197. The PM Scale Paradox: Rodolfo Cristovão Product Director and Mike Yeardley, VP at Feedzai

Productized Podcast: All right, so it's time to shape things up. Welcome to season 20 of the Produtize podcast. I'm André Marquis and I'll be your host for today's episode. This season, we're all about beyond the build with Produtize Conference 2016 happening June 18, 19 in Lisbon where we explore how product leaders drive real lasting impact and anything between.

Today, we're diving into a brutal but necessary idea. To scale your product, your identity has a PM needs to die. comes from the journey of FiZai. They have been scaling through massive growth, processing tens of billions of events, and fighting financial crime at a global scale.

I'm by Rodolfo Cristóvão, Senior Product Director and Mike Yerli, VP for Solutions at FiZai, the leading AI native risk ops platform dedicated a world of safer money. We are super excited that they have joined us as a sponsor for Poditize Conference 2026. And ⁓ lived this transformation firsthand. They have evolved their product management from early stage KOs to structured high stakes discipline at scale.

Rulfo Mike, great to have you with us. ⁓ Mike Yeardley: and accelerate. Rodolfo Cristovao: Great to be here. Thank you, Andrej, for the invite.

Productized Podcast: Absolutely, and it's really my pleasure to know a little bit what you guys are doing So let's warm up with a quick round short answer, but we want to get this started Strong so one decision you made that wrong at the time but turned out to be right and maybe Mike gets to start this one Mike Yeardley: Okay, yes, I think if you look back through our history, had a real evolution over time. think that's been When we started, we had a journey that kind of was very much focused on maybe a more merchant focused community.

Whilst that might have incorporated global names, it's a discreet, focused use case for us to kind of help those types of industries. And actually our real pivot now is that we've moved over to the financial institutions. We're looking at fraud and financial crime from a financial institution, typically from a bank, even more today from a ⁓ FinTech type basis. And so when we started, that was a big shift for us.

know, we're looking at the merchant community, the acquiring base community has a lot of very specific requirements in terms of... as much as the fraud protection, but it's actually about revenue. It's about that wallet into a good, trusted, consuming And actually, when you look at it on the financial institutions, yes, we have the same challenges. We're looking at good customer experiences.

How can we have frictionless journeys where consumers get do what they want to do? But really, it's a very pivot when you have some leading industry names that are on your roster. And you say, actually, we're going to make this big, the shift and focus a kind of like a different type of industry. So I think it's quite a, ⁓ the time, it's probably a little bit unnerving ⁓ terms of losing ⁓ recognized logos.

And I think that then, you know, within the way that a company wants to evolve is how do we kind of get that market presence and then shift that into a world where perhaps. ⁓ Productized Podcast: Mm-hmm. Mike Yeardley: we're having to start a game a little bit. We've got the basis of a great solution.

We've proven ourselves, but you're now proving it with a new set of customers and a new set of kind of buyers in the market. so it's quite a big thing, I think, to go from trusted, well-known, respected to a whole new world. And to leave that behind to some extent is, it's quite a, it's a great leap of faith. And I think at that moment, you probably have some bumps along the road, but I think if you look back now, I think he would say, what a great decision that we made.

I think the way our technology works, the industry. Productized Podcast: Mike, just to clarify, big financial industry is big, have banks, have Intratech, you have everything you've been, so exactly did you stop serving a customer? Mike Yeardley: Yeah. think about some of your ⁓ trying do it without naming names, because I think that's an important thing.

But think some of the well-known sports goods, brands exist industry. Think of those media streaming or those music streaming type companies. They're the types of companies that we have. But if you think about it today, think about the audience we maybe have at Productive.

Think about your big Portuguese banks, big banks globally. Rodolfo Cristovao: It's be hard. Mike Yeardley: It's a very different mindset, very different experience and it's a very different industry and it's that. So think of your big sports, go into your more media-based activity and now it's financial.

Productized Podcast: ⁓ Who are you focusing at at the moment? Who are your ICP? Mike Yeardley: ⁓ is the banks, it's the financial institutions. Yeah, whether that's from a compliance perspective, from an anti-money laundering perspective, you're looking at the protection of the financial ecosystem, the fraud-based relationships, or whether that's from an acquiring perspective, protecting the risk to the merchant, the risk to an acquirer who provides the ecosystem.

So think of your cards transactions, and then ultimately the banks. ⁓ Productized Podcast: Thanks. Mike Yeardley: And then for the banks, can consider every one of us this podcast and listen to this. We, you know, we subscribe to banks, we are customers of banks.

And so by helping banks protect us from the wider fraud world, that frie, that wider risk of us being compromised, we sit across those, those three strands. And on top of that, then how do we look at our identity? How do we protect us as an identity as well? our online behavior has a particular signature, a particular footprint.

actually you want to create trust in that. You want to identify those moments where trying to act maliciously on my identity and my behavioral, the way that I transact. And those three things I think go really nicely together. The transactional ecosystem, the customer, the consumer as an entity, what is the integrity of that customer?

And then what is my identity and who I am and how I behave. And so those three things go nicely and that's kind of how... ⁓ we've evolved over time. And I think why it resonates that big shift over time into that multifaceted customer first view is kind of that journey that we've been on for the last few years.

Productized Podcast: So that's a great intro to the core idea that we want to discuss here today, which is you call the PM scale paradox. The things that make you successful. And I guess some of those early clients were obviously, you know, helping you to become a successful company. Early on will block you later on a stage of the company and, and Fidzai.

⁓ And those listening, it's already a unicorn. You have surpassed 1B valuation. So of asking how do we scale products, I want to ask first of all, in your own terms, what is ⁓ feed today? Maybe, Rudolfo, can take this one.

Rodolfo Cristovao: Right. So, Fidzai today versus before, right? are a company that started already with AI at its core to detect risk in financial And as Mike said, we could detect them on merchants, could detect them on big banks, we could detect it in many, many applications. In these early stages, we were doing it with Telco.

I don't want mention brand names again, but Portuguese here in Portugal. we are very well known companies, telco, even insurance. And then came the banking, the banking space, right? The core was there from the beginning.

We apply AI to solve world problems and detecting fraud is definitely a big problem that orchestras have and affect people. That's why a world of safer money. So today, obviously, Fizz.ai has grown and has us ⁓ the market especially on the banking industry.

