The Trust Series (Co-hosted by Catherine McGregor & Chris Downie)

Jeremy Gottschalk, General Counsel and Marketplace Risk founder, discusses the importance of risk, trust and safety for marketplaces and platforms and encourages them to adopt mitigation strategies early. With the traditional focus being on growth, Jeremy believes VCs aren’t currently thinking about these issues. He founded Marketplace Risk out of a working group of lawyers, founders, execs and CEOs that originally met quarterly to discuss legal, trust, risk and safety issues and share their experiences. As it rapidly expanded, Jeremy decided it was an opportunity to aggregate relevant content and provide it to startups for free or via conferences at a low cost.
'My perspective is to always be transparent.’ 

Alexis Alexander, General Counsel of fintech organisation Liberis, joins Chris and Catherine to discuss the power of authenticity in creating trusted professional relationships. In her experience at Liberis, having open and honest conversations with her executive team shows how you can be a leader and progress to the top of the food chain by being yourself. She believes that authenticity allows leaders to build deeper human connections with their teams for more effective leadership.

'I’ve always put trust at the centre of everything I do. If you don’t have trust, you don’t really have anything.’

In this session, Catherine and Chris are joined by Polly Applegate, ex-Head of Community at Depop and advisor to online marketplaces, community-led platforms and live streaming. Polly's role at Depop saw her scale her team from 20 to 200 employees globally to provide an exceptionally safe and engaging platform for its user base.

Polly talks about the influence online community-led platforms are having on well-established brands, shifting them towards trying new things, such as Zara offering a resell option and John Lewis providing a clothing rental service.

She highlights the importance of factoring in Trust & Safety early in the startup journey and how online communities foster and grow naturally in trusted environments.
'At Depop in the early days, we were growing mainly through word of mouth. Rather famously, they didn't spend very much on marketing in the first number of years.'

In the first episode of our second series, Catherine and Chris are joined by Brett Hollenbeck, Assistant Professor at UCLA. Brett and his team recently conducted research into online reviews in marketplaces and how they shape the economics of those marketplaces. He was particularly interested to find out how fake reviews are purchased (e.g. Amazon sellers buying reviews in Facebook groups), and what’s happening to these products on the marketplace after they’ve bought fake reviews.

This episode is a very interesting and insightful listen as Brett talks about the emergence of generative AI tools and their ability to bolster fake reviewers’ capabilities and how, as a result, it's even more important to look beyond review content and instead focus on network connections in the fight against fake reviews.  Brett's research aligns with Pasabi's commercial experience of the most effective approach to tackling the fake reviews challenge.

In this episode of The Trust Series, Elle Tucker, Marketplace Advisor, Sharing & Gig Economy Consultant and Author, joins Chris and Catherine to talk about how the sharing economy has evolved over time and the importance of digital trust and safety for successful growth of sharing economy platforms. She highlights the need for educating consumers around the brand experience for sharing economy platforms and peer-to-peer transactions since it’s often a new way of doing things. Elle also shares experiences from her recent book, ‘Thanks for Sharing’, about how she and her family have been embracing the sharing economy.

#sharingeconomy #trust #p2p

Frank McKenna, Chief Fraud Strategist at Point Predictive, has been working in anti-fraud for some 30 years. Also author of the blog FrankonFraud.com, Frank calls on his years of experience to educate readers about leading fraud issues. 

In this episode, Frank talks with Chris and Catherine about how predictive analytics and AI can be used in the fight against fraud. He outlines the advanced techniques fraudsters use to commit their crimes from OTP bots to voice cloning and how 80% of people don't report scams because they feel ashamed.

John Matas, Digital Commerce Fraud Expert, has more than 3 decades of experience in retail crime and fraud investigation, from Macy’s in the 1990s to Etsy in the 2020s.

In this episode, John talks about how retail crime has become more sophisticated as businesses have moved online, while underlining the fact that identity theft and account takeover have always been major challenges in retail. John talks about the ability of bad actors to capitalize on programs before genuine customers catch on and the vulnerability that minimal friction creates for retail organizations. He also outlines the difficulty that two-sided marketplaces present in terms of very sophisticated types of collusive fraud that can be difficult to identify when anonymous entities are involved.

Catherine and Chris are joined by Becky Holmes, bestselling author of 'Keanu Reeves is not in Love with You'. Becky's book is a fascinating and insightful read about romance fraud and the scammers behind it. 

In this episode, Becky shares her experience of being contacted by multiple romance scammers and the entertaining ends she went to distract, confuse and turn the tables on them. She also talks about the experience victims of romance fraud have shared with her and the long-lasting and devastating emotional effects on them and their families.

Becky strongly believes we must educate everyone we know about romance fraud to help prevent more victims being targeted and fight against the shame people feel when they've been subjected to it.

Daniel Dart, founder of Solo GP fund Rock Yard Ventures, joins Catherine and Chris to talk about the power of second chances, having experienced homelessness and incarceration earlier in his life.

This episode is a fascinating and inspiring walk through Daniel's incredible life. The brainchild behind Time Again, a prominent punk-rock band, Daniel wrote and sang about social issues and poverty. Talking about his work in criminal justice reform and the ability of small groups to effect massive change, he believes in the power of dreaming big to make things happen.

Daniel holds an MBA from MIT and is the first formerly incarcerated student in the school's history. Not only has his work been published in Harvard Business Review and the World Economic Forum, he has presented his academic and economic research worldwide, including in Sri Lanka, China, Ireland, Japan, and the United States.

[Episode contains some swearing.]

“Trust means something I expect to be the case will happen as expected.”
  James Ratcliffe, General Counsel and Director of Recoveries at The Art Loss Register, talks about the importance and complexity of authenticity in the Art market and the role ethics play where the law does not suffice. He considers the matrix of trust at play between art owners, dealers and buyers where market value, trusted ownership and authenticity of the artwork are mutually dependent. James also highlights how vetting is changing with the move to digital.

“Authenticity really encourages trust.”
  Herman Stewart, mentor and founder of Every Child Needs a Mentor, joins Catherine and Chris to take a look at the importance of trust in mentoring and leadership roles. Herman’s interesting and extensive career, from playing football for Great Britain to rapping on the same stage as Busta Rhymes and later becoming a mentor, provides examples of the connection between vulnerability, trust and authenticity and how this fosters a positive mentoring relationship.

“Trust is always built when you’re authentic and you have high integrity.”
  Chris Hurst, MD at legal recruitment and search firm, Carlyle Kingswood Global, speaks about the need for trust and authenticity in recruitment - for the recruiter, candidate and employer. He shares insight into how trust is built over time assisted by authenticity, empathy and a level of emotional intelligence. Talking about the importance of giving candidates the tools to succeed as themselves to allow them to be their best authentic selves.

“Sellers trust marketplaces to treat them fairly vis-a-vis exposure.”
  Kate Burns, ex-General Counsel at Not on the High Street, discusses the role of a GC from being the ‘risk assessor’ to the ‘conscience’ of a company. Speaking about the important role trust plays in the online buying journey, and the likelihood of marketplaces being the proven future model, Kate outlines the difficulty with regulation when there isn’t a one-size fits all marketplace model.

“Trust is fundamental to every exchange we have everyday.”
Anoop Joshi, Director of Legal at Trustpilot, outlines the progressively important role online reviews play in the purchase process and talks about the responsibilities Trustpilot has to deliver trusted reviews to their customers and platform users. He shares insight into how they are seeing an increasing sophistication in attempts to get non-genuine reviews onto the platform and talks about Pasabi’s role in helping tackle the challenge of review sellers and fake reviews.

“Trust operates on a number of levels. If I think about it at its core, it’s about confidence and dependability. Do I have confidence in the person’s ability and can I depend on them?”
Anthony Omo, Director and GC at the General Medical Council, highlights the importance of consensual decision making in building trust between doctors and their patients and talks about the concerns regarding accessibility to prescription medicines online. 

Olga Mack, CEO of Parley Pro, a Blockchain Strategist and author, outlines her own experiences which led her to have an interest in blockchain, including emigrating to the US from the former Soviet Union at a young age. 

‘The trust we place in institutions sometimes works .. but sometimes it doesn’t and when it doesn’t, it really has an impact on you as an individual, as a family and as a society.’

Barry Eichengreen, economist and professor at UC Berkeley and Orkun Saka, assistant professor of Economics at City, University of London discuss the decline of trust in scientists, how this has manifested during the pandemic and what this means going forward for society as a whole.

‘There is a decline in trust in scientists as individuals and scientists as a collection of people, but not as an endeavour.’

Pedro Pina, VP Head of YouTube for Europe, Middle East and Africa, has been named as one of Europe’s leading LGBT+ role models. Pedro explores the ways in which brands can build and maintain trust with diverse employees and consumers. He highlights the importance of companies having visibility of under-represented groups at leadership levels and the role brands have in helping embrace diversity.

‘There is this idea that the under-represented groups are the ones that need to make the change...they can’t. The clue is in the name - they are under-represented, so they can’t!’

Colin McCarthy, founder of Legal Operators, joins Catherine and Chris to talk about the key role trust plays in starting and building a community. Noticing the need for a truly collaborative community focused on best practices, Colin founded Legal Operators. Starting out as a small group of 12 like-minded people, Legal Operators has rapidly expanded over a two year period to being a global community of 8,000 legal operations professionals. 
At its core, Legal Operators is about people coming together to collaborate and share information, drop barriers and improve the industry.  Colin outlines the effect the Covid pandemic had on the community, how pivoting to online early in 2020 helped Legal Operators to expand and the challenges building a community involves.
‘Trust is the foundation of any good relationship.’