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He said to me, "What makes you think you can be the CEO of Clear Art?"
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In my mind, I was like, "Good question."
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I leaned over the table and I said, "Because I am a complete [ __ ] animal."
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So that was that meeting and he still said no.
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[Music] So Karen, I think a great place to begin is to just talk a little bit about clear first.
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We're going to rewind the clock in a few minutes and go back to the beginning and tell your entire story.
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Everyone knows Clear because they've experienced it in the airport or at a stadium or something else.
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I more want to know uh the version of Clear that people might not appreciate the business and the product having just experienced it that way.
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Um so maybe let us in on a little bit of like the surprising elements of Clear the Business and the product that get you excited about it today and in the future.
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So when we started Clear 15 years ago, what we said is today it's a travel ccentric company and tomorrow it's the de facto secure identity platform and leisure, access, commerce.
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We didn't say healthcare.
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So a kind of ballsy vision um but one that really came from my experience on Wall Street of watching products become platforms and the concept of identity to make experiences safer and easier physically and digitally was the foundation of clear.
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And so again, this concept of enroll once, use everywhere.
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As a woman, I'm like always digging through bags for all these plastic cards to prove who I am and what I have access to.
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And I think that's ridiculous because nobody ever really looks and it's incredibly clunky.
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It's incredibly expensive and inefficient, not secure and a bad experience.
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So that is the foundation of Clear and we're really at the earliest stages.
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So when you think of I think uh the magic or the secret opportunity, it's that over 30 million people today have enrolled uh and again I what I love about that is it's opt-in. It's privacy protected. It's data secure.
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Um we will not sell or share your data.
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We're here to deliver you amazing experiences and we're here to deliver our partners enhanced security um a reduced fraud which has become a big problem.
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So I think that the basic secret to clear is that identity is foundational across so many industries and people don't think of identity as the problem.
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They think of fraud or compliance or frictionless experience right or whipping out cards or insider risk.
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Now, there's actually a story today in the Wall Street Journal about North Koreans infiltrating workforces, which is a real problem.
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That's all identity and uh bringing it to life both um with the government and a public private partnership and airports and in other sectors uh like health care and online where anonymity rules and that creates all sorts of problems uh or to secure workforces I think is the secret and the opportunity at clear.
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What did you learn about the product to platform uh switch or flip that happens for in companies from your Wall Street days?
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Yeah, so I invested in a broad spectrum of companies.
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Started out in risk arbitrage and then went on to asset management and hedge funds.
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And in 2002, we started Arians Capital, which stood for art and science, which is my view of investing.
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It's highly quantitative and highly qualitative, art and science.
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Uh, and so we had the good fortune, although every day didn't necessarily feel that way, of investing in Apple, Amazon, and Priceeline in 2002.
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And when you looked at Apple, u, they used to have signs in their boardroom that said five down and 95 to go.
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And that was their market share.
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They had candy colored Macs and this iPod with a big, you know, white uh, dial in the middle that people thought Zoom might, you know, ultimately crush.
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Or you thought about Amazon, which was books and books, music, and video.
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then a few more categories, but lots of people thought they were going to go out of business.
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He was on the cover of Time magazine, right?
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I think it was Amazon Bust or something of that nature.
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Uh, and then Priceel Line was opaque travel and almost went bankrupt after 911.
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And those were all products that you watched become platforms, right?
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Priceeline turned into bookings and a global OTAA offering you a lot more than Opaque Travel and Apple and Amazon speak for themselves.
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And I saw unconventional leaders as sort of the old GE leadership kind of went.
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Um unconventional leaders delight consumers, innovate, do really smart acquisitions and capital allocation and create these platforms of which they could build multiple verticals on top of.
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And so when I looked at Clear, which was bankrupt, I saw the same thing.
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I saw this identity platform.
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Travel was where it died and where we brought it back.
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And I thought where security, identity, and customer experience absolutely collided, but that you could use it in so many other places and connect you to all the things that make you you.
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Identity is completely contextual.
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I'm always Karen, but when I check in at the doctor's office, I'm Karen with United Health with an ex copay with a medical record that, by the way, I should own and have access to and be able to share anywhere I want.
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I go into a building, I'm Karen.
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I'm an employee and I have access to the 10th floor.
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or I'm Karen and I'm a visitor and I'm going to the 48th floor today from noon to 3, but I'm always Karen but I'm having to do all these things.
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My favorite is when they take your picture, they give you a sticker like this is useless.
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Um, so this concept of a secure identity platform was definitively modeled off what I experienced as an investor.
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The old Bill Gates line definition of platform was this idea that more economic value was created on top of the platform than was captured by it.
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And at that point is when you became a real proper platform or something like this.
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And it's evolved a lot where there's there's third party platforms in the sense that it enables outside businesses to build.
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And then there's more first party use of the install base, you know, fundamental identity layer in your case uh that you've created through a product that lets you create a all sorts of other things.
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How do you think about that difference like opening up identity as like an API to outside developers versus owning the experience yourself?
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So here's how I look at it.
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Um I think there's again I like analogies and I would look at American Express as a vertically integrated financial service company, right?
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They have the customer, they have the merchants, they have the bank.
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Certainly American Express I think is some of the best experiences when you uh lose your credit card or I had fraud on mine yesterday.
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you send a new one, the bills go right through because they're vertically integrated.
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It's a better customer experience.
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Um, I look at Clear and think we're a vertically integrated identity platform.
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So, we have our members on the platform and then we have different we have the enrollment, we have the verification.
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We have APIs and SDKs for our partners to connect into them.
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We have real estate in airports.
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We have awesome ambassadors at airports. We have hardware.
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at airports. We have hardware. we have software and so the opportunity to have all those assets and be able to use them in different ways uh I think is really important and I would argue it's a little bit open in that we are right connecting for our partners and bringing
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that member to a partner whether it be Home Depot whether it be LinkedIn whether it be a hospital either for the workforce or the patient um but I like us bringing our different assets like some of our partners want hardware they want someone to check in at the front. Some of them, right, were really working
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Some of them, right, were really working on e-gates and automated endto-end lanes in real estate in our airports to drive that end to end frictionless, more secure experience.
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How could we use our ambassadors and our concierge product?
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So, I like having the assets being vertically integrated and being able to disagregate them.
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Um, and so that's how we're looking at clear.
7:53
Maybe it'd be fun to break the story 15 years now into chapters and talk about each chapter a little bit.