So now we deal with world largest banks. We protect $8 trillion in worldwide. We will probably now the player that processes more financial ⁓ transactions in world. Coming from a Portuguese startup, it's definitely something be proud.

Just this week or last week, we announced 100 patents. So that's obviously a huge milestone. Productized Podcast: And most of those are US patents, Okay, congrats. Rodolfo Cristovao: I got two, by the way.

I got two of them the early stages on the product, which again, I will explain how we to shed our skin to get into those. And it's now we are a very large company worldwide. We're recognized by the world's largest brands. We just got ECB, the European Central Bank.

We're protecting the digital channel. we are now very big. my personal experience from a small startup until today, It's definitely something I'd like to share because it's obviously, we had to reinvent ourselves along the way. you start basically as a zero to 1 PM and now you're a scale PM.

obviously all that feels different and you need to be able to pivot into that. yeah, so today, Fidzai is probably one of the largest players in the market of risk. So it's not even just about fraud. It's also about compliance.

So fraud is basically protect our users and obviously ⁓ customers ⁓ that they don't have financial losses. in compliance is a totally different scenario we are actually protecting the about money laundering. And obviously money laundering comes, the origination of the money always comes from criminal activity and can trafficking, can be war, it be many nefarious things. definitely.

Mike Yeardley: . Rodolfo Cristovao: proud of the journey and where FidSize stands today. And is the limit. Productized Podcast: So the PM team had to evolve over the years.

And so let's just tackle this question. What do PMs need to learn to scale? Rodolfo Cristovao: I can, I can. Mike Yeardley: Why don't you take that because you've got the longevity and then I've kind of got the majority of the team today.

So why don't you start and then I'll kind of finish it off. Rodolfo Cristovao: Fair enough. Fair enough, Mike. Yeah.

So definitely, I was saying, when I joined FeedZy, I think we were probably one or two product managers, which we had just started product at FeedZy. The company obviously starts as a startup with engineering, when they have a great idea and it starts to work, but you need to be... Productized Podcast: Also because all the founders are engineers, right? Pedro Pizarro is an engineer, everyone else is.

You are. Rodolfo Cristovao: Well, I'm an engineer myself, obviously moved into product in early stages in my career. But when I joined, we were just a few and we just creating the products kind of mindset within the company. The way I like to think is there is no engineering roadmap and there is no product management roadmap.

There is only product or business roadmap. And sometimes ⁓ have to take technical decisions. Sometimes you have to take business decisions. more on the product management side, but ultimately what brings us from that point into today was always prioritizing the business decision, what's best for business.

I think that's fundamentally what to us that time. And obviously you start again, as a ⁓ to 1 you have incredible ideas for that one product ⁓ and you make work, you solve your customer pain. You delight customers, you build products sometimes that are just for selling. then when you scale, obviously that paradigm changes completely, right?

You're not looking at, know, shiny features anymore or, or, or the hero mentality. And, know, a lot of product managers have egos. I have egos myself, but you need to learn how to adapt your outcome to the, the, to the stage of the company, right? If you have four or five customers, obviously will be very hard to say no.

Productized Podcast: you Rodolfo Cristovao: whatever request they come, but you have to keep thinking, if I want to get to 100 million ARR, what are decisions I have to take today? And sometimes it's not easy for product in particular to be thinking that far away. It's easy to mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes.

⁓ Productized Podcast: Yeah. newer describing scaling has a series of identity death. a very strong claim of course. So what exactly is dying or was dying along the process?

Rodolfo Cristovao: Absolutely. No, way I like to see it is definitely your ego must die. ⁓ Obviously, obviously very provocative statement, right? Nobody is really dying, right?

Maybe shedding the ⁓ is a better but you need to think what should be your product mindset at ⁓ each of stages be able to pivot from one place to the other. So if you start small again, you're concerned about your product. Productized Podcast: Mm. Rodolfo Cristovao: You're concerned about how good it is and whatnot.

definitely you fall in love with your product. That's what happens to all of us. You fall in love with your product. When you scale, when you go to ⁓ million ARR, what need to fall in love is your customers using your product.

And it's a totally different mindset. Just to clear, the core, the kernel of good product management is the same. That doesn't die. The way it works is completely different from when we have five customers and you're still selling, you're still finding your market fit or your verticals versus when you're thinking about how you are going to handle 100 customers, the ability to say no, now it comes partners as we're going to see in this journey.

Your mindset the way you prioritize, the way you make decisions will change completely. And your ego really must die and reinvent itself for you to take the right decisions. Because if you're stuck with like in a zero to one... mentality in the hero mentality that's actually going to hurt you and obviously the company later on Productized Podcast: Yeah, but is this more about also changing the skills, the mindset, incentives?

Because, know, must die. Like said, it's a very provocative claim and it's very hard to tame ego, you know. what exactly you doing here in order prioritize death? What should go first?

Is it the skill? Is it the mindset? Is it the power structure inside the How do you do this ever? Mike Yeardley: Thank Rodolfo Cristovao: It's definitely the mindset for me.

the first thing, the ego and the mindset. You small you start building products and you need a product to sell. That's obviously the first Without any product, you're not selling. There's a point in time you're to start feeling scalability pains, like inability to deliver.

A lot of customers asking for something and then you're delivering stuff. Our volumes in terms of transactions, as I was mentioning, grew in one way, we almost doubled the volume. And we're talking about trillions of transactions. there's this dilemma or this balance between, I focus product team on making sure we're able to scale performance, scalability, cloud costs, sales visibility from or do I focus on new features?

Because they are always for features. So which comes first? Productized Podcast: That's a great segue to my last question because you moved from solving specific customer problems to building an entire platform and you know most startups are told ⁓ narrowly, on a very specific problem and solve that problem really really well. You kind did the opposite.

Why was this? Mike Yeardley: you Look, think there are probably two things. One is obviously our own appetite for growth. You know, ⁓ are a company with ⁓ ambitions and think we've had strong successes along the way that have reinforced that the ambition is the right thing.

So I think that has naturally given us something. I think the pivot as well to the financial services was another big one because look, the world of fraud is huge. I think we all know it touches everybody's lives. You hear it enough in the newspapers and the press every day.

But actually that ecosystem of how do you protect society and us as consumers isn't just about looking at it from a fraud perspective. You have to look at who are the actors within that journey? Who are the consumers receive those funds of money? Who are the ones that are trying to take over me as an identity and steal those credentials?

