Blake Hall pitched ID.me without knowing the difference between OAuth and SAML
Blake Hall · He fought Al Qaeda in Iraq, turned down $250K at McKinsey—& built a $150M+ ARR unicorn. Here’s ho... · PMF Show · Jul 1, 2024 · at 5:45
ID.me founder and CEO Blake Hall recounts pitching his identity startup early on before acquiring basic technical knowledge in authentication standards.
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“When we were first going out to raise, there was a VC that asked me, you know, are you guys using OAuth or SAML? And I didn't know the difference between the two.”
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“During the pandemic, I think in like 20, 21, we signed up over forty million Americans.”
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“We have a hundred and thirty million users. We signed up half of America now”
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“Met him on the plane. He wrote a 75,000 dollar check. And that's how we actually got to our first close of 525,000 dollars.”
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“Today, our customers are Apple and BMW and Fanatics and Ford and GM and Cedar Fair and everything else and Under Armour.”
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“And now over a hundred and fifty million in ARR, the business is growing at over 30% year over year. Our gross margins will push through 80%.”
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“I realized there was this huge problem impacting military families where the whole country kind of wanted to wrap their arms around the military, whether it was retailers or nonprofit government programs. And obviously military families wanted to access those …”