as you as I told you, I was a developer, I kind of my skills shifted to the to the more commercial, commercial aspect, but I have a partner and he's the co founder together with me, or Phil, and he is he is a developer Hour. He is the he's currently the CTO, but he is the developer and he managed r&d teams. So, you know, we started together, he developed the first, he wrote the first lines of codes to do some proof of concept and to see that it's actually our ideas, or our teaser of what can be done is something that we can achieve.

Josh Bolton  15:22  
That's awesome. And the reason I asked them what you said, you were developing my did you actually code or did you get someone else to do that?

shiran  15:28  
I wish I wish I remember. But actually, actually, I have other things that I am handling now. So

Josh Bolton  15:36  
obviously, you did sales and the other stuff. So you're like, I can handle getting us the product sold.

shiran  15:40  
Exactly, exactly. I'm trying to focus on product and sales, and Ophir is handling the the technological part. Thanks for that. He was able to make all the right choices so far.

Josh Bolton  15:54  
That's wonderful. Yeah, you didn't have like a whole team yelling at him. What do you got to do it quicker? Like I don't know what to do. Before we get too far into, I love where we're going. I'm gonna keep a lot of it, but what's your name? By the way? How do I properly pronounce it?

shiran  16:10  
So? Sheeran, right, you know, Ed Sheeran? Yes. So Sheeran now I have a reference. Yeah. So it's you're on Weitzman Weitzner because that's not what I would have said. Weitzman. Yes. Okay. Weitzman. Cool. So,

Josh Bolton  16:27  
then. So you started this back in 2014? Are you guys cash? Oh, no,

shiran  16:32  
no, no, we actually no, we actually started it in early 2018 18. Got it? Yeah. So we are foreign something years in the market.

Josh Bolton  16:44  
Awesome. Boom, say are you with these big clients, you probably only need land two big fishes and you're you're ready probably cashflow positive.

shiran  16:51  
So we were cashflow positive. So as a company we have, you know, we every company have its have their story and their path towards you know where they are. And we have as well. So we started as a completely bootstrapped company, right. So we, we started by selling to customers, and of course, funding ourselves. But we basically started by selling to customers. And so we were cashflow positive for the first three and a half years of operation. Nice as any as any bootstrap company should be. About a year ago, we decided that we are we have the right product market fit. We have the baseline customers, and we are ready to go global. So we are ready to go into the US market and to other other domains. So we need some money for scale. So we were looking for to select the right partners to join us. So we managed to, to close our first investment round. And yeah, that's we almost tripled our headcount. We tripled our sales since then, you know, it all goes. Pretty nice.

Josh Bolton  18:05  
That's also so then I'm just curious, this is more just a technical question, because you're based out of Israel. How do you handle I guess, the tax acts, but taxing aspect and well, and I guess, the international communication to the more of the taxing like, let's say an American hedge fund is investing in you. How would that work? I'm just curious, give me the layman's version.

shiran  18:29  
So how, how is how do we get

Josh Bolton  18:36  
it all in Israel? Kind of thing?

shiran  18:38  
No, no, no, no. So we, during the several things happened since Corona started. Right. Right. And many things that we didn't, we weren't sure that we will actually take place. But you know, in reality was hitting us. We closed a multimillion dollar deals completely via collaboration platform, via zoom via teams that, you know, without meeting the customers, we have several of these, we close the complete investment without meeting the people face to face. We made them only have six months afterwards, when things started to ease up. And yes, one of the good things before that, by the way, before COVID I we were flying back and forth to meet customers to present to them to meet investors to do all of this. Nowadays. We meet on the fly. You know, we just finished I just finished several meetings. I had two meetings, one meeting with New York and another meeting with Utah earlier I had meeting with lunch meeting all the time, there is almost no boundaries. Yes, we do need to meet face to face in order to maintain some personal relationship, right to get you know, to get the to get a more I would say bond right between people because people do business with people and users and people trust people. And you can achieve that by doing a lot of conversation and, and also video calls. But at the end of the day doesn't replace the human touch and the human interaction over over dinner or over a glass of wine or over coffee. And that's something that we are trying now to blend. But yeah, communicating with a hedge fund in in New York, is happening via zoom. However, these days, we are a little bit bigger. And we have, and we have a sales team sitting in New York, and we have a sales team and sales team in London. So they are doing most of the job. And sometimes it's, you know, them they simply meet in the city.