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each chapter a little bit. I I now everyone knows clear but like obviously you bought it out of bankruptcy so not everyone we're getting there a lot of people listening will know clear um we welcome them to the platform we'll welcome them all the the origin stories are super interesting to me and how these things get started so you were a professional investor I remember the first time you talked you said uh you
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didn't want necessarily some of your IR or something to be on your tombstone and have that be the thing you were known for I didn't want to die and have people say I pick good stocks that wasn't good enough it wasn't good enough so maybe talk
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about that the the or the pure origin of why you went searching for a business in the first place, how you found this one, what it's like to buy something out of bankruptcy that first couple days. First, so I will say in media's race,
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First, so I will say in media's race, bankruptcy is a completely surreal experience.
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And I talked to a few uh CEOs who I had invested with through the years like Bobby Kodak or Martin Franklin at Jordan and they said, you know, bankruptcy is decided on the courthouse steps and it's true.
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But I definitely believe and I tell my kids that, you know, life is a journey.
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And I started off in risk arbitrage in 1994 when I graduated the University of Michigan.
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I didn't even know what proforma or EBIDA was, but I figured it out real fast.
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And that was the uh M&A period of aerospace and defense under Secretary Les Aspen.
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And so I really got to know the aerospace and defense industry of which biometrics has been in the defense industry for a long time.
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So that was my first understanding of biometrics.
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Also in the 90s we invested in cable wireless and satellite subscriptionbased businesses.
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Again we were buying wireless spectrum in the 90s.
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Direct TV was really starting to grow and Echoar cable companies.
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Microsoft invested in Comcast with a billion dollars in 1997.
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That was a really big deal and they started to do broadband.
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So I understood the power of subscription-based businesses.
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Also did bankruptcy when I was doing risk arbitrage and uh so love a turnaround.
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I like to say happiness is a low bar and there's not a lot lower than bankruptcy.
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And then you get into the 2000s with after the.
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com bust and the turnarounds that we saw in products that become platforms and incredible companies like Apple and Amazon and Priceeline that were built.
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And so I had all that experience which meant I believed right.
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I saw the art of the possible.
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I'd also seen giant failures like Tao and Enron and WorldCom.
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So the thing that everyone thought was going to be great and wasn't.
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And so um ultimately had invested in Laurel which got sold to Loheed Martin which turned into L3 which was a management buyout of Lheed it.
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It stood for Lonza, Laenta and Leman. We invested in that. Biometrics were there.
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Lenta left and started L1 and he was rolling up the biometrics industry and we helped fund that.
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And so just a big believer in biometrics on top of everything else.
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It was used in in the early 2000s in Brazil for voting for Asia for financial services.
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So the consumerization of biometrics was happening outside the US whereas I had only seen it in the defense area in the US.
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I believed in the consumerization of biometrics.
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So that is like the whole journey put into clear shuts down on June 22nd 2009.
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We went to cash at Arians Capital in September 2008.
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A little late, not too late.
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And then investors said, "Well, when are you gonna like, great, you're in cash, when are you going to invest again?"
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We had never been in cash or either 120% invested, 200%, 80% long, short. We were nothing. I had three little kids.
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I had a one-year-old, a three-year-old, and a 5-year-old.
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And I was like, I don't know if I want to do this anymore.
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I did done it 247 for 15 years. I loved it.
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I thought it was the greatest industry.
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I met the greatest people.
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It's a front row seat to business.
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My late husband was in private equity at Apollo and I was like that looks awesome.
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Buying companies, controlling cash flows, uh really able to um create and build.
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And so I was like, I want to buy something.
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I want to buy something that makes the world a better place.
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Uh my parents were in the government. I'm originally from DC.
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911, I was 29 at the time, really changed me.
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I felt a responsibility and a moral obligation to help make this country a better place and that we were lucky to be here and that we were all responsible for it as citizens.
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And so when I found Clear, which L1, the company we had invested in, had um been a subcontractor to for the first goound, I was I was like product that could become a platform that could make our country safer, make consumers lives easier.
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Um it was biometrics which I believed in the consumerization.
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Subscription-based businesses are incredible.
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It was the convergence of my entire professional career.
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So we being uh myself, my husband, uh some advisors uh at the time my co-founder uh went into a room in a law office and um we're bidding against another group of people who were former employees of Clear and we had money in escrow and it was like you're reading other people's documents trying to understand what you should do.
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understand what you should do. you have a maximum number and we bid $6 million in cash which I think was a little lower than the existing bid but it was 100% cash that night given to them and uh we won and you're in this room going back and forth with the documents and strategy and talking um for like I don't know 10 hours couldn't eat barely drank and then you leave and it's almost like
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bringing home a new baby you're like I won have this company now shoot what do I do with it and uh We had a doublesided five-page list of things to do because it was all shut down and the hardware was um in different storage areas and there was 190,000 members who were like where's my data and I didn't get service and airports who were mad and TSA who was mad and at some level here ignorance might be bliss. I was
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I was like we've got a great idea. We've got some capital.
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We've built the business model makes a tremendous amount of sense.
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We've seen other leaders.
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We've seen what to do and what not to do. Off we go.
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We'll call that the prologue.
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Before we before we get to chapter one, I have a couple questions from everything else you said.
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The first is a little bit abstract and away from clear specifically, but you said uh that you didn't know what proforma and IA were.
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You've over and over again in your life and career immersed yourself in new areas and seem to learn quite quickly.
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What can you say about uh that experience and getting better at that over and over again and not being afraid of not knowing performing of the other fields that you explore?
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Um I'm a voracious reader.
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I think my team knows I send them articles now from somewhere between 3:00 a. m. to, you know, midnight. I am enormously curious.
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Um I there, you know, I grew up there was no internet, but I read in my room every night from Sports Illustrated to, you know, books, magazines, newspapers.
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And I I love learning like you I love the question why and trying to get to the bottom of it.
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And so um I also think when you went to public school in Maryland in the University of Michigan, I was a political science major.
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I don't know that people had, you know, enormous expectations of me.
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I did of myself, my parents did of me, my grandparents certainly did who were immigrants.
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So I had no fear of failure because there wasn't, you know, too far down to go.
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And so um you know my uncle who was an investment banker lived in New York City his his whole life and I would come here from Maryland and he would take me places and I just thought he was the smartest, most interesting man.
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And and then I love the movie Working Girl and you know Let the River Run and the Coach Briefcase and the coffee and the Wall Street Journal.
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I'm like that's what I wanted and so I just like that's what I wanted.
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So that's what I was going to do and I think I have blinders on when I'm focused on something.
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So whether it be proforma ibida or learning the hurandol index when you're in risk arbitrage I believe that everything x a few really scientific things are learnable and now with AI I'm like I'm not sure what's not learnable.