So actually I think what we enabled us to do as we scaled out was that shift in the industry also enabled us to start to really draw out different types of products. And I think that scaling is something that we've required from our product managers as we've moved from fraud to financial crime to identity. And actually, Last year for us, we actually made a major acquisition. It was really about orchestration and bringing all of that together.

We built a platform that enabled us to have all of these multifaceted product parts that serve specific parts of the industry. But anybody who is on the other side of the fence, any of our customers will tell you, this is all symbiotic. Whatever happens to that customer's credentials and how trustworthy they are. impacts whether or not they're likely to be someone that might be a recipient of fraud funds, which provides a vehicle for somebody to then go and commit fraud because you can get the money out.

And how does that typically happen? It happens through an internet channel a lot of the times. So all of a sudden, joining all of these dots together in the way that we as consumers behave was a natural expansion for us as well. So kind of coming into that space in terms of we needed a platform, we needed that scalability, but then we needed to grow out.

I think going back to your point about the product managers, think the one thing that's happened is that's kind of broadened us out and therefore it's stretched some of those of our solution as we kind of become this platform, which I think has then stretched our product managers. And so rather than that ability to focus within their own world, there now is all of these interconnected parts of a platform. that they need to join with. So actually it's the dependency management, the interrelationships with your fellow product managers.

You're no longer in charge of your own product's destiny because of the way that the infrastructure works. So I think that's been a mindset where we scaled, our product managers have had to scale. One the things you mentioned at the beginning is about that mindset. And I think the mindset is true, but I also think one of the things that's evolved with this scaling is ⁓ the role of the PM.

It's really interesting. Everybody wants something from a PM nowadays. It could be marketing. It could be, oh, we want to look at partners.

Oh, we want to go and speak to a customer. Oh, we need to kind of make sure we've got really good messaging and collateral. We need to make sure that we've kind of got great demos. And all of that is outside of their core job, which is to actually build that product and build it well and then ensure that 100, 200 different customers all appreciate that same change in a positive way.

So feel the product managers as well as that. but growing with us as a company has also grown to be a core enabler for the rest of the company. So I think that's a big mindset shift. I think it's also a big shift in terms of their relative importance within the company.

Ask more about the product managers than anybody else in terms of can they come and help because they possess knowledge. They possess the intrinsic knowledge of what our solution does and everybody wants a little piece of that. well, I think mindset is right. Rodolfo, you're absolutely correct.

But I think we've been very good at helping our product management community that mindset and I think what's reinforced it is that we've had good successes so that's also reinforced that it was a good mindset shift. So I think that just kind of helps perpetuate it, gives us value in terms of we are on the right track and hopefully that means it's a more empowered, a more interesting role for our product management team. It is not just focused on one thing. Rodolfo Cristovao: Yeah, let me just compliment a little bit what Mike said.

And again, this is one of those places that there is no universal answer to should I start to SSMBs or should I start with tier ones, right? In our case, it became a little bit obvious because obviously the first customers would be tier ones with very specific needs. Now the shift to platform ⁓ approach came a little bit at the same time where we, where we pivoted the merchants vertical because we were kind of narrowing too soon. Productized Podcast: you Rodolfo Cristovao: And as Mike said, in this space in particular, in our business, which is a risk business, if you focus too much, you'll become a niche player.

⁓ address the needs. You need to be looking at multiple data across the bank. So you can't just, or our customers, can't just choose one or the other. You have to start widening up soon so that you have really an approach that will win in the long run.

And again, it was a brilliant decision in this case from our... for our founders to give it that specific ⁓ focus on the platform at the time was about omnichannel platform. look across risk using AI all your touch points because again, look the space, look at the problem we're solving. It's about creating a new activity.

They have no boundaries, right? They will explore all the silos within big banks. And sometimes some of the banks out there, their departments, they almost different companies. So you fraud on the card and you don't correlate that with internet banking or let someone get into bank that will make criminal activity later.

If there's no if you don't have a platform approach to this problem, you will eventually die. That's again, not the PM in this case. Productized Podcast: It was a conscious bet there are synergies of having a platform because a product gets better by having a platform as well. ⁓ is this Feats ambition coming from?

Feats Eye is a private company, right? It's still not ⁓ listed to knowledge. Is this founded? Rodolfo Cristovao: Absolutely.

Absolutely. Founder led and all our product managers, encourage them to have a founder mindset as well. and it's been very a pleasure to work in this. Productized Podcast: which is easier said than done.

Mike Yeardley: Okay. Rodolfo Cristovao: Absolutely easier said than done. Mike Yeardley: Yeah, look, I think one thing as well, Andrea, that we've done is we have brought in, we've brought the industry into the company as well. Productized Podcast: you Mike Yeardley: We have a great view of where we want to go.

I'm an ex head of fraud. I've been on the other side. was at a bank that bought one of the big buyers of Feeside many years ago. So actually what we have done within the product management community as well is we've augmented that real world value as well.

So when we have that passion, we have that core foundation around that. the AI first approach really pushing at the boundaries of, know, bank transformations through the last 10 or 15 years. We've really been at the forefront of that, but we have augmented that with real world knowledge, real world understanding. And I actually think that's something that our PMs and our product managers team has picked up really well.

I think you would almost say they are SMEs in their field as well, as well as building the capabilities and the features. I some of our team have really embraced the industry and the problems that are in that industry. And therefore they've used that to help bring back into their own development of the solution, those nuances that really work. Because again, we did the scalability to a platform, but what we haven't lost is a focus that...

there is still specific nuances for all of those use cases that we're helping our customers with. An online fraud is very different to a card fraud. It's very different to a branch-based fraud. So we need to keep that specialism as well.

But actually doing it on a platform play means that we're getting the best of both. We have some capabilities that stretch across. We get that scalability. We get that kind of better together nature.

But then we can build on top and still make sure that it really resonates for the one problem. that does need to be solved at that moment in time as well. So we've tried to really blend it, but I think by bringing in the industry experience, as well as the ambitions we have from a lot of the leadership team, it's also making sure that we're part of the industry and part of the ecosystem as well. we're not just sat here with our view of we think this could work, we're actually making sure that's part of a real world value as well.

And people like myself are. I live for stopping bad guys. That's what kind of gets me out of bed in the morning. That's what used to get me out of bed every single day.

