Goldman Sachs Recognizes Socure Founder & CEO Johnny Ayers as One of the 100 Top Entrepreneurs of 2021

Socure, the leading provider of digital identity verification and fraud solutions, announced today that founder and CEO Johnny Ayers has been recognized by Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2021 at its Builders + Innovators Summit in Healdsburg, California. This elite group of entrepreneurs includes visionary founders that continuously disrupt the status quo and establish a new gold standard within their industries.

Socure established a new benchmark for identity verification and fraud prevention, due to the industry-leading accuracy of its platform. Socure delivers auto-approval rates of up to 98% for mainstream populations, and up to 94% for the hard-to-identify populations such as Gen Z, millennial, credit invisible, thin-file, and new-to-country. Socure’s patented data ingestion and cleansing technology is paired with unsupervised ML clustering capabilities, enabling the company to analyze an unparalleled breadth and depth of data that goes beyond the industry status quo. The identity resolution engine analyzes over eight billion records and more than 530 million good and bad identities to achieve the most accurate view of identity possible. Recent industry-first technology innovations include the company’s inclusive KYC and Predictive Identity and Document Verification solutions allowing customers to increase auto-acceptance rates, unlock revenue growth, and reduce fraud. Socure is enabling financial inclusion and positively affecting the lives of millions of people while allowing hundreds of companies across industries to build and quickly scale their digital business.

Ayers has been instrumental in building Socure's 750+ customer base and has been the main engine of Socure’s customer growth and product-market fit since launching the company in 2012. As CEO, Ayers led Socure’s most recent $100 million Series D funding round with Accel, which catapulted the company to unicorn status with a valuation of over $1 billion. The company continues to achieve record sales results as Socure ID+ has emerged as the sole identity verification platform for multiple business units within the largest enterprises and is trusted by 4 of the 5 largest banks, 7 of the 10 largest credit card issuers, top Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) providers, top crypto exchanges, and the largest online gaming operators. Socure customers have also become investors in the company including Citi Ventures, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, Capital One Ventures, MVB Bank, Voyager, and Synchrony.

“Innovation doesn’t happen just anywhere; it thrives where there’s a wide range of thoughts and perspectives,” said David M. Solomon, Chairman & CEO of Goldman Sachs. “One of our great strengths is our ability to bring together people from different walks of life and to spark conversations today that will lead to breakthroughs tomorrow. The leaders we’ve chosen to highlight at our Builders + Innovators Summit are truly remarkable, and we are pleased to recognize Ayers as one of this year’s most intriguing entrepreneurs.”

“Customer friction, false positives, and the lack of equitable inclusion are the biggest limiting factors in preventing financial institutions and other digital organizations from growing rapidly and delivering a seamless customer experience. With Socure and the amazing solutions that our team has developed, good customers onboard quickly, while risky users are automatically stepped up to our Predictive Document Verification product or are rejected in milliseconds, providing the most friction-free and efficient experience in the market,” said Ayers. “Socure’s mission is to verify 100% of good identities in real time and completely eliminate identity fraud for every transaction on the internet. I appreciate Goldman Sachs recognizing the importance of this goal and the commitment that myself, and the entire Socure team have made in achieving it.”

Previous years’ entrepreneurs honored include John Foley, CEO of Peloton, David Baszucki, CEO of Roblox, and Chris Britt, CEO of Chime.

About Socure

Socure is the leading platform for digital identity verification and trust. Its predictive analytics platform applies artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques with trusted online/offline data intelligence from email, phone, address, IP, device, velocity, and the broader internet to verify identities in real time. The company has more than 750 customers across the financial services, gaming, healthcare, telecom, and e-commerce industries, including four of the top five banks, seven of the top 10 card issuers, three of the top MSBs, the top payroll provider, the top credit bureau, top crypto exchanges, top Buy Now, Pay Later providers, the largest online gaming operators, and over 100 of the largest fintechs. Marquee customers include Chime, Varo Money, Public, Stash, and DraftKings. Investors include Accel, Commerce Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Flint Capital, Capital One Ventures, Citi Ventures, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, Synchrony, Sorenson, Two Sigma Ventures, and others.

Socure has received numerous industry awards and accolades, including being named to the 2021 Forbes Cloud 100 List, Forbes’ Fintech 50 List 2021, and Forbes’ America’s Best Startup Employers 2021, being named to CB Insights: The Fintech 250 for the third year in a row, being awarded Best New Technology Introduced Over the Last 12 Months—Data and Data Services at the 2020 American Financial Technology Awards (AFTAs), being ranked number 70 in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500™, being listed as a Gartner Cool Vendor, being recognized by Forbes as one of the Top 25 Machine Learning Startups to Watch, and being awarded Finovate’s Award for Best Use of AI/ML, to name a few.

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