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Um I actually just signed up for an AI design class that I haven't fully immersed myself in yet.
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I just think life is about curiosity and I'm a lifelong learner and I have no fear of not getting it and no fear of asking questions and I was going to ask later but I'll ask it now because it's relevant uh about how your ancestors show up in your life.
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You said something which was uh there was high expectations across multi-generations.
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Can you say a bit more about about that?
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So my grandfather, who was my idol, Hyman Seidman, uh came to the US at 17 years old in 1922.
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There's actually enormous documentation about him coming here because they he almost got sent back.
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Uh his family stayed or most of his family stayed in uh Eastern Europe and ultimately uh died.
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He had one sibling who went to Israel and one sibling who was here.
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And so to come at 17 years old, the bottom of a boat, the USS Constantinople, Constantinople, uh to work, to not speak the language, to have no money, um to work in a hardware store that he ultimately took over, Sidman Hardware, which was across from the Barkley Center. Um like that's hard.
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Everything else seems a lot easier when you have that perspective.
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And so he used to tell me to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and like keep on moving.
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And that's just very empowering when you see what he'd been through and lost a lot of family and was optimistic, loved this country, had enormous gratitude, positivity, joy, fun, you know, never angry um a at sort of what had happened to his family.
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And so I believed in the art of the possible.
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He put his family through college.
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They were all successful, went on to, you know, build families and and my dad served in the military.
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My uncle did like to do right by our country.
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You know, I have gratitude and I have belief in the art of the possible because I've seen it.
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You I think optimism versus pessimism is such an interesting thing.
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Are you just wired optimistic? I am.
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Um, you know, one of my favorite sayings that I keep on my cell phone, I saw Shimone Perez speak right before he died.
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Uh, and he said, "Optimists and pessimists die the same way, but they live very different lives."
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And I thought that that was a very powerful statement.
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Um, I don't know how if you don't have optimism, if you don't have hope, what do you have?
18:27
Well, you needed it going into the Clear thing with your six million bucks.
18:28
I but I'm curious about what was going on with Clear prior like how did how did it itself start before your involvement and why did it ultimately fail the first time?
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So clear started as a response to 9/11 when uh Congress at the time stood up TSA.
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It was a Republican le Congress.
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They wanted public private partnerships.
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If you look at, again going back to curiosity, the founding of the Department of Homeland Security, which I think is one of the like largest and fastest startups, uh I might have these numbers slightly wrong, but it's like 250,000 total employees of the Department of Homeland Security, which has all these, you know, sub areas, whether it be CBP, ICE, FEMA, TSA, those are a lot of subsidiaries, if you will, under one corporate umbrella.
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Uh, you know, I think that Congress wanted to make sure that there were public private partnerships to drive innovation to expedite the traveler experience.
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And so they put this program together called the registered traveler program.
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And so, uh, TSA gave out a few licenses for the registered traveler program for people to, you know, try and see what they could come up with in the world of public private partnership and innovation.
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uh Steve Bril had written a book 912 uh which was I think the you know day after 911 and he uh received one of those licenses and started clear and there were a few other companies who started as well and ultimately he was the most successful. He got into 16 airports.
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uh I think he raised about hund00 million dollars of capital and then had um some debt on top of that and uh was building this concept of a trusted traveler program a registered traveler program with biometrics on a smart card right so it's this onetoone match and it had 190,000 customers then I think two things maybe three things happened one being the 2008 downturn came so it started in 2003 but didn't launch in Orlando to till 2005.
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Um, the highest percentage of first-time travelers in America go through the Orlando airport.
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Strollers, balloons, the whole thing.
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It creates a little bit of a customer experience and security challenge.
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So, that was the first place.
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People are like, "Why'd you start in Orlando?"
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I'm like, "Because they wanted us." He launched in 2005.
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The economic downturn hit in 2008, which significantly hit business travel.
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And also uh he had debt coming due in 2009 uh in the middle of uh a lot of other people being bankrupt and having debt like GM and Chrysler.
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And so ultimately the company shut down.
21:07
I think that the technology they were sort of before their time from a cost on the tech side, not to mention the economic downturn, not to mention I think it was probably hard to convince some airports that they wanted biometrics.
21:20
Um and uh and so it shut down.
21:24
It it went into bankruptcy that I know obviously Clear is in lots of places beyond airports, but it's like the visceral thing that we can all call to to our minds and have probably used.
21:36
If if I think about the airport, it's such an interesting physical supply limitation.
21:40
You know, you mentioned the public private partnerships and the certain number of licenses.
21:43
Like it would be I can't imagine what it would be like to launch a clear competitor in an airport.
21:48
like it just um maybe it's possible but there's not real estate like there's certain number of lines and whatever.
21:54
What are the pros and cons of having a business that has such a unique physical supply bottleneck and both barrier to entry but also barrier to scale like if everyone signs up for it?
22:06
Is there like a disconomy of scale where now now the clear line's longer than the TSA line or something?
22:10
It's such an interesting business dynamic and I would love you to just riff on it as many angles as you can.
22:15
Yeah, you know, I didn't know going back to what I didn't know lots.
22:18
Uh I didn't know much about airports when we started, you know, clear in 2010.
22:22
But you're right, there are these really interesting structures.
22:27
There's 400 and change in the US, but at the end of the day in the world of 8020, right?
22:32
80% of the traffic goes through sort of the top 60 80 airports in the US.
22:39
And they're um there are these houses and within them are municipal employees, airline employees, federal employees with TSA or if there's custom CBP, local police and fire departments play a role here.
22:54
And so you don't necessarily have all the constituents going in the same direction because everybody has, you know, their own stakeholders and uh their own priorities.
23:08
And so airports are a really interesting place to do business and they are capacity constrained both on runways and physical real estate.
23:15
So a few things which is one we always viewed clear as a force multiplier bringing technology in that could help the throughput and enhance the security not to mention bringing badged and trained employees into the building to help partner.
23:34
And we viewed ourselves as Switzerland with the federal government to help security, with the airlines to help get their passengers through happily and safely, with the airports and the municipalities to help uh enhance the experience to help drive revenues because we pay them a percentage of our revenues to create jobs in cities that are great jobs.
23:53
So we viewed it as like a win-winwin and that as the volume grew both we would have technology like we just launched our NV technology that's five times faster but over time you could create new opportunities if you will.
24:08
So, for instance, we invested in a company called Landline, which is replacing regional jets with buses and able to go to the back of the um airport as opposed to the front door.