And I think we have a lot of that mentality as well. That this is about doing good. That's a good thing to get out of bed for, is to know that you can do good and do more good. Rodolfo Cristovao: Which, by the way, is another mutation on itself coming from a platform to this mindset.

Productized Podcast: Yeah. Mm. Yeah, absolutely. let just maybe talk a little bit about the power of no, you ⁓ the value at scale is defined by the rigor of their rejection.

think that's something said in a and that obviously sounds good. A little bit like founder led mentality, this in reality, saying no to top customers. I guess some of you are... customers represent a significant part of your revenue risky.

give me a concrete example, maybe where saying no. You don't need to disclose any specific clients obviously, but just specific. Rodolfo Cristovao: We won't on this one on this one for sure. We're not disclosing names.

hope ⁓ not listening and they can figure it out themselves. But anyway. Mike Yeardley: Thank Productized Podcast: But it's always in their best interest because in the best interest of the platform, right? And you're making these decisions towards everyone's best interests.

Rodolfo Cristovao: So. Yeah. So I think the most brilliant quotes on this one was of the customers and I can't even think about the name and Mike will know for sure. If keep saying yes to everything from a customer, there's a where you're probably going to eat the whole.

It was not the right decisions. You knew it, but you couldn't say no. And one of our customers told us ⁓ something like, we hang ourselves by the extent of the rope that you provide us. That's it.

You're giving them too much flexibility, too many features. You're saying yes to everything they say without with some reason. And sometimes you reach dead ends, either performance. And I have actually two or three examples on this.

Performance or too much power on their to do whatever they want. And sometimes you'll walls. There's no point in features if your scalability is not there. And actually, The other way around is also vice versa.

So when you start scaling, this becomes truly a balance, as I was saying before. So stories. One of our major customers was kind of pushing a little the boundary on what we could compute with our platform in terms of, you know, if you use AI, if you use models, you need to create features. know, most of our customers come with 500 features.

These customers was having more than 2000. and metrics and a of models, a lot of rules. And obviously, that becomes hyper complex risk strategy. ⁓ Productized Podcast: By the way, when you work with clients, you are working with the IT department.

Rodolfo Cristovao: No, no, no, no. So there's obviously a link with IT department because you need to integrate the cloud, having the traffic to come in, architecture, security, lot of security, a lot of certifications, and whatnot. But once that part is over, you mostly work with the business department. And the business department, we are talking about data scientists, we're talking about risk analysts that will review.

transactions and actually evolve the risk strategy so you detect as much fraud as you can. Right? So you're talking with business and obviously business without any restraint will tell you, look, we need all this complex risk strategy and full of features and whatnot, because otherwise we will let this scenario go and or that scenario go. And that's not always true.

And it starts pushing the boundaries of what your platform can compute. And most importantly, the cost, because it will cost a lot of money, right? It's a lot of compute. And it was kind of pushing the boundaries.

of what you said and what the customer was saying was we need more compute. And we said, look, this is already beyond unreasonable. There's no point on doing that. And we actually said no.

And obviously what happens is our CEO gets a call, right? Actually, not just one. I guess it was than one or two ⁓ ⁓ it started escalating. And Sharon was definitely on top of the table.

We said no. obviously you get to a level where You get more business sense that we look, explain, look very clearly. We can actually achieve the same results or better with a much simpler and much more approach. and that point, you also have other customers that you can put on top of the table with this with customer A and customer B and customer C.

And look, the results are even better than yours in the same space with a much, much. less risk strategy and actually costs a lot less to you guys as well. And when get to a certain level, they start, okay, that makes sense. Let's listen to Fidzai.

Let's understand what Fidzai is saying. And after a tests, we actually convinced them. but obviously, Chern was on the table and the no was a very hard no. Mike Yeardley: you Productized Podcast: So what happens when the CEO or management gets the call?

Because they need to be very aligned with the product team to say, ⁓ the product team is saying, I'm with their decision. ⁓ Do get a call as well saying, hey, what is happening? Everybody gets call. ⁓ So alignment very important ⁓ at this stage.

Rodolfo Cristovao: Absolutely. Yeah, at that point you have product. Everybody gets a call. has a call.

⁓ want to take that one, Mike? Mike Yeardley: Yeah, look, I of the key things about when you say no is to say no and that up with evidence and facts and value as to why you believe that is the wrong There's lots of our customers and like I I've been a customer myself as well, that will overcomplicate things. They then start to create their own inertia because everything becomes so micromanaged to their unique needs. They actually stop themselves from being able to kind of benefit from what is going on in ecosystem.

So some of our customers will actively say to us, I need you to be that trusted partner that will tell me where I'm going wrong. Obviously, you know, telling a few people, you know, you're totally wrong, get their backs up a little bit. But I think if you go in and you give a reason, you can back it up with evidence and you can say, look, these are the benefits of what we could be giving for you. These are the problems that we think are going to come down the line.

It's about having that conversation. Perhaps we have had one or two conversations where it was a no, even still had to say, this is not right for us. This is not right for our long-term strategy. Because even saying yes might make one customer happy.

when you've got hundreds of customers, you've got a potential that you're making hundreds of unhappy because you're not able to focus on the value to everybody. So look, has it gone perfectly? and I sit here and say, well, we got it right every time. And you know what?

At no point was it ever overridden. No, we're not. Life is life and some things happen. And there are some conversations, some that you make to customers.

But it's about, I think, making sure that we're backed with evidence and facts ⁓ and reasons why. And that is our job to also make sure that the executive have that information. So when they get that phone call. Rodolfo Cristovao: Yeah.

Mike Yeardley: A, they're aware of the potential risk. They're aware of why we've taken a particular stance and they're aware of the implications us not that stance. And again, that's our job. We are the enablers to some extent.

We have to be very protective of where we want to go, what our own vision looks like. We do have to recognize that our customers ultimately pay our wages as well. you know, should listen as well. know, some of our customers have brilliant ideas and, know, they're valuable to everybody in the ecosystem and that's our role to get that right balance.

Productized Podcast: What's your rule of thumb for saying no? Is there any decision framework when going through a client, get the specs and then obviously you have your own roadmap and so on, but is there any decision framework, easy rules that you can relate to to have this quick understanding of what should go in, should go out? Mike Yeardley: Yeah, I think when it comes to features, I think very much about what is that replicable value? You know, we have that wider customer base to manage on this.

