We sat down with our new board member Frank van Veenendaal to find out why he’s joining Onfido, and what’s next on our journey to become the identity standard for the internet.
Welcome aboard, Frank! Tell us a bit about yourself.
I retired recently from Salesforce, after spending 14 years with Salesforce from the early years – 2001 until 2015. I’ve really been part of the SaaS cloud revolution, but my whole career has been in technology, riding many of the waves. I was in hardware to begin with, then software and then into the cloud, so I’ve seen a lot of the transitions.
How did you hear about Onfido?
I heard about Onfido from Alex Kayyal at Salesforce Ventures, we’ve worked together over a number of years and he mentioned Onfido as being just a very exciting and hot company that’s growing fast and globally in the identity verification space. I thought that was going to be a really breakthrough market.
What do you look for when joining a board?
When I’m looking at joining a board, what’s important to me with regards to a company is are they attacking a big problem? Are they after a big market opportunity? Then I look for ‘what’s the team’, who are the founders, what are the talent that they’re attracting. And then I look at whether they’re executing – so are they able to do what they say? Not just paint a vision, but execute.
What impresses you about Onfido?
What impressed me about Onfido was I really had been talking to Husayn and others about Onfido for a period of about two years. What impressed me was their vision about the opportunity of identity verification and how important that’s going to be. But also the team, and how they were able to really execute on what they said they were going to do.
What excites you about joining the Onfido board?
By joining the board, I’m really excited about being able to help Onfido and the team achieve their mission of becoming the global trusted service for identity verification; helping them build an excellent team; and really helping them prioritise their goals. I think there’s a great opportunity, they’re ready to make it happen and I’m glad to be a part of it.
What does the future hold for Onfido?
I think that identity verification is really going to be a breakthrough area, and I think they are going to be the global standard and the trusted standard for identity verification.