Josh Bolton  20:41  
That's awesome. Yeah, I was just I was just curious, because I'm like, wait, taxes. I know, there's a whole international thing. And I'm like, but if it's one of those, nevermind, then yeah, you're you're it's to check, question,

shiran  20:53  
taxes, tax wise, the world knows how to handle their tax treaties, and there is a tax a consideration. The world knows how to handle inter globalization work between companies. So that's, that's not a problem. Okay, cool.

Josh Bolton  21:15  
I guess that was my biggest one, because I was starting to sell stuff. And I had it closed. I was about to close a client till I realized that my Oh, shoot, if I closed something in Canada, I owe a lot of money on that thing. So

shiran  21:29  
again, I needed to take the tax treaty between Canada and the US and, and take action on that. But it's really starting to be straightforward. It's no longer a challenge.

Josh Bolton  21:41  
Okay, cool. Yeah, then probably just to chat with an accountant about then you're good to go.

shiran  21:45  
Go to the accountant asking if,

Josh Bolton  21:48  
yeah, so then that's interesting. You will you kind of gave us the Genesis story and how it works. And what you do specifically, what is like an example, or you can even be one of your sales pitches. Let's say I'm interested in your product, but it's like, Can I get a use case situation like this x prevented y kind of thing?

shiran  22:13  
So you're asking if we are able to detect something very, very specific? Oh, sure. Let's go with that. No, ask what what was the question? What was what was

Josh Bolton  22:25  
just the kind of like, how would you do the sales pitch to someone online saying, I want to leave? If this happens, how can you prevent this kind of thing?

shiran  22:34  
So the thing is that the online and the face to face doesn't really, it doesn't really change, does it really change is exactly the same. It's the same presentation, it's the same discussion. And actually doing the last two years, things became much more fluent in the online, you need to understand that at the end of the day, on the other side of this, of this string, sits a customer that faces challenges that we believe that our software can resolve is dealing with the challenges, either is using other systems, or he's doing it manually, but he have the challenges and these challenges cost him money. So we need to have, we need to reach a point where he understand our scope, and we understand what we're doing. But we mainly ask the ask questions in order to better understand what he needs. And that's the fundamentals in sales, not only to to throw out what is it that we want to sell, and how good our solution is the most important part after the initial pitch, we are presenting and putting the right slide? What's actually bothering him? What's actually the challenges for them? Is it in the efficiency of the compliance team? Is it in the IT organization? Is it the cost of hosting? Is it you know, what is the challenge? Is it a specific channels that he wants to monitor is isn't isn't able to capture? Is it in the data science team that is not able to do? Or to dedicate the resources to that? What's the issue? Is it too many alerts? Is it the false positive rates? What are the actual issues that are bothering him? What's What's his being what will make him be a successful manager if you know if he is implemented right, is implemented, right. So you know, this, these are the questions that eventually we would like to understand in most cases we can there are cases and we are honest enough and saying look, what what you currently have is good enough, right? You're not ready to move to another it will be too expensive. But in most cases, we are you know, we have a very clear, compelling event. So what is bothering him? Is it a cost? Is it the end of life of the solution? There is a lot of a lot of a lot of reasons why people wants to replaces solution, why people need to implement a solution. But the bottom line is that the customers that we speak live with, it's not a nice to have, it's a must have. So the only question is, are they choosing shield? Or are they choosing something else? That's the question, or are they developing themselves? So we don't need to, we don't need to explain what they need for the solution, we need to explain why we think our solution is better. And when we would like as a company or as an individual, we would like to understand what his challenges are, what hair challenges within her current job? And how can we address them?