What is that replicable value? What ⁓ the opportunity cost of doing this? And suppose to some extent, what does it mean in terms of, do you start to limit the growth of that strategy? If we pivoted down particular function because one particular customer asked for it, no matter how important.

but it meant we, you know, perhaps went back to something we were doing five years ago that we'd moved away from, then, you know, I think that decision framework works for itself. So what is the opportunity cost? What's the actual cost of doing this? What is the value to that customer?

know, what is the, what is the preventative nature of what it stops? And so I think there's no, we haven't got a tick list. I think some of this is qualitative, but I think they are the key foundational things that take part in that decision chain. also even time as well.

Time also breeds inertia. This is not a time when, you know, you can rest on your laurels and do nothing. And then the other thing is what are we proposing to do? What is that roadmap?

And actually you are going to get all of this other value and that would have to stop for you and for other customers. And there's a lot of intrinsic value for lots of customers compared to the needs of that specific one. Like I say, it's never a single, every time we say no, that is the perfect ever final decision. But I think we have a good healthy balance in terms of making sure that the decision is based upon fact rather than opinion and it's based upon evidence to then at least make it an explainable reason why not.

Rodolfo Cristovao: Yeah. Productized Podcast: So just taking that one of the laurels Pizzai and obviously the laurels is the reason why the customer is knocking at the door the time, you know, that the market knows you for whatever reason. What are laurels of Pizzai? What makes customers love you so much?

If you had pinpoint a single part the or the experience, what is really the core? reason. Mike Yeardley: Why don't we do or two each, Rodolfo? I will tell you very selflessly from my old life, it is the performance.

⁓ look, we here to protect fraud. If you are great at protecting fraud, half the battle is easily won at that point. Productized Podcast: moments. Performance has a speed of processing transactions ⁓ Mike Yeardley: The actual value of decisions, so the nature of being able to say, can we stop that fraud?

How much can we protect that customer? How much can we protect the bank from a financial loss? actually, in a lot of the scams world nowadays, how much we actually protect the customer from a financial loss? That can be catastrophic for a customer.

You know, there's a lot of stories like that. So I think for me, with my own arm, performance always comes first. And then second to that is what does that mean for me as a business? Rodolfo Cristovao: No, no.

Productized Podcast: Validation. Yeah. Rodolfo Cristovao: Yeah. Mike Yeardley: in terms of the ability to have a good customer experience.

better you can protect your customers without intervening and causing friction and causing unhappiness means that you have a protected consumer base that is able to get on with its real world life and what it wants to do. But it knows that in that moment of truth, the bank through us is there to protect them. So, Ridolf, I picked a very specific value for me in terms of what Rodolfo Cristovao: Yeah, I agree with that. Mike Yeardley: what a customer thinks of us.

And again, I think you probably have some others as well. Rodolfo Cristovao: I have a couple more, but Andre, you asked for two, I need to be mindful of time, but they have like maybe a bunch of reasons for that, but definitely value detection. know, a bank has, I don't know, $100 million in fraud losses every year. When we just started, everyone else was having a rules-based approach to detection, which detects maybe 20 % of that.

Our first model already got 50%. So that's, Mike Yeardley: Ha ha ha! Productized Podcast: Your first model for people that are not super familiar with Technologies Tech was already an AI ⁓ learning model, right? And that was what, ⁓ 10 years ago, something like that?

Rodolfo Cristovao: Exactly, exactly. From the get-go, yeah. We also do rules. Yeah, well, I don't have the exact dates here, but yeah, maybe bit more than 10 years already.

You know, talking about random forests, early models, sort of technology. But with those, we would get from 20%, which is 2 million, to 50 or even 60%, which is again more 3 or 4 million. So you're going to a bank and you charge... Productized Podcast: Maybe more.

Yeah, but that was... Right. Rodolfo Cristovao: this amount of millions, but they will save more millions than that, they will love you. That's the one period.

Now with our latest models and whatnot, we sometimes get to 85 and even 90 % of detection. And obviously that is mind blowing for them. I think that's what Mike was saying. The second reason is with our position.

Yeah. Productized Podcast: Sorry to ask you, Rudolfo, but has a layperson, their performance a limit that you can get to? like 90 % this is as good as it's ever going to get or 100 % might eventually be possible? Right.

Mike Yeardley: you Rodolfo Cristovao: Yet to be seen. obviously with traditional models, we believe we can get to maybe 90%. Obviously, I think that's probably 80, 90 % would be the limit. I don't know if you saw recently, Fizzai is launching the first.

large model for risk, which we are calling a risk FM. No, it's not like an LLM that will predict the next word or the next token or whatever. It will something that will predict the next transaction or the next attribute of a transaction, which is something that our research has been working on. Fidzai now has a ratio of PhD to employee bigger than Facebook.

Obviously we are very small. That's an easy one. And that's one of the reasons we get so many patents. So sky's the limit.

We're evolving. And again, that sense, we are dying and reborn again in area because obviously we cannot stand still to again world of safer money. that's one of the reasons. First, obviously we're a lot.

The second is the customer sees that we got them covered. You know, with our risk ops approach, can, you know, maybe they start with cards fraud or transfers fraud in the product that we call transaction fraud for banking. But then they have AML, then they have account opening issues and account opening, you don't know the customer, so it's totally different. they see that they can land, get good results and then maybe bring more areas of the business, more departments of the bank until obviously they save a lot of money or they become safe in terms of regulations and reputations in case of compliance.

And that's obviously a compelling story and we landed. Productized Podcast: So in terms of the sustainability of the business on a longer term, everyone's talking about moting and data moting and opposite China and all that. you, right, that's another podcast, but still on that one, you argue that the product is no longer the UI, but the intelligence engine, which by the way has been at the core of the product since pretty much the beginning. where would, where?

Rodolfo Cristovao: Yeah. Woo, another podcast. Productized Podcast: Do you see current PMs actually ⁓ their time today? Or where should they be spending their time?

Rodolfo Cristovao: you have any preference for Mike or me? Yeah. Mike Yeardley: So I'll give you a couple. So I think one is we're moving away from the bank providing their own data for us to help them find the intelligence within that to then go and do a treatment back to their customer, whatever that is.

