Today we are talking to Fred Sadaghiani, the CTO of Sift Science. And we discuss scaling a business through the engineering lense, Advice for companies going through an acquisition, and why embracing failure can be the key to success.

All of this, right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast!

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Show Notes

• Start of podcast
• Both Joel and Fred went to RSA
• Dreamforce is the conference to be reckoned with
• How long have you been in San Francisco
• Love the design of Sift’s website
• A lot of people don’t focus enough on design
• Started before everyone was on the ML AI money train
• Amazing to see the different projects emerge
• What does Sift do?
• Cities coming online – whole new threat emerging
• They go to great lengths to educate people on fraud
• Organized crime exists on the internet
• There’s a big push for offensive systems
• There’s many tools that are being used to attack us but we’re not prepared
• Unrealistic ability for a human to approve every piece of content
• Relationship of trust with brands
• Part of a founding team – now have 50 engineers
• Hard Valuable and Fun
• Value questions for CTO’s Areas of growth
• Moving from technology to people to teams
• Role of CTO is one of the more dynamic roles in an organization
• Spoken to 100 CTO’s – difference between companies CTO’s ability to let go
• Scaling the business through the engineering lens
• Just spoke in Dublin at the Merchant Risk Council
• Spoke with Asana CTO earlier today
• Attracting your tribe
• No shortage of opportunities for engineers today
• Up to tech leaders to present their vision and why people want to work for them
• Going out into the industry and talking about it
• Have you thought about moving over to the other coast
• What are you excited about that you’re working on today at Sift
• Experimenting with wild ass crazy ideas
• Engineers have very creative and highly intellectual work
• Advice for CTO’s going through an acquisition
• A very opaque process
• Big companies get to call the shots
• You can’t lose sight of what you’re working on and the value you bring your customers
• Joel’s experience with acquisition
• A lot of people 5-10 years ago equated the idea of acquisition with success but it’s not always a success
• The acquisition is two sided – you do have a say and know what to ask for
• Advice to self in the past – Embrace Failure