Josh Bolton  25:43  
So I'm just curious, you mentioned it a few times, or at least twice the navy or three, I might have missed a third one is the finances. So I'm taking that times the biggest objection? Is your pricing.

shiran  25:55  
Actually, no, pricing is never an issue. No. Pricing is never an issue. No. Generally speaking, right? Sometimes it can be. But pricing is never a showstopper. Yes, we are we are we are in an industry that the cost of doing something wrong, right? It's like investing in health. Right? Really? Would you spend $10 less and go to, to a plumber to fix your, your teeth? Or you will go to anywhere able to pay $20 More, and go to the world class? Dentist? That's the question. It's marginal, its marginal, and the difference is significant. That's why pricing isn't really an issue because the cost of implementing and that's always by the way, you know, something that, you know, my father was teaching me, you buy cheap, you pay more, it's more expensive at the end of the day, right? So the, I think that the most important part in selling is finding a partner on the other side, we are looking for partners on as our customers as well, they need to see us as a partner, are we do we understand them too? Are we able to handle their challenges, are we able to grow together with them to handle their future challenges, or to be able to provide solutions to their future challenges. So it's a partnership at the end of the day, and it's a trust between people. That's the issue. Pricing. By the way, in general, my belief in general, when you again, when it's not a commodity, right, when you're going and looking for a telephone, right or for a phone, and it cost, it's the same phone, but it simply cost $10 More in in the other shop, I will probably buy where it's cheaper. But when it's not commodity, when it's something that is involving a high touch, high touches solution with a lot of moving parts. Choose, right, we need to choose the right thing. It's like choosing a contractor to fix your house. You know, he can give you the cheapest offer, but usually pay more, you'll notice

Josh Bolton  28:13  
that in two years, we're like, Oh, yeah.

shiran  28:16  
Hey, sometimes it happens on the fly. Yeah, we haven't included this yet. You have to trust the person, right? So you're engaging with someone and you're buying a solution, or you are getting into a partnership, you have to trust them. That, you know, you see eye to eye is they're not trying to screw you or they're not, they're not trying to, to capitalize on you only, they really understand. And we really have a mutual goal. So you know, pricing is never an issue. It's a value that you know, what is the value? And are we I'm trying to we're trying to present the value of the solution and for us as a company. So that's,

Josh Bolton  28:53  
it's interesting, okay. It's, it's interesting how you said the pricing is not the issue. I recently closed, I closed a client for me on the side, I added shows for him. And it was just one of the total and like, I'm not cheap, but I can get it done. And he's like, whatever the price is get done, because it'll take me 1015 hours, I'd rather pay you your rate and save my time kind of thing.

shiran  29:14  
I am look, there are all sorts of people in the world, right? Again, when we are selling price, you know, there is always a competitive situation as but price shouldn't be an issue. But in any industry, right? If if you go to an advisor, right, and the advisor is worth the money, right, or, you know, it's the high class, it's usually it's usually worth the money, right? So if you get the high quality, high quality advice or high quality service, it's usually much better than procure the cheapest one that you're not sure if it will be good or bad. It's a it's a gamble. So, you know, I was you know, maybe it's a matter of age, but I will always prepare prefer the I prefer the quality.

Josh Bolton  30:04  
And I think that's just in general, but a lot of us through time, got used to cheaper prices, and Eriko higher value. And so this morning when you're like, well, it's gonna cost you more to do more. And you're like,

shiran  30:17  
Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, it's, we're there, it's

Josh Bolton  30:22  
Yeah. It's just human nature is always something changing like that.

shiran  30:26  
It's human nature. Yeah, people like to negotiate and it's fine. It's okay. It's not saying it's not that we are saying, yeah, it's our pal. This is the price. No one is negotiating at everything. It's a, you know, it's business and people are doing business with people. And negotiation is part of it. That's fine. But price competition or price war is never a good solution is never never it's not a success on the long run. Never. Okay, so I'm just gonna value. Yes.

Josh Bolton  30:59  
Yes, you do. So I'm just curious who's like your predominant clientele like banks, hedge fund managers, traders.

shiran  31:06  
So for us, it's financial services. So it's everything from the buy side and sell sides. So it will be banks, wealth managers, asset managers, hedge funds, brokers. I think that in the future, there will be venture capitals as well. Anyone that is providing advice or dealing with dealing with deals, right. We have we see opportunities in in insurance in insurance companies, energy traders, in a where else? Which other things? Yeah, we're starting to be a little bit payment a little bit crypto ethics. Yeah.

