In This Episode
Colton Pond, Global CMO of Socure and co-founder of Fintech Nerdcon, joins Rory Holland to discuss the technological landscape of identity and trust. Colton shares why the predicted “war” between banks and fintechs shifted toward collaboration and how traditional institutions are now embracing tech-first strategies.
The conversation dives deep into the threat of AI-driven fraud, where deepfakes and automated attacks have reduced criminal expenses to near zero, requiring more sophisticated, proactive defenses like Socure’s global identity graph. Beyond technology, Colton opens up about his relentless work ethic—a mentality he calls “all gas, no brakes”—and his passion for fixing a broken financial education system for the next generation. From scuba diving adventures to the community-driven innovation of Fintech Nerdcon, this episode explores what it takes to lead with 110% intensity.
Key Takeaways
- The Era of Collaboration: Instead of fintechs taking over traditional banks, the industry has shifted toward a B2B model where there is fintech-bank collaboration that provides the infrastructure for better banking services.
- The Zero-Cost Threat: AI has fundamentally changed fraud by allowing bad actors to launch sophisticated attacks at scale with almost no financial overhead.
- Beyond the Four Walls: To accurately verify users, organizations need data beyond their own internal records, utilizing global interactions to make smarter, faster trust decisions.
- Friction vs. Security: Effective fraud prevention isn’t about nailing the door shut but creating a seamless experience that lets good actors through while keeping bad actors out.
- Financial Literacy Crisis: There is a critical lack of financial literacy in the US school system, leaving young adults and even professional athletes unprepared to manage their money.
- The Power of Community: Innovation accelerates when experts are brought together in micro-communities to collaborate on specific challenges like AML, fraud, and AI.
- Extreme Ownership: Success in high-growth environments often comes down to a hardest worker on the field mentality, controlling the effort even when talent levels vary.
- Outcome-Based Marketing: Modern B2B buyers do not want to buy a specific technical product like KYC; they want to buy the outcome of decreased fraud and increased customer satisfaction.
Transcript
Italian Glassmaking
Colton: And one of the glass makers started a fire and burnt down the whole city. And the government came together and said, these glass makers, they’re awful. They’re only burning down our city. Let’s ship all the glass makers, let’s ban it. And if you want to make glass, you got to go to this island. The island is the only place that you’re able to make glass. And what happened was all the glass makers were like, all right.
Colton: I myself, going to the island and they went to the island. And during that like 10 years, I think it was during that time period, we got the fastest growth of innovation in glass that we’ve ever had in the entire world. And that’s what we’re trying to do and doing within FinTech Nerdcon, just focus on FinTech.
Introduction
Rory Holland: Hi, I’m Rory Holland, CEO of CSTMR, and the host of Mighty Finsights. Every year, I talk with hundreds of financial leaders and innovators. We unpack the highs and lows of working in financial services and fintech. Today, Colton Pond, the Global CMO of Socure and co-founder of Fintech Nerdcon, is back on the show. We talked about a ton of great stuff, including:
- Why the battle between traditional banks and fintechs ended in a merger instead of a conquest.
- How cybercriminals are using AI, and what Socure is doing about it.
- The reason why Colton’s “all gas, no brakes” attitude is actually about work ethic, not recklessness or arrogance.
Join me as we dive beneath the brand to learn what’s really happening.
From New York to Miami (The Wife Decided)
Rory Holland: Awesome. Sure. Awesome. Hey Colton, welcome to the show.
Colton Pond: What’s up, Rory? Good to see you, my friend.
Rory Holland: You too. So it’s been a couple of years and a lot of life changes for you. We were just talking off camera about your move back down south to Miami. How’s that going?
Colton Pond: My wife woke up one day in New York City and she said, hey, you travel all the time. I’m here 100 % of the time. I think I should decide where we live. And we’re going back to Miami because I’m not doing this winter thing ever again. But Miami’s been great. You and I were talking about how it’s grown a lot. I was here for grad school and I taught at the Research University of Miami in 2018, 2019, 2020 era. And even over the past six years, it’s just exploded with growth.
Lots of growth within Latin America, FinTech, but lots of growth within traditional finance down here too. And a lot of cool new companies are popping up.
Rory Holland: Yeah, what do you see, like as far as new companies, I need to mention, like obviously you’re there, but like with all the cool stuff you’re doing, are there like, is there community there for our industry?
Colton Pond: think there will always be a pull in Miami to two general subcategories of finance, one within Latin America. So New Bank’s headquarters in the US is in Miami and they got conditional approval for the OCC charter. They’re going to go kind of headfirst to the US market and see if they can win with other folks. Like, it’s interesting because Revolut also conditionally got applied for an OCC charter. Monzo announced a couple of weeks ago they’re leaving the US.
There will always be this Latin America finance influence. And then the other influence that you’ll see a lot of is a lot of crypto blockchain web three influence down here. But what I’m encouraged about is merging those two worlds together and a lot of interesting companies. There’s a lab down here in Miami and a fintech group down here in Miami where I get a mentor, a bunch of the new companies that come up and I encourage to see some of the cool use cases of the stable coin of crypto and Web3 within traditional finance.