24:22
Because you're right, you can't put millions of people through the front door.
24:25
And today, there's three million people every day going through airports.
24:28
Our numbers are by 2030 you're going to have four million, another million people a day.
24:31
And again, most of them are coming through the major buildings.
24:35
You couldn't put them through today.
24:38
And so the question is what other doors can you put them through?
24:40
Can you do off-site screening and bring them through on buses?
24:45
Can you create we're trying to launch endtoend automated lanes so you can have greater throughput.
24:50
Can you privatize the physical screening uh opportunities and so that you can have greater throughput because oftentimes it's a staffing issue.
24:58
The equipment is there but there's not enough people to staff it.
25:03
And airports are also super interesting because you have these peaks.
25:05
Like I if you watch an airport, which I never thought I would be doing, but I do, right?
25:10
It sort of the volume goes from this to this to this.
25:12
And so you have to staff for peaks, which is really hard in a staffing business.
25:18
And so you do need automation. You do need e-gates.
25:20
You do need off-site screening.
25:22
You do need people to come to the back as opposed to through the front.
25:26
So I think there's all sorts of opportunities if you're innovative and creative and partner oriented to drive secure throughput with a better customer experience at airports and at any time you get you know a little stuck and then you need to move and try new things.
25:44
What is the NV tech like? What is it specifically?
25:46
So the envy is our new face first technology is now uh in all of our airports.
25:50
Well we start look we started at smart cards.
25:52
So going back to chapters, our first six years were smart cards until we went to the cloud.
25:56
And then we went to the cloud in 2016 at the same time we partnered with Delta and that was a really transformational moment for clear both in terms of scale and technology because you didn't need a smart card.
26:07
You could enroll and use it immediately.
26:09
But that was fingerprints and eyes.
26:10
You know to to us it's clear that face is one of the winners, one of the really important biometric winners.
26:19
And so we are face first with our NVs which makes it you know five times faster to verify and yeah you know uh many people don't have good fingerprints.
26:28
Little known fact if you're a teacher if you're working with chalk um certain ethnicities don't have great fingerprints.
26:35
Um eyes can be a little bit of a chicken dance even today.
26:39
So um face first is we call it envy and enrollment and verification.
26:44
How do you think about this problem that like with success?
26:46
So there's there's sort of two uh there's two things that happen with scale.
26:50
Like I had the experience recently of using clear at like an NBA arena and it was amazing because there was this incredibly long line to get in and then I just literally walked right in. No no line at all.
26:59
And then the converse is so many people have cleared an airport that there's been times not often but there's been times when I've been and had to skip the clear line because it was literally longer than the other lines.
27:10
How do you think about that problem maybe in airport specifically that like you're a victim of your own success when more people have it because you don't control the whole airport so you're subject to some constraints that you can't change.
27:21
constraints that you can't change. I think there's a really important point which is um working with the government can be hard and I would say that um the last four years with the Biden administration was really hard and in
27:37
fact that they put some policies in place that really challenged our throughput and the customer experience and we're on the other side of that and so when you can innovate to drive throughput when you can leverage technology at the speed that the private sector is capable of. You can solve
27:54
You can solve bottlenecks with willing partners.
27:56
Um we did not have that in the Biden administration.
28:00
We certainly feel like we have that in the Trump administration.
28:04
They definitively care about making airports great.
28:06
They definitively care about throughput and the customer experience and security and believe in innovation in the private sector and partnering together to do that.
28:13
So I would say uh and I've been very public about it that our customer experience degraded in 23 and part of 24 which caused throughput uh issues.
28:20
It wasn't because of volume.
28:22
It was because of um some policy decisions that were put in place that impeded the customer. What were those?
28:29
I'm curious like what what like the literal nitty-gritty of it.
28:32
What I can say is that they put in some physical escorting uh policies so that a clear employee who verified you had a stand with you which created all sorts of challenges.
28:42
All of your team members are standing in line.
28:44
Also they um wanted to recheck at a extremely high level um identity documents and that created kind of defeats the purpose all sorts of backups and I think that is about building trusting relationships with the public and private sector and being able to communicate and I would say there's a lot of great people at TSA and at DHS who do believe in innovation and public private partnerships.
29:10
Um, but as I like to say, debanking didn't just happen in crypto.
29:14
And it was a very eyeopening experience to be on the other end of that to not have uh transparent and and partners who wanted to work through things together, but instead just wanted the government to do everything.
29:30
And that was very eye opening.
29:32
um and also I think made us better, made us more innovative and I think has positioned us to work really well with an administration who sees infrastructure um as a major need here in the US and in order to be competitive you shouldn't have better travel experiences in Singapore, Dubai, Tokyo and London than you have here in the US when we have the greatest tech companies.
29:54
I was in Singapore on Christmas.
29:56
My kids were like, "What are you doing?"
29:57
I was taking pictures of Egates and banks of Egates.
30:00
You go to Dubai, it's the same thing.
30:02
you absolutely should have endto-end automation and there's so much you can do to transform the travel experience.
30:07
So on a very personal and professional level, uh watching our customer experience degrade when I knew we could do so much about it was horrifying and not being able to say much about it because they were pretty retaliatory was also um you know pretty painful and I think we're on the other side of that and there's so much you can do to drive throughput.
30:25
The airport experience should be and can be amazing.
30:27
People love travel in the US, quite frankly around the world.
30:32
And I actually give huge credit to Airbnb.
30:33
I think that they transformed the travel industry by creating infinite capacity.
30:37
And I don't think people have fully wrapped their heads around that.
30:41
Like it used to be like, oh, I want to stay at the Marriott and wherever and it's full, so I guess I'll have to wait.
30:45
There's always a room somewhere for you if you want to go.
30:47
And I, you know, you see what's happening with air traffic control.
30:51
Like our systems are rigid and a little bit analog.
30:55
They have to be invested in. We have to partner.
30:57
Travel is such an important part of the economy and I think it's also an incredible part of families and experiences and growth and learning and curiosity.
31:06
I know for my family it's been our best memories and our time together feel really fortunate.
31:13
So, um, you know, we're hellbent on driving innovation to make travel safer and easier and also learned a lot from our experiences in 23 and early 24 to make sure that we move forward and not backwards.
31:28
Can we go back to chapter one?
31:28
You no longer have your six million bucks. You now have clear.
31:32
What was the process like of figuring out what the business could or should be?
31:37
development of the business model, go to market, like all the basic basic stuff.
31:43
What did you do and what did you learn in that first chapter?
31:46
That is a great question.
31:46
I wish I documented more of it.
