On The Internet, No One Knows You’re A Dog, Or A Bot—Except Proof

If you've ever notarized a document online instead of having to get in your car to drive to a notary public, you have Pat Kinsel to thank. And if one day your identity is not stolen after you purchase something on the web, you may have Pat and his team to thank for that, too. As Co-Founder of the identity-verification company Proof, formerly known as Notarize, Pat Kinsel gets animated about problems that are important but largely invisible, vulnerable moments during pivotal online interactions that can come back to haunt us if the right protections aren't in place. So he's building a trust layer for the internet with clients like Visa. Pat spoke with Camber Creek Managing Partner Jake Fingert about how he got started as an entrepreneur and working with partners who appreciate big and lucrative but overlooked problems. 1:19 Growing up in California on the Stanford campus, where his mother worked. Surrounded by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from an early age, Pat says he always knew he wanted to build companies. 2:49 Launching his first company while in college after leaving school to take a job in financial technology. Although that first venture failed, it convinced him that entrepreneurship was the right path. 3:57 Joining Microsoft to learn how world-class technology companies operate. 8:22 Pat's next company, Spindle. Building social search technology, launching products ahead of competitors, and eventually selling the business to Twitter after solving a major data-classification challenge. 11:35 After working as a venture investor and seeing companies like Drizly and Lob modernize traditional services, he realized notarization could be transformed the same way. 14:03 Changing state laws to permit remote online notarization 21:26 Evolving from Notarize to Proof. Proof's core mission: allowing people to securely prove who they are and what they have authorized online. 28:03 Proof's partnership with Visa. Studying the history of Visa led Pat to recognize parallels between the evolution of payment security and the future of digital identity. 30:56 Deepfakes and AI impersonation are already more dangerous than most people appreciate. Pat argues individuals need cryptographic digital identities. 39:34 Did Pat always know online notarization would eventually become something bigger?