Scuba Diving: From a Murky Crater to the Maldives
Rory Holland: Yeah, man, exciting time. I definitely have to come down and visit. We’ll shoot in person next time. We missed each other this last trip. So I want to talk about your work now that you’re doing it. So cure. I definitely want to talk about fintech T fintech nerd con. Like there’s so much fun stuff I want to get into, but I wanted to start with something we both enjoy and that’s scuba diving and like when, how did, how did you get introduced to scuba diving? When did you fall in love with it? I want to hear some of the stories.
Colton Pond: You know, kind of funny actually. So my wife and I booked a trip to the Maldives. It was like her lifetime trip. And we were about a month out and we’re like, we’re going to the small manmade island at the Ritz Carlton. And there’s nothing really to do there other than hang out on the beach and relax and eat great food. I was like, what else could we do? I was like, we could go scuba diving. And literally, and you know the certification process is really thorough. Three weeks before the trip, we went and got certified. We did a blitz class and got certified.
We were in Utah at the time, went to this crater that fricking sucked to dive, to do our four official dives within the crater in Homestead. It was so murky you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Imagine going from that to the Maldives and diving in the Maldives. And we did it and we fell in love. think on that Maldives trip, we were there for 11 days. I think we did like 18 dives. And now we’ve been in 10 different countries scuba diving. to 67, 68 different countries, non-scuba diving, but.
10 different countries scuba diving across like Japan and Hawaii and now down in the Keys here in Florida and then Japan and Maldives. We just did a trip this past year where we did Bali and Komodo, which was incredible diving. And then we went to Australia and did the Great Barrier Reef.
Rory Holland: Whoa. Any favorites?
Colton Pond: Komodo was pretty fricking cool. incredible. Some of the best diving in the world. really, really strong currents, great shark dives. my favorite dive by far is actually, the big Island in Hawaii. The Manta night dive in Kona is something in a totally different world. It’s incredible.
Rory Holland: you mentioned a night dive. So not so dissimilar to what you said about you and your wife’s experience. When my wife and I met, we met and got married within the same year, pretty fast. And we both enjoyed the water and really struggled to get our families together. My family’s all spread all over the country and like we finally got frustrated and said, we’re going to Jamaica and we’re getting married. So we’re going to get married on the beach. Come if you want. Like, and thankfully we had 30, 40 people come. It was a blast.
But we raced to get certified, same deal. And like your experience with your open dive to actually get your certification, we did in a lake in North of Atlanta called Lake Lanier, and it was pretty awful. Same thing, murky, you couldn’t see anything. I guess you can call it scuba diving, but it was what we needed. But then we went to Jamaica and we dove at least once a day, some days, twice a day, and we did a night dive.
Rory Holland: And so I wanted to ask you about the Manta night dive because that night dive for us, I loved it. My wife was terrified. When we came up at the very end, we went to the bottom and like circled up and we had gotten separated. We had one guide with us. Thank goodness. But we had got separated from our group. So when we came up, they were gone. Like we couldn’t find them. And you know, at night you can’t see anything. You could just, you’re just bobbing in the water. So we were thinking we were not going to make it and he blew the whistle. It took about 20 minutes for the boat to make it back to us. But she’s like, I don’t think I’ll do a night dive again. I’m curious about how that Manta experience was, and what you thought of it. Like it had to have been beautiful, I imagine.
Colton Pond: It was beautiful. Luckily, we’ve never had an experience like that. I think it’s a screwdriver’s worst dream that you, worst nightmare that you come up and they’re gone and you’re like, shit, what did I do? Like you got a BCD that you can inflate and just hang out for a little bit if you needed to, right? But the Manta Knight Dive in Kona is incredible because they put these big lights down there, Manta Rays eat Plankton and you just kneel on the sand and 20 different Manta Rays are coming right by you, right over your head.
Rory Holland: What’s the size of a man, like how big are those? Do you know?
Colton Pond: Huge. Their wingspan is like 15 feet, 10 feet, 15 feet. They can swim up to 50 miles an hour and as a result have no real natural predators because they swim faster than sharks would eat them. But sharks are lazy. They want to eat things that are easy, not manta rays that can swim really fast. And they eat about 20 percent of their weight every day in only plankton. They only eat plankton. So when you drop the lights, the lights attract plankton and the mantas come and swoop and eat the plankton. More plankton come.
Rory Holland: That’s so cool, man. So cool. Well, thanks for indulging me on that and the audience too. It’s so cool. you haven’t, for everybody listening, you haven’t scuba dove, do it. It’s a great experience. Even if you just have to go to your local pool and get certified, do it and go somewhere and dive. It is completely, as you know, Colton, it’s a completely different experience and it’s just, it’s fantastic. So I wanna shift gears a bit.
Three Big Problems (And Why Finance Won)
Rory Holland: When you first got into fintech, how did you discover fintech? Was that something back in college days? Was it after you got out of college?
Colton Pond: Great question. So I was actually at University of Miami in a PhD program and was going down the professor path I was teaching doing research at University of Miami. And I realized the path wasn’t the right path for me. So I said, OK, I’m going to step out. I’m going to go back into industry. And one of the reasons why I wanted to get into academia was I wanted to make an impact. And impact was the most important thing to me. And I felt like academia gave me the biggest likelihood a chance to be able to do so.