With the scale that we've got to, how can we bring the feeds our ecosystem to play. So not about this particular feature, this particular widget, particular font on our case manager, but actually behind the scenes, how do we build that new product capability for our customers to be able to leverage the data that sits behind everything? So we don't share that data across, we use a federated learning approach. So we kind of take the signals and take the inferences what our customers observe.

And then we kind of create. that model. But what we're able to do is to say, ⁓ what is it about this particular fraud problem that's been prevalent in the UK for the last 10 years? Okay.

How could we leverage that because scams are everywhere around the world. It's the same scanty apology in Brazil, in Australia, in Portugal, in the UK. So how can we leverage from those parts of the world that perhaps experienced some of this problem before we can take some of their learnings because we have that underlying intelligence and we can kind of share that. There's almost that the product manager, not creating the widgets, the features, the APIs, especially about how can I create a data led product and a data led mentality where I can give you new intelligence that you could not have gotten anyway yourself, but I'm able to serve that.

So I think that intelligence first mindset is one. I think the other one is, know, podcast probably goes nowadays without agentic AI and the use of that to kind of like, can we make journeys simpler, more intuitive and much more engaging for those. And actually, you one of the reasons that we've, said that we got our product management community together, they're all sat in a room just down from me and Rudolph, is we're actually talking about how can we better use agentiKi, LLMs within our product development cycle to actually bring things in quicker, do that early test and learn prototyping, make sure we get that feedback.

So actually we build, we don't build MVP products and evolve. We actually do that evolution in a much quicker way. So actually when we get to market, we're already pretty mature. We've already stress tested it in the real world.

We've given customers the ability to, kind of be part of that journey because we brought the development cycle much closer to kind of like, you know, the development So I think they are a couple of things where. ⁓ see the product managers particularly evolving with the way that the industry is going, but also evolving with the way that data as a commodity and intelligence on top of that is in itself its own product nowadays and we need to integrate that. So they're two for me, Rodolfo, I think we're definitely moving faster and forward.

⁓ Rodolfo Cristovao: Yeah, completely agree. So as said, ⁓ now ⁓ the third institution in the world that has more data about financial transactions. That's a mode on itself, right? It's not easy to displace with, know, you fancy your UI.

Actually, customers are moving in terms of the UI also to more agentic experience, and probably we are also playing a in that direction. You can also see what's happening with the pure SaaS companies that don't have this kind of mode. We're in market. doesn't, doesn't, doesn't.

yeah, internally, obviously we use Gen.ai, our PMs, actually now in of our products, I don't have a roadmap slide anymore, right? I have what the will look like in six months a year, you know, because it's again, ⁓ so easy and compelling to show that. problem is now customers not believing that is not real yet, but that's a different So.

Again, sitting on top of all that data, right? Your product is not a shiny new feature or a fancy feature anymore. Is, know, ability to deliver an API for them to consume that is so good and the detection is so good that from zero without us knowing the customer at all, which ⁓ prevents already on their And this is something that was impossible for us a couple of years because again, we've been doubling our volumes and our transaction every year. Productized Podcast: Hmm.

Rodolfo Cristovao: And that's a totally different ballgame. It also allows it to move down markets. So probably now is the time that we're going to move down market from tier 1 to tier 2, now maybe to tier 3, 4 and 5 because... Productized Podcast: you in the still in the banking sector or are you planning not to?

Rodolfo Cristovao: don't know what I can share with this for now. We're in the banking sector. I know what I can say. But anyway, ⁓ right that's the banking sector.

Mike Yeardley: Hahaha Stick with that, we're gonna have Productized Podcast: I'm just talking about it from a purely intellectual point of view because theoretical perspective of, the product is so good, ⁓ like you have a gem ⁓ you want to share to the world. So if it's just hidden for tier ones, that means it's not really democratizing that fraud prevention other banks that could benefit a lot also from having that kind of almost military-grade technology to their own. Rodolfo Cristovao: Yes, from a theoretical perspective we are obviously looking at...

Mike Yeardley: And I think that's a really interesting one already, because actually, and it is one of the way that we're trying to make this part of any... Productized Podcast: Clients, Mike Yeardley: financial systems, ecosystems. How do we make it so simple that they don't need to have huge teams of data scientists out there, but they can still get the power of a data scientist community. They can still get the power of a data science led risk decision infrastructure.

And we can join the data forum. You one of the biggest challenges is, you know, banks of all size. need to ingest lots of information points to be able to make a decision that Mike is Mike and things like that. But we can actually do that for them as well and we can do it in the simple way.

I think across the community can benefit from the systems, the solutions, capabilities that we do. And it is our responsibility to allow all of them to leverage this because ultimately every bank, large or small, is trying to do the right thing, which is protect its customers, do good for society and stop bad guys. And that is probably another shift that we're really focused on. Give the power of the very best.

but make that available to all. And that's not simple to do. That is definitely not an easy job to do. But that is one of the things that we want to make true.

That's why us taking control and bringing that data, that intelligence on behalf of what feeds I can do is a way of us taking away some of those pain points that... Rodolfo Cristovao: Yep. Mike Yeardley: smaller bank wouldn't have the resources or the in one year to go and do, but actually we've got that intrinsically. They should be able to leverage that as much as the big bank.

Productized Podcast: Yeah, because you are also limited by the cost of infrastructure, right? And that's probably something. I don't know, do you have your own infrastructure? Are you building own cloud infrastructure or are you still reliant on basically cloud power that you outsource?

Mike Yeardley: Yeah. Yeah, we're a first shop. We kind of use that. have multiple regions around the world as well.

So as much as leveraging that and, one of the great things as well about when you those wider providers is that you get the benefit of their roadmap for free because that's how they evolve that helps you evolve. So we are very mindful of the impacts of. Rodolfo Cristovao: Yeah. Productized Podcast: Mm-mm.

Mike Yeardley: data residency. That's a big focus for a lot of our customers, know, jurisdictionally. want to keep it within their statehood. we have a number of application installs, sorry, cloud installs around the world.

That means that we can cater to our customer base and we can give that privacy. and give that security that comes with that because there's nothing more important than the security aspect. But we also can give them something within region so they can have that comfort within their own regulators. look, that is, I think we've been based upon that strategy for a while.