Josh Bolton  31:55  
I was gonna say crypto that's in there. One, I think kind of like adventure card

shiran  31:58  
is starting starting to be more and more crypto. Because I have the same, they have the same requirements. Yeah, yeah.

Josh Bolton  32:06  
It's one of those dudes who dabble in crypto don't realize like, there are consequences. Yeah.

shiran  32:14  
Yeah. So these are these are my, our typical, typical customers. And, you know, within a bank, they have both the trading their sales, their wealth manager, the Treasury, their retail banking, they are all potential customers. Today, they all have some requirements around electronic communication compliance that need to be fulfilled.

Josh Bolton  32:41  
So I'm just curious, then, because you've been at this for four years, is it now you still have to like cold call? Or is it more referrals and you go into the referrals kind of thing.

shiran  32:55  
In the day, where we don't need to call customers, they're just referring to us will be the day that you know that you reach the, you know, the peak, you're, you're in the apple and the Google level, right? Okay, we are not there, we are not there, we still need to we need we still we're still a young company, right? We need to prove ourselves, we need to sell our value we are not selling because of our muscles and the strength. We are selling because of the quality and the the quality of the team and the quality of the product that the technology. So yeah, we need to call we need to meet people we need to. Yeah, we need to find ourselves, we need to find the customers. We need to create relationships with customers, you know, normal, normal b2b sales.

Josh Bolton  33:41  
Yes. Because I will say what's the next tactic for your let's see for yourself teams would have is it do they have to crawl through like LinkedIn or different stuff for?

shiran  33:52  
No, these days? It's, you know, we are attending events. We are a we are looking into our network to find the relevant introductions. And as we grow, and as we are doing good things. The rumors are spreading, and people are speaking with people. And that's something that we invest a lot of effort in maintaining happy customers, not happy but maintaining partnership with customers, and the rumor spreads and people are calling as well. So yeah, we forget the mix. Yeah, it's very important. It's a very important move. At least for us. Yeah, it's important for the kind of for us with our current customers. But it you know, it's it's it's nice that it's being acknowledged, right and being you see the fruits of it outside of eyesight of this specific account. So yeah, people are speaking with people and we ferrying people and, you know, so all the methods and all the all the tools in the books, including cold calls and outreach, and, you know, we're doing

Josh Bolton  35:11  
that's cool. So then I was what I was trying to go for is how do you find your client list? who felt like given the the beans away kind of thing? Is it just Yeah.

shiran  35:22  
Yeah, look, it's not, you know, it's not, you're not throwing something in the wind, and whatever it catches, you know, at the end of the day, we have, you know, sales is, is something very, that is done in a very methodology, methodology way, without

Josh Bolton  35:41  
a methodical bow, I'm doing the same thing.

shiran  35:45  
But I'm not an English speaker. So I'm allowed. It's being done. If there is a methodology about around it, you know, you have your mapping the account you're making, you're mapping the market, you are mapping a certain segments, you will mapping a certain territory, and starting to link things to another end. And once you are mapping an account, you're looking to find what the relevant person, some of them, you find their LinkedIn, some of them you'll find in your network, and asking for introduction, you know, small step, you want to understand, are they doing an RFP, they're not doing an RFP? Are they open for communication? Not open? What's the currently usage? Are they happy with what they're doing today? Etc, etc. And this way, you're starting to get understanding of what's happening in a specific account? And what are the opportunities there, if there is there an opportunity or there is something that will be in the future. And people know, you and you're speaking in events, and you're speaking in and you're meeting people in, in meetups, and, you know, and you are, we are posting in blogs, and we are posting in newspapers, and, you know, part of the outreach and the brand that the, our, our place in the industry, people get to know us. So that's interesting. So that's how it works.