When I stepped out, said, okay, let me look at industries that I would feel really passionate about. And one of the things I didn’t want to do is just be marketing and like go into advertising, go into tech, go into healthy. I wanted to really focus on a certain industry and problem and go solve it. And there were three that I came up with of big, big, big problems. One was education. think the education system in the U S needs a fundamental reform, to healthcare and like a lot of challenges within healthcare. And three is finance. Six out of 10 Americans can’t afford an emergency $400 expense. And I looked at the problems and said, health care. I don’t know, or sorry, schooling, education. I couldn’t find any companies that I felt were really solving it. And it’s a really big problem. This is really, really, really hard to solve. Health care is like, I don’t want to be a doctor. Like I already went to enough school. Like I’m fine. And then I was like, finance, like, yeah, this could be cool. And I dove deep into FinTech and I fell in love with FinTech.
I started my FinTech and finance career at MX, built a really close relationship with the late co-founder and CTO of MX, Brian DeWitt, who passed away due to stage four cancer. And he helped, taught me the impact that finance can have and FinTech can have on broader financial wellness. And since then I am a self-proclaimed FinTech nerd. I will never leave FinTech. I love FinTech. Socure now is broader than FinTech, but we have a really, really, really deep presence within FinTech and financial services. And it is the thing I do in my spare time. Like I read about FinTech. That’s what I do.
The War That Never Happened
Rory Holland: I love it. I love it. What I want to go back to something that you said and just talking like financial education, financial wellness, and helping people’s impact. What do you think about traditional finance and FinTech? Like those words get mixed up and most people not in our industry are like, what is FinTech? Like never heard of it. Like how do you think about the work that you do at Socure and at FinTech nerds and trying to make that impact and like Do you use language like FinTech and financial service outside of the sphere?
Colton Pond: Great question. So there’s two points to hit on here. One, we use the word financial services in fintech. To me, like we should stop and they should be synonymous. Fintech is lean more of like how to infuse technology within financial services and then traditional financial services now has technology in every aspect. So we really ought to start thinking about merging these two because in reality they are. They’re in 2018, 2019. There was this big debate. Brett King wrote a book about fintech coming to eat banks and credit unions lunch and they’re going to take over the world. And that hasn’t come to reality. What we’ve seen is much more of a cooperation within these tech companies solving financial services problems and banks and credit unions. You see a little bit of it with Chime as a neo bank and a challenger bank going and trying to sell customers from some of the traditional banks. But for the most part, and where I’ve lived, my career has been in the B2B fintech space of How do we provide technology that helps you provide better products and better services, better education, better awareness on the financial side to customers?
Rory’s Commentary
For most consumers, and even for much of the business world, the financial system is invisible. Money seems to whizz from place to place at a speed that was impossible just 50 years ago. Banks and fintechs need each other to succeed. We’re definitely seeing some of the disruption and innovation that Brett King wrote about, but it’s happening to both parties. The future will be determined by how well banks and fintech cooperate.
The War That Never Happened
Colton Pond: Because the second aspect that I’ll highlight is, Rory, like, our education system is broken, in my opinion, but the financial education system is tremendously broken. That my kids go to school and they don’t have a teacher, a class to teach them about how to manage their finances is a shame. And kids get out of school. And you see this a lot with college athletes too. They go into college now with the NIL money, they get paid a bunch of money, they have no idea how to manage that money. They have zero idea up from down on what to do, right? And I believe that that’s one of the most important skills that we ought to be teaching our kids is how to manage your finances and how to live a self-sustainable life.
The $400 Question
Rory Holland: Gosh, I couldn’t agree more. And why do you think that is? Like us, we live in this country of so much wealth and opportunity and there’s zero financial education. Now growing up, I got zero. All I know is I got a credit card offer in the mail. At some point, the latter half of my college career, I’m like, cool, free money. Cause I had no idea. So I went out and did whatever I guess a boy would do in college that loved to play golf. I bought a set of golf clubs and I was like, okay, that’s 700 bucks. That’s fun.
Rory Holland: And then I got the next bill. I’m like, wait, that’s 700 bucks is not 700 bucks anymore. It’s more. So I’m like, what is that? But that’s so sad. Why do you think so? Two questions. I’m gonna post the first one to you. I’m curious. Why do you think that is? Why do you think there’s such a lack of education?
Colton Pond: Hot take because the education system in the US is outdated and not quick to adapt and change to problems that are actually happening. Folks know about these problems. Like it’s very clear. And when I bring up this, this perspective, everyone always agrees with me, but no one’s actually doing anything to change it. my opinion, like there’s some non-government organizations who are attempting to do so, but they don’t have the influence to actually do so at scale and it needs to be solved at scale.
Rory Holland: I think to me it’s ludicrous. It’s shocking that in this country we don’t. I had a guest the other day and he was talking about the system being rigged. Starting my story out of college. So I incurred debt and I didn’t learn. And then I got a car because I needed one. I got a car loan. Then I needed to buy a house so I bought a house. And then you find yourself in your 20s, if you’re lucky in your 20s, you can own a home but then you’re not really owning anything. You’re just paying the bank for it. And then it becomes a harsh reality of like, wait a minute, now I’m sitting on a pile of debt. At least I have a home where I’m building some equity, but everything else, nobody teaches you that. And then you get stuck and there’s people, you think about people living paycheck to paycheck right now. It’s really sad.
