Episode #84: Alloy’s Unconventional Path to $1.5B
Tommy Nicholas is the Co-founder and CEO of
@usealloy, the identity and fraud prevention platform trusted by over 700 financial service companies.
Our conversation explores the early days of fintech, why more consumer financial protections actually lead to more fraud, and gets into the weeds of building a technical platform company like Alloy.
We talk learning to embrace that the hard parts of company building are actually the best parts, why you’re most likely to give up when things first start getting better, using hands-on sales implementations in the early days to gave Alloy product market fit on steroids, how hiring changes as you scale, getting 100’s of no’s over 20 months raising their Seed round, and why TAM doesn’t matter.
Thanks to
@CharleyMa for his help brainstorming topics for Tommy and to
@NumeralTax for supporting this episode!
Full episode here on X, or grab a link in replies.
Timestamps:
3:56 The platform to manage fraud
5:48 What fintech risk was like in the early 2010’s
14:34 Why company building never gets easier
19:30 Reasons the hard stuff is actually the good stuff
24:00 You’re most likely to give up when things start getting better
33:47 Doing hands-on sales implementation to get PMF on steroids
42:26 Deciding when PLG or hands-on sales will work best
52:33 Why more consumer financial protections leads to more fraud
58:14 20 months to raise $2m vs $200m from a spreadsheet
1:06:32 “Make yourself look like a good investment”
1:10:14 Why TAM doesn’t matter
1:14:35 How to hire collaborative problem solvers
1:24:38 Why Alloy didn’t do much marketing early on