Josh Bolton  37:01  
So are you running low, then the next question would be for b2b marketing? Are you running some sort of strategic ads? To get in front of those specific people?

shiran  37:13  
Oh, no, we are not. We're not? We're not yet doing that. I don't know if we will doing that. But no, that's not, that's not something that, you know, we're not trying to post to them and to flashy to them. You know, it's because we're not selling, we're not selling a commodity solution. So we are not here to present how a how our computer is stronger than the other computer, or this is the the best laptop or the best phone in the world. The end of the day, you need to, you need to understand who are the relevant persons? And what's the challenges that they are facing? And once you identify that, then we are able to take action. So it's, you know, what would be the ad, right? What will it be? How, who is it that is going to meet? And when, you know, these are the all sorts of all sorts of questions that is very specific. And to and to present an ad or this kind of a campaign is very generic, you need to have a generic solution and generic, something that, you know, people can purchase in $5 or 100 bucks, right? In order to, to align to or to relate to this. habit or solution. So not yet, perhaps we'll we'll do that in the future.

Josh Bolton  38:45  
Because I know on LinkedIn, you can get hyper specific on who you want to talk to you like their education, their location, kind of thing.

shiran  38:54  
Yes, that's true. But I think, you know, again, I'm not the marketing guy here. But I think that our attempts to do things via LinkedIn is, you know, outreach via LinkedIn, not always work. It's there is the rate of success or not, are not so high. So

Josh Bolton  39:17  
yeah, I can agree with that. I've been reaching out to different people to get them on the show, literally. Oh, so and so it'd be a great person. I'm like, Alright, I messaged him, like three months ago, never opened it. I'm like, Just and no one. You live kind of thing. Nothing. I'm like, Oh, great.

shiran  39:30  
Yeah, it happens. It happens a lot. You know, I'm being reached as well, and people are trying to sell us everything. And you know, we're being cynical to this and you know, so the cold rich via LinkedIn even via emails need to be done within the right time, and via the right introduction, so you know. Yeah.

Josh Bolton  39:55  
So we're gonna say from what it sounds like cold calls are sending out like postcards, I guess would be a more effective route, then

shiran  40:05  
perhaps Perhaps the best way, the best way is to have, of course, the referral, or an introduction or someone that is speaking highly of you, or someone that is introducing or someone at least that is a is able to make the contact and making maybe you are able to have the link. That's the best way forward. And sometimes, you know, you need to work with the right vendors that are providing solutions to this customer. So there's tons of different ways to reach to reach a contact with, with people. That's the job. That's the profession of professional sales, guys, you know, yeah, that's the art, that's the art of selling.

Josh Bolton  40:50  
It really is. Yeah, there's so many layers. And if you can at least get a general concept or all of them, you will be able to pull in a lot of fish.

shiran  41:00  
Yeah, but you know, people, every people are unique. Right. And, you know, Facebook was cutting aid or catching it back then. And, you know, we're able to target and we're able to adjust their ads according to the specific specific wishes and, and things that I want to see. So they were able to present it, so they did it. But but that's more on the I would say consumer level, right? That you are buying here and now, right? When you are taking a decision to buy an enterprise software for your company, you you're doing it in a different way, the decision process, the the devaluation process is completely different than the consumer than the consumer channel. Because again, in a consumer channel, you get an ad, and you're It looks nice, how much does it cost? It costs 50 bucks. Yeah, maybe I need to I don't know, let's keep let's let's decide tomorrow, but the end of day 50 bucks. I'm not, I'm not dismissing this, but it's 50 bucks to pay 500k is something different. And it's not yours. It's not your money. It's the organization money. It's something different than it has to connect to all sorts of different data and needs to sit somewhere. And it's confidential data coming complicated.

Josh Bolton  42:30  
Oh, yeah. I want to say just the price alone got really complicated. Yeah. Yeah. So then, you mentioned something earlier, I want to touch on, I'm assuming you're using a type of AI to filter everything to,

shiran  42:45  
to filter in our solution.