31:47
Um, so number one, you had to find where the inventory was.
31:53
Like let's go to the real basics.
31:55
It was like, where's the equipment?
31:55
And we would go to the San Francisco airport.
31:57
We were like, hey, where did you put the clear equipment?
31:59
And they would take us to a storage facility and it was like, you know, all the way back there.
32:03
One airport threw them away.
32:03
I was like, "You threw away the hardware because in it we bought $10 million of PPD.
32:09
We about $10 million of hardware."
32:11
So, I was like, "For $6 million, we bought a brand that we were too cheap to change."
32:15
People were like, "Why don't you change it? It's really sullied."
32:16
I was like, "I don't know.
32:18
I think it's pretty good, and we don't have a lot of money, so people know what it is, and we're sticking with it."
32:22
Ultimately, we changed the logo. Um, and I love the name.
32:26
We bought 190,000 members, biographic and biometric data.
32:29
they had to opt back in um to clear. Yes.
32:32
Um they had to come back to clear and we would give them whatever months they had left.
32:39
I think in aggregate about 75% of them did come back.
32:41
Uh and then we bought $10 million of hardware.
32:44
I also say we bought a hard drive of what to do and what not to do.
32:47
Bankruptcy is really interesting.
32:49
You get the hard drives of the company.
32:50
So you were like looking at their old documents and learning.
32:52
But first it was um finding the hardware that was left because you were we were going to reuse it.
32:59
Number two was actually rebuilding the software from the ground up because we didn't buy software.
33:06
They didn't own their own technology.
33:08
So, we had a rebuilt and we wanted to rebuild the software from the ground up.
33:12
Um, number three was finding Orlando airport.
33:15
We closed in April and the Orlando airport wanted Clear to come back and you need one person to go first and they wanted to. So, we had to win that.
33:24
So, we wrote the RFP for the Orlando airport. Other people did too.
33:30
Um, and then they protested our win.
33:30
So, you had to go down to the Orlando airport and uh and share with the board and the community why Clear would be good and um serve them well.
33:39
From a marketing perspective, I wrote the emails.
33:44
I signed my name to them.
33:44
I was in customer service.
33:47
So, we said clear is coming back.
33:49
It was to, you know, 90,000 people.
33:51
Uh, we knew who they were.
33:54
One of the beauties of being an identity company, you actually know your customer.
33:58
Um, and we told them we were going to do right by them and make them whole.
34:03
And uh, we got some nasty emails back.
34:06
I was like, "Wow, people will really write anything in email."
34:07
So then I would call them and I was like, "Hi, I'm Karen from Clear. I got your email."
34:12
This one guy said, "Um, how blunt can I be on this podcast?" Oh, blunt.
34:14
He said, "Uh, you know, my grandma had big balls and you have bigger balls than my grandma."
34:21
And I was like, first of all, interesting. Okay.
34:22
So, I like called him because like, you know, you're an owner operator.
34:27
And I was like, "Hey, it's Karen from Clear. I got your email." And he kind of shrunk.
34:31
And I was like, "Well, people will write anything in emails cuz it's totally anonymous."
34:35
Going back to identity, we, you know, told people we were relaunching at the end of October and that they could come back.
34:41
We then hired um 20 people in Orlando, 10 for each uh lane.
34:45
And we hired I had read setting the table is amazing book.
34:52
Danny Meyer, one of my great heroes.
34:54
And he became an investor in Clear. And that was awesome.
34:56
And uh so we hired Union Square Hospitality um I think it was called Hospitality Quotient to do the training of our team members in Orlando.
35:06
So you know again it's like okay I read the book.
35:08
I like that we want to be hospitality and serviceoriented.
35:11
I think it's missing in the airports.
35:13
We got to rebuild the software.
35:14
We got to find the equipment.
35:16
We got to hire some people.
35:16
I don't even remember how we hired them. I went down to Orlando.
35:20
I participated in the training.
35:22
I got to know all the people at uh the Orlando airport.
35:25
We communicated with you're making it up as you go along and then every day you're like, "Fuck, didn't think of that."
35:31
I mean, that's just like what it is.
35:33
And so, I wish I had, you know, we have a playbook now that we're in 59 airports and more to go.
35:39
But you fake it till you make it.
35:42
And then, you know, I would just keep talking to people and I had seen great operators and I would ask them questions.
35:48
Ed Breen is one of my great heroes.
35:49
We had invested in General Instruments which then got sold to uh Motorola and then he became the CEO of Tao to turn it around after Dennis Kuzlowski.
35:56
So I would ask Ed lots of questions and and uh these leaders were so generous with their knowledge and their experience.
36:03
And so, you know, every day you're just hacking at it.
36:05
And then I was at the on the floor of the Orlando airport at 4:30 in the morning when we launched and you know, you're people would hug us and then you knew you had something like when we were rolling out the old kiosk from storage and people were hugging us um that we were bringing it back.
36:27
That was the greatest feeling because to know that it meant something to people um that they were rooting for your success.
36:33
There's plenty of people rooting against your success, but that that gets you up every morning to know that you can make a difference in someone's life.
36:41
That you can security is job one.
36:42
And then that someone could have breakfast with their family because they had a more planful and less stressful trip at the airport.
36:50
I happen to be a neurotic flyer, so I'm worried about turbulism turbulence and terrorism and and I didn't like leaving my kids.
36:57
And so it's just like to know you could change that for someone, that's a giant win.
37:02
I'm curious to hear a little bit about thinking versus action in your business life.
37:06
Like you you exude this intense bias to action and Oh, yes.
37:10
That's one of our core values. That's great.
37:12
You I didn't know I didn't know that.
37:14
I promise I didn't know that or look that up.
37:16
Um but it sort of just like uh comes off you.
37:19
I'm curious when you've needed to stop that if at all and like retreat and think like I'm very interested in this dichotomy of like uh Brian Armstrong from Coinbase has this great simple phrase which is that action produces information.
37:35
Um and so actually you can learn faster through action than through thinking you know is one way of thinking about it.
37:41
Um say a little bit about action orientation versus um stepping back to think. I have a very busy mind.
37:48
So, at some level, I'm always thinking.
37:51
Um, I guess being a girl, the power of blowing your hair gives you like 20 minutes to think. It's like our shower. Showers.
37:59
Well, I have the shower plus the haird dryer.
38:01
Um, so I am always thinking, my friends will laugh.
38:05
I can be a little spacey sometimes.
38:06
Like, if I'm driving, they're like I'm like, "Oh, I didn't know how did we get here?"
38:09
And, you know, it's like my mind was 20 different places. Um, yeah.
