Monday, December 21, 2020
Reflections on 2020: Harrison Tang, Spokeo
Every year, we feature the year end reflections of founders, CEOs, investors, and others in Southern California's high tech community. We'll be posting these throughout the next two weeks. Today, we have Harrison Tang, the CEO of Spokeo. You will be able to get to all of these posts on our 2020 reflections here. Are you a founder, CEO, or investor who would like to participate? Contact our editors for details.
What was the biggest news for you/your company this year?
We had a soft launch to test our new identity protection & identity management features to complement our core people search service in 2020. We’ve started with dark web monitoring, and we are adding credit monitoring to help our users better control their digital identity. With both people search and identity protection functionality, we provide the most comprehensive people intelligence to help our users know more.
It's been a tough year for many due to the pandemic; how have you or your company adapted to the business environment?
We successfully pivoted to a flexible workplace in 2020, which includes transitioning our 70-member Customer Care team to work from home in less than a week. The pandemic allowed us to experiment with working from home, which has proven to be quite successful without sacrificing productivity. We achieved this due to our shared values and transparent culture, which helped keep us united during a difficult and stressful year. Beginning in 2021, we’ve enhanced our flexible work policy to allow teammates to work almost anywhere in the US.
On a personal note, I experienced an “aha” moment with my son Terry who started first grade at home on his computer. A whole new generation of people are growing up with remote-first learning and work. The future of work and education will not be the same, and it will be flexible.
What was the biggest lesson you learned this year?
As a data company, we’ve always believed that a data-focused culture is necessary for us to achieve great data quality. That’s what our users come to Spokeo for -- accurate data about people.
The data-focused culture is different from the hacker way popularized by web companies. It focuses on the overall process, particularly getting the raw data inputs right at the beginning of the process. Otherwise, we will get “garbage in, garbage out.” A data-focused culture is more about understanding the “why & how,” whereas a hacker culture focuses on the “what” and the end results. We want to understand the “why & how” before tackling the “what” so that we can deliver high quality products to our users.
What are you most looking forward to in the technology/startup world in 2021?
As people and businesses spend more time online, digital identity and knowing “who this person is” become more important. Technologies such as multi-factor authentication, identity and access management, and fraud mitigation will see accelerated growth as more activities go digital. Furthermore, I believe that the digital identity landscape will change from today’s duopoly of Google and Facebook to a more decentralized and self-sovereign future. People do not want companies to own who they are in the digital world; rather, they want to take control of their own identity and destiny. New technologies will pop up to accelerate these changes starting in 2021.
Harrison Tang is the CEO and Co-founder of Spokeo. He started Spokeo with his college roommates Mike Daly (CTO) and Eric Liang (CIO) in 2006 in his parents basement. Harrison guides Spokeo's product vision to help the company realize its mission of making the world around us more transparent with data. Under his leadership, Harrison has helped build and scale Spokeo ’s user base from zero to serving tens of millions of users. He is passionate about building products that help customers get their jobs done. Harrison earned a B.A.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Economics and a M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.