One of our other big pivots was to move away from allowing, you know, having customers take our software and put it within their own premises. That creates, you said something earlier about the, do we work with the IT community? We probably work more with the IT community. but we've now shifted to the business and the business is the one that's there about protecting the customer, protecting the money.

we've pivoted, actually it's probably changed the stakeholders that we work with more as well and we're probably more on the front line now rather than having those deep technical conversations about ⁓ something connects together. Talking about value, not connection. Productized Podcast: transition go because lots of banks they have know very specific rules and having ⁓ thermos they have to run their own data centers they cannot really use the clouds ⁓ are you dealing with that Mike Yeardley: Thank Yeah.

Rodolfo Cristovao: So I can take that one. So actually, that was one of the big no's as well, right? So you had still a few amount of customers on-prem, big ones. And you had to say, look, no, we're going to move to clouds only.

And have maybe two years to go with together. most of them no, we're going to share. And we stick to that decision. It was a very painful and maybe even bigger than the pivoting on the merchant's vertical.

And look, we're going Productized Podcast: Right. yeah, big ones. Rodolfo Cristovao: We explained to them why the pace of innovation cannot be met if we continue on-prem. We're actually launching this and this and these new services and features and capabilities that are not possible to build on-prem.

And maybe they didn't take it at first. Maybe we're five years ahead of that specific market because, again, we're talking about big corporations, banks compliance is probably two notches up on the tinfoil scale architects. But we stood our ground and slowly steady, customers started to come with us to the cloud. think we haven't lost a single one.

So they will understand it over time. Sorry. Mike Yeardley: Okay, I think we were ahead of the curve. I think we were ahead of the curve to some hundred.

I wasn't here when this decision was made. It's got nothing to do with me whatsoever. But transformations have taken place in the financial services industry for the last 10 or 15 years. There has been a move and ⁓ more natural acceptance of a cloud-based approach.

I think most banks would say, we've got cloud, we're in the cloud on lots of things. Rodolfo Cristovao: We're bit ahead of the curve. Yeah, but look, we... Mike Yeardley: And perhaps the financial crime aspect was the one that was perhaps one of the later ones.

We made that pivot a few years ago. We were probably riding the wave of that transformation journey. We were an early adopter of that mindset. We definitely had that as our thing.

And what we're seeing is that parts of the world are cloud embracing. It's natural for them to see that. There's still parts of the globe that perhaps still are working their way through their transformation journeys. And for them, a tougher conversation.

It's a tougher choice for them to do. But knowing that what we give them by having that cloud first approach, to be honest, cloud only approach, is the fact that they get that value. have the ability to make releases on an intraday basis. We typically do a couple of weeks cycle, but they get that fast evolution of new value by coming to us on the cloud.

And what they got was inertia and complexity of different technologies coming together all the time. But I think we were at the forefront, particularly with some of our big wins a few years ago that, again, reinforced it with the market, that it was the right thing to do. And then we stood our ground on that. Productized Podcast: someone that is not in the fintech industry, what FeedsEye in the cloud infrastructure is essentially whenever there is a transaction or maybe a batch of transactions, asks ⁓ FeedsEye, hey, I do this transaction?

And FeedsEye answers ⁓ yes, ⁓ I know, maybe. Maybe it's probability, I don't know. Comes back and ⁓ The bank says, okay, let's do this. It's a piece I told us that we can do this intersection.

Let's do the transaction. Is this more or less how it works? Rodolfo Cristovao: A very small subset, In the beginning, obviously, you're talking about the transaction is like a card payment, right? The card payment goes through multiple institutions to be accepted, right?

You have the issuing bank, which is your bank, where your card is. But first of all, it's processed by the acquiring bank, the bank where you're paying from. So they all communicate it with each other. And we could sit at the acquiring bank.

We could sit at the issuing bank. We can see holistically across that network. But ultimately, you will give him a confidence or a risk of that transaction. Mike Yeardley: Hmm Rodolfo Cristovao: If it's zero, super safe, right?

The model will... Productized Podcast: certain stage in this process it goes to FIATSAI's to ask whether ⁓ I clear this transaction or not. Rodolfo Cristovao: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, simplifying, let's say we are the issuing bank. We are your bank. Your bank will look at who's this merchant, that who is the acquiring bank? What's the data that I have to actually understand if this is a decision I should take or not, right?

Have I seen fraud in this bank? How many times have you tried to pay with this card over the last month? you actually paying, you know, in the same location, in the same IP, in the known merchants that we analyze? I say millions.

Mike Yeardley: Yeah. Productized Podcast: That's what you do. That's the service you provide. That's FinCi.

Rodolfo Cristovao: Yeah. Yes, that's Fidzai, that's Fidzai score, right? And then we compare it with other segments, like similar segments to you. Is this normal?

Is this not normal? All that comes in the form of maybe a score, which is from zero to a thousand. So if it's low risk between zero and 200, it's safe. If it's between 800 and a thousand, this is definitely very fishy and you should investigate or you actually should decline automatically.

fits in the mid-range, the can decide whether they will have a human to review it or ⁓ like that. But that was the early beginning. We moved beyond just the payment, right? Or we now look at internet banking transactions, movement of money.

We look at device biometrics. Even ⁓ before do the payment, we can analyze if it's you touching your screen or not. So that's why the risk ops is so powerful, because now you can correlate the movement on your phone to the payment. the time that is being done.

⁓ can. Productized Podcast: What do you see the major risks, the upcoming risks or emergent risks now that the bad guys are also using dark LLMs and stuff? Mike Yeardley: Thank Productized Podcast: or you know I'm not a bad guy so I wouldn't go into this but it seems to be a rat race. Mike Yeardley: Yeah, always been a little bit of rat race.

It's been like one of those stress where you squeeze in, it pops out somewhere else and I think ⁓ that's But I think, I'm just finishing one thing from the last one, which kind of, I think helps with this question as well. what we do do though, it is the bank makes the decision. We provide all of the infrastructure, provide sub-millisecond type capabilities, we them, we've had all these different types of models. Productized Podcast: Yes.

Right. Yeah. Mike Yeardley: the ability to make calculations in milliseconds, all those sorts of things. We give them guidance as to what does a great strategy.

It's not like we give them models, but ultimately the bank also has control and they can work within the fees I estate and they can control what their appetite for risk is and how much they want to do it, how many rolls. So I think that's one thing as well about we enable them to also be very self-sufficient as much as we're here. I think the thing about where the markets go really interesting. We looked at that platform play and we provided the financial crime, the identity, as Rodolfo was talking about, the way that you engage with your phone or your desktop device is part of who you are.