Josh Bolton  42:47  
Yes. Yes. So that's where I'm just curious, then. You mentioned the false positive rates, have you do have a lower higher false positive rates with AI? Is what generally speaking, I know each case is different. Oh,

shiran  43:04  
no, no, yeah. So we are able to reduce. So first of all, in the industry, we have to understand that in in any industry, any industry, by the way, even if you're looking on electronic communication, or on cyber alerts, the majority of alerts are false positive, right. So the question is, what is the volume? Right? And are you able to catch everything? Right? So out of if you are flashing 1000 alerts, right? But only one of them is relevant, then you have 99 point 99 alerts, a false positive rate, right? But if you are able to flush 100 alerts, and one of them is irrelevant, then it's 99%. So you made a huge difference, right? So our job is to reduce the overall alerts level, and increase the relevancy rate. Right. So overall, you reduce the false positive, we were able to show with our customers, that we were able to reduce the alert the number of alerts, and that's all of the alerts that been reduced our false alerts, right? We were able to reduce it by over 90%. So we have customers that had 3000 alerts, and now they're getting less than 100 are relevant, right? So some of them are false, but they're all relevant even if they're false. So reducing from 3000 to 103,000 alerts, you need, let's say 10 people, right? So the people just to see them through to look in on each one of them, right. Let's say you have three if you know 10 People, each one is seeing 300 100 delegates, when is enough? Right? I saved nine persons, each one costs 200k a year, right? Or let's say the total cost is 200 250, including office, etc. How much do I save? Almost two and two plus million dollars a year? time have I saved? This is this is the this is the calculation that they're everyone doing?

Josh Bolton  45:24  
Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna say just to say that you cut down nine bodies, and you can lower down your rent, and whatever else fees. Oh, yeah, that I can just hold the big people are done. Just take my go.

shiran  45:37  
No, and the most important part. Again, it's cost and efficiency. But the most important part, I am allowing the team to focus on relevant data on relevant alerts, rather than sending them spread all along, going across a lot of other things and a lot of noise. And you know, what's happened? We're human, right? Human when there is a when there is false and false and false. You start? You know, it's perhaps it's in your subconscious, but you kind of lose trust in the system. And in the alerts. And in that case, that's that's the most difficult part. Because then you are, you know, you, you may dismiss a positive alert, way too soon, then you should have. That's right. It's the wolf cases, right? Yeah, the boy who cried wolf? Yes. In Hebrew, it's, it's Wolf. Okay, well, for the story.

Josh Bolton  46:44  
That's awesome. Yes. So yes,

shiran  46:48  
we are implementing AI, and all sorts of NLP and neural networks, and the whole shebang of AI as part of the solution. And we are allowing noise reduction, as well as accuracy level, and relevancy relevance within our detection alerts. So we have, we're using different disciplines and different tools and different engines, all developed in house, in order to eventually present an alert with all the relevant data, it's called alert transparency, with all the relevant data. So the compliance officer, the reviewer, will be able to take a look. And as quickly as possible, with all the information in front of him take a decision, is it relevant? I am starting to escalate, is it not relevant I'm dismissing. That's the decision point.

Josh Bolton  47:44  
I want to see especially in the finance, the financial the buy and sell side, they're inundated with messages and alerts all the time, they don't want an extra 300 Attend to view can say prove that you're you've lowered is listed. Maybe you get a 3000. Like I said, maybe 100 at worse, that you just need review. That's maybe our

shiran  48:03  
bad? Yeah, there is. It's definitely an efficiency element, you need a victim? And? And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you need, you know, we are in basically, what we're doing is we need to help our customers to use automation and advanced software to do things that they were doing manually, right? Manually, they are not able to monitor when when when you're doing things manually, you're not able to review 100% of the communications, right, right, in an organization that there is, you know, I don't know, a million messages per day. And you have, let's say that you have 10, or even 100 compliance officers, you're not able to review 100%, the entire million every day, every day to read through all the emails and all the chats and everything, it's simply impossible. And what a solution like ours is doing is monitoring 100% of the communication and flashing up only the relevant information. Right. So it's an efficiency, accuracy. And I can bet that the chances of missing something is much lower, using a solution like ours, then using the human the human approach, or the manual approach. And, you know, eventually that's what we're doing, you know, you bring the the the entire rec tech and fintech industry is to bring automation into, you know, into, into the industry to do things much more automated and efficient. Yeah,