38:16
Look, I think bias for action can sometimes lead to impulsivity and I think you need to guard against that.
38:20
Um I have consistently surrounded myself with people uh including my late husband who was like you got to stop like just push pause on that for one second. Uh slow your roll.
38:33
Uh and I think that I respond very well to that.
38:37
But one of my sayings is that every week is 2% of a year.
38:42
So when someone's like let's meet on that in three weeks.
38:44
I'm like, we're going to wait 6% of the year to have that conversation. That's insane, right?
38:50
I mean, and if you believe life is short, and I definitely believe that, I don't want to waste time. I love data. I love information.
38:57
Look, I think working in the stock market makes you more decisive.
39:00
You're never going to have perfect information.
39:02
So, you got to put together the mosaic.
39:04
You have to understand your thesis.
39:06
You have to see how that is, you know, weighing relative to your thesis.
39:10
And you need to move out.
39:12
Maybe you don't need to take an 8% position.
39:14
Maybe you want to start with a 2% position.
39:15
Um, and you better do I think that Wall Street gives you incredible discipline.
39:20
You better have done your work before you need to do your work.
39:24
So when I head into a meeting, I'm like, we should, you know, know them better than they know themselves.
39:27
We should really understand and have warmed this 10 ways from Sunday because it's all about the preparation, right?
39:34
Kevin Durant, the basketball, all the practice that he does before the game.
39:37
Uh, and so I do feel that I I think a lot, probably too much.
39:41
And so that actually my bias for action is because I've been I you know I'm playing chess in my head all day long. Well, what if? Well, what if? Well, what if?
39:52
And look, you can never you know, things are always coming out of left field.
39:54
And but I am I've seen a lot of this in my a lot of these scenarios in my head before, which I've actually never articulated that. Uh but that's real.
40:05
So I'm like, well, what if we did that and what if we did that and how would that and then you have the data and you're like, well, that would make that go up by 500 basis points.
40:13
That would have a negative implication over time that could drive my margin to this.
40:18
Um, but yeah, I like I like to move, you know, I think Bezos talks about, right, the the door and if it's a really big decision, Yeah. one or two doors. Yeah.
40:28
And so I I buy into that.
40:28
Uh, and like my middle daughter always tells me, it's just not that deep, right?
40:33
like can you go back and make and change that?
40:35
I think if you raise your price and then you have to lower your price, I don't think that's good.
40:41
I think sometimes doing things that would make your workforce feel not stable.
40:43
So, you want to be thoughtful.
40:45
But one of our other core values is embrace change.
40:48
I think the only thing constant is change.
40:50
And so, I'm really good with that.
40:52
I sometimes forget other people are not as good with it.
40:55
So, it's something I'm trying to be more thoughtful of. I love the 2%. I won't forget the 2%. It is true. It's it's it's crazy.
41:01
Well, let's meet in a month. Really? 10%.
41:06
Um, back to like chapter two or whatever.
41:08
I'm curious how you originally thought about the tradeoffs in the business model itself and maybe just to hear a little bit more about the business model itself of margins and pricing and product and I'm always fascinated by the things left on the cutting room floor that like maybe you almost did but didn't do and you went this way instead.
41:24
So, in the early days as you were thinking through how could this be a big sustainable business and I'm also curious to hear about like how you financed all this like you started with 6 million but everything else you're doing costs a lot of money too.
41:37
Um what were you what were you working through in those early days as you got your arms around what the business model should be?
41:43
should be? So I think a few things we had built a model when we started right you you know we come from finance we'd built models garbage in garbage out um but we did think that this could be a good business if you own your own technology um if you own your own labor which the
42:01
other company didn't it had outsourced the labor and the technology which really impeded the margins but again going back to the power of a subscriptionbased business right and cost per gross ad and LTB to CAC like those things were in my blood and I understood them deeply. So understanding
42:14
understood them deeply. So understanding what we thought it would take to break even from a subscriber basis looking at every MSA understanding Denver and Orlando and San Francisco and New York how many you know what was the volume of the airports what percentage of that
42:29
volume did you need or what percentage volume of that population seemed realistic you know we owned wireless companies nexttel actually was one of them and it was like what percentage of the city is on nexttell and what do you need to to break even so we had done I like coming at things bottoms up and top down and sideways, right? At different At different ways.
42:48
What percentage of we said that the TAM was 35 to 40 million people that traveled five or more times a year.
42:52
What percentage of those people did you think you would have?
42:56
Then looking at the cities then, right?
42:58
So all sorts of different ways.
43:00
So we thought that this could be a good business model um if you got to certain penetrations um of certain cities.
43:10
All that being said, it took longer and it was harder.
43:13
Um I did not take a salary for the first five years and uh you know got paid in stock and to me that was a privilege.
43:20
Um and we turned cash flow positive six and a half years in and we had burnt through $53 million of cash to get there.
43:28
We were very cheap, very efficient.
43:35
Airports are a really interesting place because again think of it like concentrated shopping malls.
43:39
I didn't think oh I wanted to start a business in an airport.
43:42
I thought I wanted to build a secure identity platform, but airports are the great place to start a business because you have millions of people coming through these buildings every day that see your brand.
43:51
Our ambassadors, I would say a tipping point for us was when we allowed our ambassadors to do the selling for us.
43:58
Um, the internet or, you know, social media is a really noisy place to try to get someone's attention and certainly getting noisier.
44:04
and certainly getting noisier. having an ambassador who gets a commission so that they can make more money and they're awesome people say sir would you like to learn about clear sir would you like to be a clear member or you coming over and saying it sometimes we put out candy
44:17
bowls we did different things to try to like who doesn't want to mint when they're traveling u or hand sanitizer in the 20 2020 time frame uh and so it was great ways to get the word out and to educate and to have uh team members who could make more money and to have people bring technology to life, right? Innovation is about bringing people what
44:36
Innovation is about bringing people what they did not know they wanted.
44:37
And people don't Google like biometric security at airports specifically, not at the beginning.
44:43
And so having people explain the technology, explain the privacy, that was crucial.
44:47
And so um we believed it to be a very efficient and powerful business model.
44:53
Um we run the business for members bookings and free cash flow.
44:58
I have said that for 15 years.
45:01
Members bookings, free cash flow.
45:02
Members bookings, free cash flow.
45:02
Free cash flow is the ultimate measure of a business as a girl who comes from Wall Street.
45:07
Like a good hedge fun, it ain't eyeballs.
45:08
Uh and so that's how we ran the business.
45:12
and when we turned positive in 2017.