And so when you're looking at making those decisions, it's can I make a decision based upon trust? Do I feel that you are doing the action yourself? Am I confident that you're doing something you should do? And then ultimately, what is the integrity around that transaction?

because even a good person can be a recipient of fraud funds to enable a mule because circumstances have pushed them that way. So I think what we are really seeing in the industry is we've seen a lot of convergence to scams being a big problem. We've seen great things around the use of authentication, particularly in Europe, around the way that, you authentication when you're kind of authenticating a password, when you're authenticating your log on, that's helped put some barriers in place.

That means that often it's the genuine customer, it's us, that are the weakest part of the problem. And it's now trying to identify those innate of, yes, it's Mike, it's on Mike's home device. at the same time that Mike always does it. But actually Mike shouldn't be doing this because someone has told Mike to do something he shouldn't be doing.

And so we're actually actually evolving with how do we look at the integrity of that transaction. We know it's Mike. We are 100 % confident he's a genuine customer. And he's a genuine customer now doing the thing he wants to do.

Productized Podcast: You could argue that people nowadays are increasingly using agents to do purchases or transactions on behalf. So that kind of adds a layer of complexity to the decision process. Mike Yeardley: Yep. Yep.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And you're right.

And actually, agentive e-commerce is one of the kind of our development factors because there are trust factors within that journey. It may look like, you know, go and buy me something and, know, the human never actually interacts, but there are still trusted facts in terms of, you know, the card players like some master card and making sure that there are ways to identify that actually this is Mike's instruction that can be trusted. But right, we are seeing ⁓ it's of like those peripheral figures.

that involve the foresters are more professional than they've ever been. There's no dodgy email from a particular country with spelling mistakes in and all those sorts of things. Everything now looks genuine. And that's the big problem I think that we're trying to help.

In a world where things can look genuine, how do you find those specific nuances Productized Podcast: Thanks Mike Yeardley: Maybe you didn't have to try and find before because used a different device, somebody kind of was in a different location. It was 10,000 euros instead of my 100 transaction. There've been big allies, but now it's kind of like, actually all of those factors are true. And how can we find the next level of nuances that say that...

All of this we have to almost disregard. We have to find new ways of identifying that this is not correct. This is not typical of the behavior of this customer. The fraudsters are pushing it.

is a key part of the risk that the customer changing their behaviors is the biggest problem. It's been evolving for a while. That's one thing, like you say, how do we do hands off? How do we use coming into it?

Agents will move money in your bank account. They may change your address because you just moved address. So all of those things, how do you get new levels of trust when perhaps it's a customer's instruction? It might be a verbal instruction.

It might not even be an interaction with a keyboard or something like that. How could we kind of leverage when those instructions are done that we can extend that level of trust to say, we still make sure that this has got the right. integrity around what's being done. look, they continue to grow.

see you know, you kind of see mule-based activity. mules is a big message across the whole of the world now, but particularly in the European We know that we have to look at maybe me as the recipient. Maybe everything Mike does is great, but actually Rodolfo shouldn't be receiving that money. And why is Rodolfo sending that money out straight away?

So how do we, the fraudsters will touch any point to get a hold of that money. We need to also go beyond those walls and kind say, can we bring intelligence in? But perhaps they can't get to, know, like the $8 trillion of transactions. Productized Podcast: love you.

social engineering. Mike Yeardley: Thank you. Productized Podcast: Yeah, you're being a victim of a scam. Right, right, right, yeah.

Exactly. also means that you are a very mission driven team because you're really trying to people from being victims of scams and obviously not the bank industry from fraud. maybe just start to this up, if someone listening today, whenever listening, is a good PM, what's the one belief they like? that will make them fail whenever things get to start scaling inside companies.

Mike Yeardley: Yeah, yes. You take it first. Yeah. Yeah.

Productized Podcast: Yeah, you might take this one and then might then can take one as well. Mike Yeardley: you But I've got one very quick one. won't, I won't lay a point. I heard this word a couple of weeks ago.

It's not mine, it's one everybody knows. But I think this sums up, think for me, gives a product manager that longevity in the role and sets them up for success is to be curious, to be interested. to want to understand what it is that could make them better, could make things better. So I'm going to leave that as the word.

I think being curious, think is a great personal that I think will stand any product manager in great stead for today and for rest of their career. Productized Podcast: great. I have a very burning question to do. What's the thing with vests and feet sign?

Because I see that you have Columbia vest, have a Cotopaxi vest. ⁓ I've seen as well. So is there specific rule or? ⁓ Mike Yeardley: Hahaha I'm sorry.

Productized Podcast: It says to die that's fine. Mike Yeardley: I think we've had six different vendors, Andre, in terms of who we've got. I've got Cotopaxi. I think we've had six different ones.

So, we're done. Productized Podcast: Can you get to choose which brand you want to go with? is it... ⁓ last year.

So there's a season. Mike Yeardley: This is last year's. is last year's. Rodolfo has got the new one, think.

This one has got the new one. So we've evolved. We've evolved. Productized Podcast: this year.

Okay, so you are on season. Mike Yeardley: Yeah, we do love a vest though. We do love a vest, we must admit. Productized Podcast: That's a great way to...

All right, that's a great way to wrap things up. That's also for today's episode of the Productized Podcast. Rudolfo Mike, thanks for sharing with us. The idea that scaling requires letting go of your current identity.

It's obviously uncomfortable, but probably accurate. So before we go, anything working on that ⁓ people follow, ⁓ is a way for people to reach out to you? I guess, usual stuff, LinkedIn, or how you write somewhere. Yeah, I was going to say that.

I was going to say that. Yes, absolutely. Mike Yeardley: day. So one message, Rodolfo.

So one message. But yeah, there's lots of blogs, lots of content out there on the industry. Look on LinkedIn. You'll see there's a lot of posts.

There's a careers page. And like I say, we're going to try and have quite a few of us come to Product Ice. A lot of our actual product managers will be with us as well. I know we're presenting Rodolfo and I.

So come and say hi. We're a pretty good bunch. We'll be friendly. Just come and speak to us.

Come say hello. Productized Podcast: Absolutely. I hope to see you there as well. Thank you so much.

Mike Yeardley: for me.