Colton Pond: It is sad. Yeah, and goes back to that stat, like six out of 10 Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency expense. Their car breaks down, they need to get there, use their work to go to the car, use their car to go to work. Their hands are tied. Like that’s a sad reality we live in in the U.S.
A Hundred Nerds in a Room
Rory Holland: Where did that come from? Because you said you’re a self-professed fintech nerd, which is great. Like, did that, was that something you just created? Did you run into some buddies that are like, let’s do this?
Colton Pond: Great question. So at a conference, I won’t name the conference, but at a conference, I was talking to Simon Taylor, who’s a very close friend of mine. And I just love his content that he writes about FinTech. And we became really, really good friends. We were talking about how frustrated we were at the conference. What many of these FinTech conferences turn into is FinTech social hour, which I like, because I got lots of friends in the industry. But like, I’m also a FinTech nerd and I want to nerd out on this stuff. I don’t want to talk about the ISO standards within payments. I want to talk about what’s happening within deepfakes and injection attacks within fraud. Like I want to really nerd out on the stuff too. And I was just disappointed. It was like, yeah, great to catch up with everyone. But like, did I learn anything about fintech? Did I progress my knowledge of fintech at all? Like, no. And Simon and I, Sam and I already had this idea of like, in talking to folks like Alex Johnson and others, but it was like, hey, what if we just had a hundred of our friends in a room? for a weekend and they’re all fintech nerds and we just talked about fintech stuff and then we don’t really have an agenda. We just like to nerd out on what’s going on in fintech. It’s like, man, that would be so cool. Let’s do it. And we started talking about this to other people and we got an overwhelming positive response. And Simon and we were like, and Joy, our other co-founder was like, hey, we had to do something about this. So we co-founded fintech nerd con. It is the community for fintech nerds. We hosted our inaugural conference last year. So we host an annual large conference for about 1,500 folks last year was in Miami. This upcoming year is in San Diego. Everyone should come the week before Thanksgiving. Who doesn’t want to go to San Diego in November? It’s quite nice. But the premise of the conference is flipped on its head. Instead of focusing on networking, instead of focusing on meetings, instead of focusing on things like that, why don’t we focus on the content and the insights of what’s happening within FinTech.
And so for context, like this year we’ll talk a good amount within prediction markets. So what’s happening with production markets and the regulation within prediction markets, calcium and polymarket are facing that reality now, but experiencing tremendous growth and fricking crushing it. We’ll talk a lot about what’s happening within blockchain based lending and like, is blockchain going to revolutionize capital markets? Like these like really, really, really nerdy insights. that you gotta raise your hand and say, I’m a FinTech nerd and I wanna learn about that stuff. But the conference last year was like a mini FinTech family reunion. was everyone you would want within FinTech, all in a close facility. You walk in the area and you just see the people that you want.
Rory Holland: Yeah, you told me when we chatted last that it had grown dramatically. Where did it just start with a handful of you in a room?
Colton Pond: It was like, we were into a hundred and then 500 and then a thousand. And we were like, Hey, we’re going to cap it at thousand. And then we shut off registrations. got so many people to text Simon and I enjoy like, I was going to, I’m on a flight and you shut off registrations. I’m coming. I’m like, why don’t you buy your ticket a while ago, So we opened it up and we ended up getting about 1200, 1300 people in Miami. But the idea is much broader. It’s like how to build these micro communities within FinTech.
So Dennis Yang is the head of generative AI at Chime, and he was a big part of what we did at FinTech Narcon this year. And he hosted a community of the leading AI individuals and executives within various FinTechs where they collaborated on what’s working, what’s not working, how is AI influencing FinTech and finance, and deep collaboration. And I actually like it. I’ll shout out to my old boss and CEO at Lone Pro, Rhett Roberts, who told me this story. But I think it was in Italy, if I’m not mistaken. But there was a time in which there was a lot of glass being made and this was a long time ago. And one of the glass makers started a fire and burnt down the whole city. And the government came together and said, these glass makers, they’re awful. They’re only burning down our city. Let’s ship all the glass makers, let’s ban it. And if you want to make glass, you got to go to this island. The island is the only place that you’re to be able to make glass. And what happened was all the glass makers were like, all right. I myself, going to the island and they went to the island. And during that like 10 years, I think it was of that time period, we got the fastest growth of innovation in glass that we’ve ever had in the entire world. Some of the innovation we use today, like I’m in Miami, so there’s a lot of like hurricanes and hurricane proof glass and things like that came from that time period of just 10 years. And what happened was they were all together. They were learning from each other. They were collaborating. The speed of innovation sped up really, really quickly. And that’s what we’re trying to do and doing within FinTech Nurkon, just focus on FinTech.
Rory Holland: That’s awesome. I did not know that story about Italian wear glass in Italy. That’s cool. But that makes a ton of sense. you mentioned these micro communities. is that what you see happening with Hintechnerge is you guys are getting together as a group, and then you have this great content around different topics, and then people are circling around different topics they’re interested in and innovating?
Colton Pond: You got it. What we eventually want to do is create the S tier of leaders within certain micro community space, the top AI leaders within FinTech, the top fraud experts within FinTech, the top AML experts within FinTech. And like they meet every other month together to collaborate and share insights and whatnot. And then they gather in the annual gathering of FinTech NerdCon, but it’s all centered around community and increased collaboration.
Rory Holland: Wow, that’s cool. So are you, other than AI, like were there other couple of topics, like things that were top of mind for you that you’re seeing a lot of innovation?
Colton Pond: Yeah, there were two and it ties to both of my, my, my, I’m now an advisor at loan pro and the global chief marketing officer at SoC here. One, there was a lot within lending. talked about how to stand up a lending program from scratch. see a lot of folks that have debit card programs shift to credit card because interchange compression on the debit side. And then the other aspect is just the insanely crazy pace of change when it comes to fraud. If you look at a year ago, AI and deepfake technology, or AI technology to create deepfakes was not very good. I could tell a deepfake from a real person. You cannot tell today. And we have seen AI tremendously accelerate the pace of fraud, what attacks fraudsters are using, attacking fraud at scale. And there was a lot of conversations around what is the future of the global economy look like with fraudsters using. AI technology to try and commit fraud.
Fraudsters Run a P&L
Rory Holland: Yeah, it’s a good segue into your work now. So you spent some years at Loan Pro and helping build that brand of business. It’s great to hear you still have a solid relationship and still advising them. Now you’re over at Socure. Tell me a little bit about the work you’re doing. Socure, what has the experience been?
Colton Pond: Uh, I love that you say that. It seems like you’ve been here a very long time. Uh, officially it’s been about two and a half months. No worries. No worries. Means I’ve already made an impact. That’s great.
Rory Holland: Sorry. Okay. I over extended. All right. But yes. So tell me about the last couple of months. What, what has the transition been like with what kind of work are you doing?
Colton Pond: A lot of it. I came to Socure because after talking to Johnny Ayers, our founder and CEO, and Matt, our president, I was really blown away and impressed by them and very excited to learn from both of them. But two, what I realized is two thin gs. One, how much a problem fraud is and how much is changing. And if we don’t approach or change our approach to defense. And we’re going to be far behind as an industry and like we need increased innovation here. And the problem is only getting more sophisticated and worse.
Rory Holland: Fraud isn’t just a problem for banks and fintechs, although they have a front-row seat to the battle. In a world where AI deepfakes cost fraudsters almost nothing, everyone is a target. No amount of personal vigilance is going to solve a problem of that scale and complexity. Socure’s authentication technology seems brilliant. And with recent developments in AI, like Anthropic’s Mythos model, it couldn’t come at a better time.
Colton Pond: And then two is no one’s better suited to solve the problem than Socure. So we did something, one of the things I always talk about when they’re like, Hey, what’s really impressive about Socure? They’re really amazed by. We built the only global identity graph at Socure. And what that means is we have 3000 customers, Uber, PayPal, Remitly, Chime, et cetera. And let’s say I’m USA for context. Generally, I only see Rory’s interactions within my four walls of the USA. So I can see Rory trying to apply for a credit card, apply for a checking account, try and log into his account, try and make a payment within the USA. We built a global identity graph where organizations like USA can access and can see Rory’s interactions globally with Uber, with PayPal. with Bank of America. And I can make way smarter decisions if I have a breadth of data and insights and understanding who Rory is. And those are the types of things we’re doing. We also, another shout out to Ponker, one of our PMs over some of the things that we launched with deepfake and deepfake detection. We have technology. It’s awesome when a deepfake generally is on a computer, not on a phone. And when you got to do a selfie scan, to verify that Roy is who he says he is, we’ll send a vibration to the phone and to the device and we’ll get a response back based on is that device being held in a hand or do we not get a response back and it’s likely deep fake technology accordingly. So just some of the really cool things that we’re doing using AI to fight AI based fraud is incredible.
Rory Holland: AI with deep fakes. God goodness. It’s going to become a more pervasive problem. And you know, the work that you’re doing to cure sounds so interesting. Like what is, what is the market? What are you hearing from the market about what Secure does as you talk to current clients, prospective clients? I gotta imagine there’s some interesting conversations there?
Colton Pond: Yeah. So I’ll highlight two things. One, and one overarching thing. Fraudsters run a P &L. Like if you don’t think that they are, they’re running a business. They have expenses. They have revenue. The revenue is fraud and stealing from people, but they do run like a P &L, right? So what AI has done is decrease the cost for fraudsters of fraud to near zero. Go on ChatGPT. You can ask ChatGPT to build you a driver’s license with a different picture and it will do so with the free version with like 20 seconds 30 seconds of time and imagine what you do if you put some actual time So it’s decreased the cost of fraud to near zero So what that allows is fraudsters to launch attacks at scale and find any vulnerabilities that do exist and what they do is they’re launching attacks at scale and they’re finding what vulnerabilities and then they attack those vulnerabilities aggressively so historically Let’s take a broad example. Fraud used to be a really big problem focused within banks, credit unions, fintechs, like where your money exists. Fraud was not a problem within workforce, for example, like getting hired is relatively hard. You got to show up to an interview in person. Even if I’m remote, how am going to convince the person that I’m actually someone else? You can go read online on many articles, but there’s a huge problem today within workforce fraud where large organizations are hiring employees that they think are based in San Francisco. but are actually in North Korea and posing as people in San Francisco getting hired, getting access to systems, and then draining funds or money or information or data. So even like aspects where two years ago, completely unheard of is now being attacked. The same things exist with banks and credit unions and fintechs, just not on the onboarding side, ongoing. Account takeover is a huge problem of folks getting access to other folks accounts that are already existing. They’re finding the side door, the window, the back door, the attic, the chimney. Like how do I get in? And unless you’ve actually fortified all of the areas, you’re at risk. And one other aspect here, Roy, that I think is really, really important. Many folks in the industry, their response to a fraud attack is shut it off, turn it off, turn it off.
Colton Pond: What they do instead is they say, I’m going to take two by fours and I’m going to nail them to the door. No one’s coming through this door. The problem is no one’s coming through that door. That doesn’t help your business grow. That doesn’t do what you need it to do. You need a door that lets in good actors quickly and without friction and keeps bad actors out. And that’s really where Sokio differentiates is like, lots of folks focus on stopping fraud. And if you want to stop fraud, just stop onboarding new accounts. You will stop fraud. but you won’t grow as a business, right? So it’s about stopping fraud while reducing friction for good people and letting good people go through as quickly as possible.
Nobody Wants Your $50 Gift Card
Rory Holland: There’s so much FinTech, using that word again, there’s so much new technology. How are you helping your current clients that are looking to maybe evolve the way they’re doing things to increase their security and then you’re talking to prospective ones because they’re just, you know they’re inundated. Financial institutions are just inundated with inbound all the time. How are you cutting through that? Like from a marketing, I want to talk a little bit about marketing. Like from a marketing perspective, how are you doing that? And what are those conversations like?
Colton Pond: From a B2B marketing perspective, I’m a big believer that you have to be everywhere to everyone with a value-based message. They need to see you on LinkedIn. They need to see you in Google. They need to see you at conferences. They need to see you in their inbox. They need to see you making a diet. Like they need to see you everywhere and through a variety of channels and a integrated but highly omni-channel approach. And then the second aspect is people don’t buy products. buy value and outcome. If folks think that you’re selling a product, it’s not the case. Like go back to Clint Christian and jobs to be done framework is a framework that I live my life, my life by and career by people buy outcomes. Like I’m not buying KYC. I’m buying a solution to help decrease fraud, to help me increase my, my pull through rate on, on my onboarding experience to like provide a better experience for my customers, to drive customer satisfaction. I’m buying an outcome. That’s what I’m doing. And you’ve got to understand that way too many people ended the product of like, okay, KYC let’s sell you KYC. And that works for a group of people, but it’s not the right approach.
Rory Holland: It’s noisy out there though. I’m kind of curious like how you cut through the noise and maybe part of it is just awareness, knowledge, trust, like some different things coming to mind.
Colton Pond: Find the actual real value that they can achieve and like to take a very quantifiable value engineering value based approach, right? So there are a lot of messages and Rory, the amount of times that I get some SDR in my LinkedIn inbox saying, do a demo and I’ll give you a $50 Amazon gift card. I’m like, dude, I don’t want a $50 Amazon gift card. Like those days have gone away, right? Like what I want to know is, For me as CMO, Global CMO at Socure, I’m hiring 28 people or so this year or something like that, right? How are you gonna help me hire and scale and onboard people faster because I need to get them up to speed because I have a bunch of things on my plate that we got to go execute on. I don’t care about your $50 Amazon.
Rory Holland: Yeah, yeah. funny. It’s funny. still, I even get those two here in my company too. People wanted to pitch me something. It’s like, if you got to pay me to pitch me, I’m probably not interested.
All Gas, No Brakes
Rory Holland: So you had shared that you have a tough time slowing down. And I’m kind of curious, like, why is that so hard for you? And when you take a moment to reflect on that, like, what is it about you and, like, your routines that maybe you have to instill into the way that you do work to make sure you do slow down from time to time?
Colton Pond: Yeah, good question. So this goes back to like my upgrade brain, my dad, best listen, my dad ever taught me. played baseball. I loved baseball. I was extremely untalented in baseball. It was not a very good baseball player, but I worked my ass off and I ended up getting a college scholarship to go play baseball at a Juco up in Montana. But, what it taught me and what my dad taught me is it takes no talent to be the hardest worker on the field. I live that today. And I tell my kids that, I tell Hudson and Bronx out, like, it takes zero talent. You can be the least talented person, but you can be the hardest worker. Like you can always, that’s 100 % in your control in everything you do. So I’ve lived my life that way. When I was interviewing for the role at Lone Pro, there was some feedback that Rhett, the CEO, and Charles, the chief revenue chief operating officer, heard of like, oh, I don’t know if you want to hire Colton. He’s all gas and no breaks. And I was like, oh, okay. I’d rather be all gas than all breaks. Like, if I’m to be honest with you, all brakes is no good, right? But what I’ve realized is there are instances I will always have a bias for action, 100%. And I think a bias for action and inner innovation are two aspects that the workforce need more of today. But there are times in which you gotta take a step back.
Rory’s Commentary
Rory Holland: This ties into our discussion about fraud and security as well. There’s a false dichotomy between speed and reflection, action and consideration. We need both and depending on the situation, we need them in different proportions. Colton’s mantra of being the hardest worker is an example of extreme ownership. He isn’t waiting for doors to open or gift-wrapped opportunities, he’s pouring energy into the things he can control, which turns out to be quite a bit. That’s a lesson all of us can take to the bank
All Gas, No Brakes
Colton Pond: You gotta evaluate the plan, you gotta think a little bit, you gotta make sure that it’s right, and then go and move and learn from it and continue to iterate. And that daily reminder has helped me improve my career transparently and it’s something I think about every day now.
Rory Holland: And did that come up, was that the moment that you heard that feedback that you hadn’t thought of before?
Colton Pond: I’m going to be honest, I heard the feedback before and I said, you know, y’all didn’t know what you’re talking about. Forget you. Like I’ve done this well in my career. You got no idea. But I was an executive at Truve, but much smaller company, 30 people. I was really the first marketing hire. Loan Pro was the first one I was literally stepping into a CMO and executive role. And I was able to actually take a step back and say, okay, like, yes. bias reaction, iterative innovation. But if we could be a little bit more deliberate on some of the things, we can make sure that we maximize our effort accordingly. I will always still be the hardest worker at any company that I work at that will never change. But taking a few moments to slow down, think about it and be a little bit more deliberate, it’s something that really Charles and shout out Charles Sweeney, the chief COO at Lone Pro helped me to be able to do.
Rory Holland: Yeah, that’s great. I mean, I think the maturity that comes from that not one hearing it and receiving it and then acting on it, the hearing and receiving, I think we all get feedback from time to time, right? That we’ve been like, nah, they’re wrong. They can’t be right. But I love the, I love the story about baseball because that’s, that’s really great that your dad instilled that in you. What a wonderful gift your dad gave you. And that, kind of leads me to the next thing. What, what you’re passionate about. So it sounds to me like
Rory Holland: The way you describe Fintech, Fintech NerdCon earlier, you have a similar passion to that, but you might, it sounds like you’re a lot better at it than maybe we were at baseball at the time. Although getting a Juco scholarship is really cool. What, what about Fintech NerdCon like is so special to you?
Colton Pond: It’s the community aspect. Like I’m tremendously grateful for the FinTech community because they’ve helped me progress in my career and it’s been, I hate saying this word in a work sense, but it has been the broader community, not a company, the broader community, like a family to me. All of my friends are FinTech nerds, they’re all within the FinTech ecosystem, financial services ecosystem. And it’s… It’s been like a home to me and Simon and I enjoy all feel like Fintech NerdCon is kind of our gift back to the Fintech community because they’ve been so good to us to create a place where self-regulating Fintech nerds can nerd out. Like it was cool. You walk down the expo area and it wasn’t, we don’t have boots at Fintech NerdCon. So it wasn’t like that, but everything was all in a room. All the stages were all in a room. And you heard people like Wade Arnold at Move talking about how payments started. You hear other people talking about like, the early foundations of crypto and blockchain and like where it came from. You have people like Frank Rotman, who was early art at Capital One and a complete legend in the space that hosted a fireside chat with Cokie on how he’s learned from failures in his life and insecurities in his life. Like it was incredible, organic, authentic conversations. And really to your question, Roy, it’s… Simon, myself, Joey, viewed as our gift back to FinTech for being so good to all of us.
Rory Holland: That’s awesome. Do you have to be a fintech nerd to go?
Colton Pond: Yeah, I think you should be FinTech curious and like desire to nerd out. We constantly say like, if you’re there to have meetings and like social hour, go to Money2020. But if you want to like dive deep into FinTech insights, we’re the home that you need.
Rory Holland: Yeah, okay, good. So I was just wondering like if you’re a banker but you’re really curious about it, you could go. So you’re not gonna turn the guy that shows up in a suit away?
Colton Pond: Oh, 100. We had a whole panel and I love the suits. I meet with lot of banks and credit unions constantly. And from the beginning of my career, I loved to how do we collaborate more with banks and credit unions. We actually had a panel on the main stage is what fintechs can learn from traditional financial institutions. had Kelly Keough at SoFi. We had a BMO executive. We had the UK CEO of JP Morgan Chase and it was one of the best panels. It was awesome. So there was a wide breadth of FinTech financial services and even the CEO of Opendoor. He gave an awesome keynote on how Opendoor used to be the head of payments at Shopify and what Opendoor and how he’s thinking about shaping the culture of Opendoor. It just like the breadth of perspectives was awesome.
Derek Jeter and the Case Against Work-Life Balance
Rory Holland: Okay, good, good to know that for our audience, if you’re not a fintech nerd, but you’re curious, nerd curious, go. So we’d like to do this one segment here that’s kind of fun and it’s called fantasy headhunting. So we asked you a question about if you could fantasy headhunt anybody to work with you at Socure, who would it be? And you said Derek Jeter. Tell me why.
Colton Pond: Not even close, by the way. I didn’t even have to think about it, Rory. One, I’m a huge Yankee fan. I’m wearing my Yankee shirt today. My Miami Yankee shirt, Rory. Let’s be really clear.
Rory Holland: I see you got your Yankee shirt on.
Colton Pond: I like Miami because I live in Miami A huge Yankee fan. You don’t see it on my wall, but like this wall over here is all Yankee memorial memorabilia My son met Aaron Judge got a ball sign from her and judge was one of his like favorite days ever But I grew up in the area where Derrachito led the Yankees and he was captain the Yankees The reason why I said it is I do believe for anyone that’s thinking about applying for the 20 plus roles we have on the marketing side and the hundreds of roles we’re hiring for this year at Socure, I believe it takes a certain mentality to be successful at Socure. Like we’re winners. And I was talking to a candidate the other day, they’re like, you and Matt Thompson and Johnny and Pablo and these people you’re hiring, they’re all cut from the same cloth. And I was like, yeah, we fricking win. Like, and we are relentless and we’re super competitive. And like, we want to… Our goal is to say yes to more good people and decrease friction for good people and stop fraud like we’re really really passionate about what we’re doing And if you think about Derek Jeter whether you’re a Yankee fan or not and a lot of people want to throw a lot of shade but he led the Yankees as the captain for the Yankees to one of the best stretches in the Yankees history ever and he’s a winner Up and down he wins and he’s hyper competitive. He’d fit in perfectly with culture. So Derek Jeter if you want to apply I’ll give you my phone number, Rory, and if he reaches out to you, have him give me a call, we’d have a great combo.
Rory Holland: Well, I’m sure he’s a listener, so maybe he will apply. Well, I’ll definitely ask him. I’m a huge Detroit Tigers fan, but I was back at, I don’t know if you remember Kirk Gibson, but a long time ago, but that kind of raw talent is the type of guy I’d love to have. Just like your work ethic is like he was, like work harder than everybody else. He didn’t have all the talent in the world, but man, did that guy work hard. And as a result, he was very successful, helped take the team to the World Series in 84. one more question. So you have kids, I think you have a dog.
Colton Pond: Two kids and a dog. You may have heard him barking. Did someone pick up a garbage can? Okay.
Rory Holland: I heard your dog. We have, I have four dogs. So I’ve been really lucky on this episode because I’m at home recording from home and no dog barking. So based on the season and life that you’re in now, your recent move to Miami, you’ve got kids, you’ve got a dog, you’re married. Like for people to really know you in this season of your life, what would you want them to know?
Colton Pond: It goes back to one thing I said, and Colton works his ass off for things that he’s really, really passionate about. And anyone that’s ever worked adjacent to me realizes that and recognizes that. You’ll never be able to look at me and say, man, he didn’t give it 110%. Like, that’s just not something I do in every aspect of my life. But I thoroughly believe… And I tell anyone that I interview this, like work-life balance isn’t a thing. Work-life integration is for sure a thing. And I’ve tried to make my kids a part of what I do in the FinTech ecosystem as much as possible to the point to where Hudson, my oldest, now says first, when he gets older, he wants to be an MLB player, but he doesn’t want to play for the Red Sox. He really wants to play for the Yankees. Second, he wants to be an actor, but not any actor. He wants to be Will Ferrell. And then he’s like, I was like, Hudson, what if those two don’t work out, dude? Like, I love it. The ambition is great. What if they don’t work out? it’s like, well, I think I could be a marketer. I think that sounds pretty good. And I was like, at that point, like I felt really good about what I did. so I, I do believe it’s about integrating, but, I’m tired of people giving half ass, like 110 % always.
How to Connect with Colton, Socure, and Fintech Nerdcon
Rory Holland: That’s how I’ve always known you. Since the first time I met you at the FinTech house a couple of years ago and had you on the show then, like, yeah, and I’m really grateful to know you and you put off such a good energy. You’re doing such cool stuff between FinTech NerdCon. We didn’t get into FinTech today, but I definitely want to talk about that at some point in the future. Come on the show and we can jam it out together. And of course the work, exciting stuff you’re doing at Socure. All the interesting things going on there. So thank you so much for sharing all that.
So for fintech nerds and the nerd curious out there who are listening and want to keep up with you and your work at Socure and NerdCon and all these other things, what’s the best way to find you, to connect with you, to engage with you?
Colton Pond: Yeah, great question. Shoot me a note on LinkedIn, Colton Pond on LinkedIn at Socure and Fintech Nerdcon and advisor at LoanPro. You can find me at any of those aspects. I will say that I’m really, really bad at, per our comment earlier, keeping up in LinkedIn messages. So if you shoot me an email coltand.pond at Socure.com, I do keep my email up to date and I’d be happy to connect with anyone.
Rory Holland: Awesome, and it has been an absolute pleasure. Next time, I mentioned my son’s gonna be making the move to Miami, and maybe my wife and I might join him for a period of time. So definitely love to connect with you and your wife and family when we get there.
Colton Pond: I love it. Sounds good. for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Rory Holland: Hi brother. our pleasure. Thanks.
Outro
Rory Holland: When Colton was getting certified for scuba diving, he had to do four qualification dives in a crater in Utah. The water was so murky he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. Three weeks later, he was in the Maldives. Eighteen dives in eleven days. That’s what a bias toward action can get you. In a world as complicated and arcane as financial services, trying to make progress can feel like swimming through pea soup. Only you never know when you’re going to run into a cyber attack or a regulatory minefield. A lot of people would have given up, but Colton found his purpose early on from Brian DeWitt at MX — a source of light who left the world too soon. Financial technology isn’t just about efficiency or scale. It’s about the six out of ten Americans who can’t cover a $400 emergency. It’s about the kids coming out of school with no idea how money actually works. If you’re going to work on a problem that big and audacious, it certainly helps to be the hardest-working person in the room. And it also helps if you can gather a cadre of like-minded people to attack the problem together. Like Italian glassmakers on an island, or fintech nerds at a conference. Something really special happens when you integrate your life and work without losing your passion for either. Colton’s a great example of what it means to give 110% and have a great time doing it.