45:14
So we raised capital in 2010 from myself uh the gentleman who started it with me and some outside investors mostly here in New York City and Bill Miller who was uh a strategic partner at Arians Capital and one of my great mentors and partners and he was on our board for the first few years and as an early investor in Amazon.
45:35
It was certainly great to get his wisdom and his advice.
45:38
And then in 2012, we raised some capital.
45:42
Again, I think from those same outside investors, really individuals, went to Silicon Valley, I came back with zero in 2012 and zero in 2015. Um, which was fine.
45:51
One of the guys said to me, I won't say the name of the fund.
45:57
He said, "What makes you think not going to, but I do keep his picture in my photos."
46:02
He's no longer there, so it's fine.
46:05
Let your haters be your motivators.
46:07
Um, so he said to me, "What makes you think you can be the CEO of Clear?"
46:11
And in my mind, I was like, "Good question."
46:12
Uh, but but I leaned over the table and I said, "Because I am a complete [ __ ] animal."
46:20
So that was that meeting and he still said no. He still said no. Wow. He still said no.
46:24
Look, I think that it's, you know, we're creating a new industry in identity, but even before you get to identity, we started here in 2010.
46:32
Pre-check started in 2011.
46:32
People thought that was going to kill us.
46:36
Little did they know we could integrate and now we actually sell pre-check. Our view was great.
46:40
You want to start other kinds of trusted traveler programs.
46:43
We're a great enrollment mechanism.
46:43
This is exactly what we do.
46:45
And uh for the past year we have been enrolling people in precheck and it's a great partnership and I think there's so much more to go there.
46:53
So then they thought precheck was going to kill us.
46:55
There's always something else and it's like guys some dead end guys people love traveling.
46:58
You need innovation in airports.
47:00
You need public private partnerships and when you have willing partners in the public sector you can do great things together and if you go through airports they don't look materially different than the p you know past 20 years and so such a huge opportunity to be frictionless from home to gate.
47:17
to gate. What if you knew you had a reserved parking spot or where the Uber should drop you off and a concierge could meet you and you went through an automated end to end lane and then you had your coffee waiting for you on the other side or you knew you could get
47:29
into a lounge like Shanganger and then you knew that uh you know that you were on the flight and that it was two hours late and Uber sent the car for you as opposed to everyone doing this when they land and what if you used it as a mobile key. Those are all the things we're
47:41
Those are all the things we're doing like Yeah.
47:45
You said great investors.
47:45
it was the name of your firm is art and science.
47:48
It's qualitative, quantitative together.
47:50
Um, so many investors are trying to analyze things when ultimately the creation of new net new value can't be analyzed ahead of time other than in very broad strokes.
48:01
You know, you're betting on the airport or this you being a complete [ __ ] animal and the airport being a great place to apply that energy.
48:08
Um, now having done it from both angles being the investor and the founder, builder, CEO, h how would you invest differently than you did prior to the experience?
48:22
I think about that and truth be told, I have not bought a single stock since uh we ended Arians because if I can't like focus and do it, I'm not doing it.
48:30
Uh, and I own a lot of clear stock and and you know have investments in other places, but I'm focused here.
48:35
Um I think I would be such a better investor. So okay, here we go. Yeah.
48:42
Uh number one, so we invested in Amazon.
48:44
They announced Prime and it went down.
48:46
The stock went down, right?
48:48
And we were like, oh, you know, you know that okay, what do we like?
48:53
And then the shipping and what are the losses?
48:54
And it is like let's start with the TAM.
48:56
Let's start with the total addressable market of if you had Amazon Prime and like let's start with the art of the possible and if those people signed up and if they were stickier and if they did more so like what could that be?
49:10
What could the incremental margins be?
49:11
I would also spend I did analyze org charts.
49:14
I would spend a lot more time on org charts and people and systems you know like we are in the midst of changing our billing system to stripe and we are super excited about it and the opportunity set there is important.
49:27
I remember every time someone had an SAP transition like the stock blew up, right?
49:30
And so it's like understanding the culture and the people and the systems and the total addressable market and their penetration and then all the second derivatives of that and at any time one metric can be a little wonky, right?
49:47
But that is the question is what is your ultimate thesis and is that derailing of it or is that just like nothing is straight up and to the right almost nothing.
49:55
almost nothing. uh maybe open AI is right now but like you know there's a lot of girrations along the way and to understand that those girrations are part of business but also to understand look you know we would go visit Kodak and right ultimately under Kodak and
50:13
Kmart and lots of companies they can go away I live with that paranoia every day for 15 years right you can go away you can become totally irrelevant so what what are you doing what is your product roadmap, what is your innovation roadmap, when will you get there, what will the impact behoo and say where can we go? You know, those
50:36
You know, those are things that I think I did at a but not with as long a term perspective as I think was required and to really map out the art of the possible and then probability weight the getting there like what can Amazon Prime be?
50:51
like what can Amazon Prime be? what can the iPhone be in the ecosystem of the apps and then the economy that that's going to create can't just be like yeah they're creating an iPhone and they're going to set it you know 10 10 million or 10 billion it's like what can that be
51:06
and I think to really map that out and then the impact on the margins is you know gamechanging and allows a lot more patience does that boil down to uh imagination about market and belief in leader like are those the two things that uh you would focus more on as a result of this experience? Yes. And and again I would focus on free Yes.
51:30
And and again I would focus on free cash flow and optionality which we did but and I think those two things create that free cash flow and optionality like look at Priceel line they bought bookings and active those were transformative acquisitions right but you need the free cash flow or the balance sheet to be able to do those things and you need the management who has that kind of foresight.
51:50
So I also think you got to be decently paranoid.
51:55
So I think you know I prefer management teams that are humble um nose to the grindstone.
52:00
The answer to this will be a lesson for every business owner.
52:02
What does optimizing for free cash flow feel like as a leader?
52:09
I used to tell our management teams when I was an investor like you should just lever up and buy back stock.
52:12
I don't know why you're not more lever.
52:13
The optimal capital structure is X.
52:14
when you run the business and you're responsible for all the employees and you're wanting to invest in the business or you know leave cash on the balance sheet for potential M&A or whatever levering up doesn't necessarily feel like the great thing.
52:29
Um so free cash flow and the optionality it creates allows you to think more clearly.
52:35
Like when COVID hit that was a transformative time for clear.
52:40
We went uh we took $20 million which at the time was our marketing budget to zero on February 26th or 25th.