Josh Bolton  49:56  
yeah, I'm gonna say especially with all the complexity of the rules, human can't keep up with how fast they're changing or, or the caliber of what they want to. Yeah,

shiran  50:05  
changes of the regulations, the rules, changes of the different channels, increasing a usage of China's increasing a different different deployment, tools and capabilities. Suddenly, Cloud is the baseline. Before that it was on premise, all sorts of things that are eventually, you know, are are should enable us to do things much better. 100%. So,

Josh Bolton  50:33  
I don't want to go over your time, because you definitely need to get some sleep. I got three questions for you. Sure. So other than work during these COVID times, what have you been doing to keep yourself busy?

shiran  50:48  
during COVID times, yeah. So I was training almost every morning, regardless of the weather. Morning, 6am. I was going to the to the park, and doing my training, it was freezing. It was cold, it was hard, doesn't matter. 6am training, working. You know, spending some time with the family cooking and you know, watching some movies, and reading some books. Love Reading. That's awesome.

Josh Bolton  51:23  
Any recent books you've finished?

shiran  51:30  
Thinking Well, recently read an interesting book called 2034. is, yeah, it's a futuristic book on the world. After? Yeah, in the year 2034. When a potential conflict, the global conflict. So all kinds of playing, playing scenes and scenarios that can happen. That was very interesting. And I have some books in Hebrew that I love that I'm currently reading in Parliament.

Josh Bolton  52:05  
Okay, I will say I am not able to understand that. So it's best that we want to read it be like, be like, what is what does this one say? So someone aspiring to be like you exists as Wow, word SEC today, successful businessman, entrepreneur, family, man, what are some tips, tricks or advice you'd give him to start down a similar path?

shiran  52:34  
If I have to give, you know, one advice or, you know, what is representative of an entrepreneur, or business name, is to be you know, is the stamina is to be tough to understand that it's a long run, to understand that it's going to be there's going to be ups and downs. And you know, you need to be able to get in the good times and the bad times, you know, you need to be able to get some hits along the way. Not everything is perfect. But the joy of seeing something that is, you know, being created out of nothing, it was an idea or a paper and being created into something meaningful, that people are willing to pay for it. And is actually working from an idea to reality to scale to growth to an execution. It's worth it. So, you know, you need tough, you need to be tough in this process. Stories. There are a lot of stories in the industry, right or in any industry. And sometimes people are getting confused. Yeah. You know, trying to mimic the same, the same process, but everyone has their own story. Sometimes it's easier. Sometimes it's tougher, but every one every entrepreneur, every company, have their own unique story. And it's beautiful. And it's interesting, and it's unique and you know, embrace it.

Josh Bolton  54:06  
Yes. 100% That's what I tell people is whatever you do enjoy the process, even wave it's really solidly or is at its best, you just have to love the process.

shiran  54:17  
Yeah, and as part of this process, stories are being created. And I'm telling my guys whenever it's shit happens, and sometimes it happens, right? I'm telling them remember this right? We will get through it, we will get to the other side, we will resolve it. Remember it stories will be told about this right? And you know, it's things are being built and it's nice to look back and to see that even tough time or tough situation being resolved. And you know, you're being built based on successes and and failures and small successes and small failures. This is how you build the company, the quality the team Yeah. And at the end of the day, it's all about the team around you, the team that you're able to draw, and to, and to recruit into your story and into your passion and into the vision. That's, that's at the end of the day. It's all about me on individual level. And even my fear my partner, it's limited what we are able to do alone, right? It's are you able to inspire? Are you able to give division? Are you able to provide the tools and the means of for others to develop themselves? And by that develop the company? Are you able to empower other people? So that's some of the tips I will give.

Josh Bolton  55:45  
No, that's just pure gold you just gave right there. So then where can everyone contact you at?

shiran  55:54  
You can be LinkedIn. I have a LinkedIn avid Twitter. I'm sure I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's there. In a website, and we also have an even

Josh Bolton  56:05  
Okay, awards website.

shiran  56:08  
Our website is www at shield FC, like football club, but shield S H I E, LD fc.com. Cool.

Josh Bolton  56:22  
Awesome. This has been an absolute honor and pleasure to chat with you. It was

shiran  56:25  
a pleasure as well.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai