Meet Tamer Hassan, co-founder of White Ops
I’m Tamer Hassan, co-founder of White Ops. About eight years ago my friends and I were looking at the bot problem and the ways bots could be monetised. We prototyped some code to detect automated activity and managed to get it deployed on several large properties on the web. What we saw astounded us. The amount of non-human activity that was not being reported or talked about was beyond what any of us had expected.
As we started to pull the problem apart and research the criminal ecosystem behind bots and botnets we quickly realised that sophisticated bad ‘bots’ are a fundamental threat to the integrity of the internet. We asked ourselves the question, ‘what could you do if you could look like a million humans?’ The use cases for fraud spanned multiple markets. For example, you could “listen” to a song or “watch” a video enough times to move it to the top of the charts and quickly create the impression that something is popular or trending. You could even amplify a political opinion with millions of fake interactions. How would people know whether it’s true? How would people know what to trust? So, we decided to develop a bot mitigation platform to definitively know whether there’s a person or a robot on the other side of the screen.
What was your background before setting up White Ops?
I’ve always had an interest in computers and taught myself to code aged 8, when I got my first computer. However, I initially went into the US Air Force, spending several years flying Black Hawk helicopters behind enemy lines in Iraq and Afghanistan on search and rescue operations, before moving into tech. This military experience has certainly shaped my vision for White Ops - at the end of the day, we’re not just protecting clients, we’re disrupting the economics of cybercrime.
What is the end goal?
Our endgame is to change the economics of ‘bot’ fraud to make it unprofitable for the fraudster. We ultimately want to safeguard the integrity of the internet and our customers by making sure there really is a human behind every online interaction. We do this by verifying the humanity of more than 5 trillion interactions per week across cybersecurity, programmatic advertising, and marketing. Due to our unique approach to signal creation and our scale, we have a rare view of fraud and abuse from sophisticated bot attacks across the entire internet like no other company on the planet. We protect against threats targeting our partners, learn from the experience, and develop detection methodologies to benefit the entire internet ecosystem. It’s a mutual feedback loop of knowledge and insight into bad actors, which leads to new techniques to protect everyone. As new organizations join our mission, the entire system becomes stronger in the fight against fraud and abuse.
What’s been White Ops’ greatest achievement to date?
In terms of sheer scale, working with the FBI, Google, Facebook and many other organisations on its biggest ever Ad-Fraud investigation, 3ve, was an amazing experience for us. We were able to help take down one of the most sophisticated bot-based Ad-Fraud operations ever encountered, preventing millions being stolen from the $250bn global ad industry.
What plans do you have for White Ops over the next two years?
We’re focused on expanding our product offering and use cases around fraud protection, the number of markets we serve and expanding our international operations. In London, we’re growing our presence to include sales and marketing, alongside security and research. We are beginning to do the same in APAC with a focus on Singapore and Japan. This expansion is crucial to our mission—changing the economics of cybercrime and digital fraud requires collective protection—as every company that supports our mission is also supporting and protecting others. We are committed to changing the economics of digital fraud so that it’s more costly for the bad actors to do cybercrime than for the ecosystem to defend itself.
What advice would you give to entrepreneurs seeking their first funding?
Treat selecting your investors just like you treat selecting your core team. Investment is much more than just capital; you’re bringing on teammates.
How did you attract the right investment attention?
Leverage your network. If you haven’t built a team of advisors who are more experienced than you are, that should be your first priority. Beyond that, press coverage has been crucial for us to raise awareness of digital fraud, since it often takes place without anyone noticing.
Do something noteworthy that showcases your true capabilities and what you’re really trying to accomplish. If you’re doing the right thing then investors will find you - they’ve all built extensive networks to find innovative and commercial opportunities.
Has the pandemic affected funding rounds? How so?
The pandemic has affected funding in many nuanced ways. Capital is still readily available; however, it appears to be much more selective. Traditionally, high growth, high burn companies tend to get a lot of attention in the venture capital space. Now we’re seeing more activity at the two extremes of the spectrum - early idea stage, where the capital requirements are low, and established high growth companies that are showing profitability. However, there may be fewer opportunities for companies in the ‘middle.’ As coronavirus continues to cause economic uncertainty, a clear and efficient path to profitability is more important than ever.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?
A lot of people fail at the first step: believing that your big idea is even possible. That’s where “systems thinking” comes in – this has been the most useful tool to me throughout my career, both in the US Air Force, and as an entrepreneur. With this approach, you break an ill-defined problem down to its component parts, and come to a solution from first principles. Rethink the problem from the ground up, and question the status quo. Don’t do things the way they’ve always been done - come to your own conclusions about what is possible.
What sets White Ops apart?
We’ve always placed huge emphasis on the importance of our team and our mission to get to where we want to be. People are the true competitive differentiator. You can have the best strategy in the world but you’ll get nowhere with a mediocre team. We make sure we’re always hiring the best talent, who are passionate about our mission to disrupt the economics of cybercrime, and never losing focus of our ethos and culture.
