That sucks. We (Sift Science) have been building something similar for 7 years and aren’t going anywhere. If we can help, please ping me - jason at siftscience dot com
Nothing specific against Sift Science whatsoever in my comment, but many, many times this sentiment has been conveyed by companies and it rings hollow IMO. There are a lot of different ways a company can change or disappear at some unforeseen point in the future, and claims that "you can trust us to be here forever" do not carry much weight for the large group of experienced users, devs, management, etc who have been burned multiple times.
I think the parent commenter is just saying that it's not something you can actually believe, just like a company saying they'll never sell your data.
Sure, that's the intention but when someone comes around waving a checkbook, they can in turn buy you and shut you down, sell your customers' info, etc. Sure, its not YOU allowing that to happen but by ceding control you essentially allowed that to happen.
"You can trust us to be here (until enough money comes our way)" is just how it is for most businesses like this. An unfortunate, and in my opinion largely unresolvable, side effect of an ecosystem where specific useful tools are hard enough to create and manage that full companies have to be formed around them.
A third party code escrow account with instructions on how to build the service and a contract that specifies conditions when a customer gets access to that escrow.
I've been on both the customer and service end of such agreements.
Is there a popular provider for doing this? It sounds like a lot of work to find a solution in which both parties trust (both technically versed and reliability wise). A common notary probably wouldn't cut it, right?
There's a bunch of companies doing it, some dedicated, some as part of larger related offerings. E.g. I know NCC Group (large IT security company) does offer it, TÜV (which does all kinds of certification and compliance work), ...
A guarantee is only as good as the guarantor. A guarantor can be a company providing a service, as well as all sorts of assorted guarantees about said service.
In time, the situation can change. The product can get sold. Cash can be spent. The guarantor can no longer make good on its guarantees.
You're back to square one where the guarantees are as worthless as the original service.
You need 3rd party backing (insurance) in such situations, but that costs money. This money is a cost which makes competing against unbacked entities tougher.
In most cases, you can not have 100% foolproof guarantees of anything. The closest I can think of is governments standing behind their banking institutions. Even there though, governments have defaulted on their guarantees.
The world is not a stable, perfect, and cut-and-dry place as many would like to believe. It is dynamic, and ultimately backed by trust.
It's much harder to mitigate this kind of risk in the world of services as against purchased software.
The problem has always been present especially when larger slower moving companies buy from smaller, riskier, companies.
In the days of software, code escrow was possible to mitigate some of this kind of risk. That's still got it's costs but can be an effective hedge against a supplier going bust.
Do you have a high level overview of what I’d need to do to get started? Are there any specific areas you specialise in as opposed to general users and what information will I need to share with you?
Sift Science | San Francisco, CA | Join the fraud fighting team! https://siftscience.com/ | Onsite
We are a hyper-growth Series C company based in San Francisco. We’re in the business of squashing fraud and other malicious activity for the world’s largest web and mobile businesses. Our next-generation platform is built on proprietary machine learning technology that learns in real time from live activity taking place on the sites and apps of our global network of customers. By integrating our modern REST APIs and automation workflows, our customers not only eliminate risk but also increase revenue and conversion rates through user experience optimization.
Open Roles:
- Data Scientist
- Senior Backend Engineer
- Senior Full Stack Engineer
- Senior Machine Learning Engineer
- Senior Site Reliability Engineer
- Software Mobile SDK Engineer
We’re hiring in our San Francisco and Seattle office and we would love for you to join the team! If interested please visit our careers page and apply https://siftscience.com/careers.
Unfortunately, evil exists. Fortunately, we're here to stop it! Fraud and abuse plague online businesses of all types, from marketplaces to payment processors, social networks to e-commerce stores. As the internet's trust layer, Sift Science's mission is simple yet powerful: make these online experiences faster, smoother, and safer – using the smartest technology around.
Sift Science is hiring for Backend Engineers, SREs, Full Stack Generalists and Mobile SDK Eng.
Curious about what we're working on? Visit us at engineering.siftscience.com to learn more.
CEO and cofounder of Sift Science here. I think we are complementary, actually. Wallarm focuses on security vulnerabilities (like a more automated HackerOne), and we focus more on "application abuse" (user-level fraud).
Hackerone and Bugcrowd do a great job. And we recommmend to run bug-bounty programs all the time.
But companies which run fast and deploy code everyday with CI/CD (or several times a day) it's almost impossible not to introduce new vulnerabilities. This is where solutions for continuous security are incredibly helpful.
Unfortunately, evil exists. Fortunately, we're here to stop it! Fraud and abuse plague online businesses of all types, from marketplaces to payment processors, social networks to e-commerce stores. As the internet's trust layer, Sift Science's mission is simple yet powerful: make these online experiences faster, smoother, and safer – using the smartest technology around.
We just raised $30M in Series C funding from Insight Ventures -- join us in making the internet a better place!
Hi Josh, Jason here, CEO of Sift Science. Would love to hear your feedback on what we could do better, whether publicly or privately - jason at siftscience dot com. We want to do better.
Full-time. Sift Science uses real-time machine learning to fight online fraud. It's a problem that cost U.S. merchants > $12B last year with 70% being a result of organized crime. We are currently seeking ML engineers to join our team to work on our diverse and exponentially growing dataset to employ large-scale, online machine learning and model millions of unique features. Sift is a tight-knit team that likes board games, yummy food, and solving challenging technical problems. Check out https://siftscience.com/jobs or ping us at recruiting@siftscience.com for more information :)
Sift Science (YC S11) | San Francisco | Full time | Onsite
Sift Science uses real-time machine learning to prevent and predict online fraud. We are a lean group of driven and collaborative people passionate about bringing machine learning into the real world. Do you despise evil? Believe fraud must be eradicated from the internet? If so, Sift Science must be for you.
We are hiring for engineers (front-end, machine learning and everything in between), sales, marketing and business experts.
Visit jobs.siftscience.com or reach out directly to lynda@siftscience.com for details/questions.
Sift Science (http://siftscience.com) CEO here. We focus on helping online businesses like Airbnb, Match.com, and OpenTable automate away their fraud problems with realtime machine learning. Many of our customers use us an additional layer of protection in addition to what Stripe or any other payment gateway offers. I'm happy to answer any questions about fraud.