52:49
Um and we were we create we took our salaries to zero and we created a leave of absent plan for our ambassadors so that when it really happened on March 12th uh we were prepared and pivoted to creating health pass and connecting people to their test information and
53:04
ultimately their vaccine information and connecting those data packets to professional sports leagues like the NHL so they could have the Stanley Cup which they've never missed in all of their history or to open table and resi for dinner reservations. Um, it allows you
53:16
Um, it allows you to be offensive, not defensive.
53:20
And that is a massive mindset shift.
53:23
I believe in the growth mindset.
53:26
And so to be thinking offensively about what you're going to build or what you could um, you know, buy or what you it's just it's uh, it's really freeing.
53:36
I imagine being very levered could be constraining specifically in difficult times.
53:42
And again going back to embrace change, you get tariffs, you've got, you know, pandemics, you've got um financial markets.
53:49
It's it's incredibly freeing.
53:52
What are the sorts of things that you've done that have most positively impacted your free cash flow, your free cash flow margins?
54:00
Um I think it's an output of the business quite frankly.
54:02
Uh you know, we run the business efficiently.
54:04
It's a capital efficient business and we are really thoughtful on resources.
54:11
Uh I think we continue to get better at that like how do you drive efficiency?
54:16
like how do you drive efficiency? How can AI impact member care or you know we have a little sign like AI to impact every work stream every day for everyone whether it be legal or finance or HR recruiting or member care or scheduling
54:31
or coding like it's always looking for efficiencies and I guess I was the girl who got all A's and a B and my dad would say would you get the B in um and now so it's like well okay how do I do better and every day I do think we can do better so how can we do better. How can How can we rethink that?
54:48
How can we drive a better marketing campaign?
54:51
And I think when you're it's it's everything everywhere.
54:54
And so that that and the subscriptionbased business model with high incremental margins generates strong free cash flow.
55:02
And we've invested some of that back into our enterprise identity platform, which is a here and now opportunity to reduce fraud and prevent insider risk and drive compliance and efficiency and automation on the enterprise side. It's just it's awesome.
55:19
What does Wall Street lease understand about the business?
55:21
What do you get the least credit for in the price or something like that?
55:26
Well, we've bought back um let's see, we were I think we peaked at 155 million shares. We're at 133 and change.
55:31
So, we've bought back a lot of stock.
55:34
All the stock that we went public with at 31, we bought back at a lower price if you want to talk about arbitrage.
55:40
Um so, I think there's a lot they don't understand.
55:43
I don't think they understand the opportunity in the travel business.
55:46
I think they think it's like a zero sum game and that um we've long known that biometrics were going to go mainstream. That's been our view.
55:56
There's a TSA report from 2018 on their biometric roadmap. We read it.
55:58
Uh and so understanding that we believe biometrics are going to be everywhere.
56:04
The question is what kind of experience are you going to build around biometrics?
56:07
Biometrics are a feature not a product.
56:09
The product is the experience.
56:11
So, I think that biometrics going mainstream is like new news to people, not to us.
56:16
Um, I don't think that they believe necessarily in our enterprise identity business. Um, and that's fine.
56:25
I appreciate Show Me when when we were on the buy side, we called that evidence-based investors.
56:29
When you show them the evidence, they get excited.
56:30
Um, and so in the meantime, we buy back stock.
56:33
We have a dividend and um, we just keep building.
56:35
So look, I think in fairness and and I laugh a little bit in that I was on the buy side and I think I haven't done a great job u telling the story or on the IR side and I think we can do a better job of creating consistent metrics um that we can be measured on.
56:55
So I think that you know we have to execute and we have to do a better job of um really sharing um good metrics that people can measure and value the business on.
57:09
What is like the bare case on biometrics the extent to which there is one?
57:13
I think there's quite a few quite frankly I think privacy and data security are a big one right and so you see uh some folks in in on Capitol Hill negative on the government doing it.
57:22
negative on the government doing it. I think there's certainly a concern about big brother biometrics in lots of countries from you know again Estonia is a leading country on biometrics India with Aadhar um you know Brazil with voting China there's biometrics but I
57:38
think that that also has another side of it which is concern about privacy concern about big brother concern about data security um so I think that's a big one and I think again us being so transparent about privacy and data security and our ambassador sharing um the story, us having a privacy policy that is very transparent. You can control your own data. You can
58:00
You can control your own data.
58:00
You can purge at any time has been really important, but I think that that is a big one.
58:06
Um I I think that's the biggest one quite frankly, which is also why I like being a private company doing it.
58:12
But it, you know, from some countries and our history would say that it can go ary.
58:20
What is the biggest thing in between us today and a future where my face just does everything for me?
58:25
Where I can pay with my face and I can I can sort of opt into not taking stuff out of my pockets and just move through the world and get what I want with my face. Like what?
58:36
I don't think a lot I don't think there's a lot.
58:37
I mean, look at your iPhone or your Google phone, Samsung, right?
58:41
First, Touch ID started, I think, in 15 or something of that nature. Um, and then Face ID.
58:46
So I don't think there's a lot in between that.
58:49
I think it makes perfect sense.
58:51
I think you need trusted companies to do it.
58:53
But I think the level of fraud has gotten so high whether it be financial fraud, right?
59:00
You look at peer-to-peer, who are you? Who am I? You look at teleaalth. Who are you? Who am I?
59:05
And it's not just, you know, a document is not an identity.
59:08
An ID is not an identity.
59:10
You need total identity integrity.
59:13
You need identity with depth.
59:14
You need connecting you to all the things that make you you.
59:16
And so, you know, I think as as this anonymous online world rises, which creates all sorts of problems, I think as the world goes more digital, you know, we just did this partnership with Docu Sign, like of course pushing enter is not a secure, you know, thing when you're wiring a million dollars or getting a title, you know, or deed like that doesn't make sense. Your face should be it.
59:40
Uh, and so I I just think that when it makes that much sense and when it's that feasible and when you're doing it in other areas, it's a here and now moment.
59:49
And I think as long as it's opt-in, if you want to do it, if you don't, you know, you do it the oldfashioned way and that's a choice.
59:55
It's like my mom cash checks at the grocery store for a really long time.
59:57
I still don't think she's used um an ATM card. We're working on her.
1:00:02
So, I I just think it's it's a moment and I think used appropriately and in a trusted way. Look at crypto.
1:00:11
How could you get locked out of your account if you can't remember, you know, your 12digit hash?
1:00:15
Like, these things just don't make sense.
1:00:16
And then you look at the workforce side of the house and people are coming in the front door with fake credentials or credentials that aren't theirs, real credentials because they got it from the call center or, you know, they did it through other scams.
1:00:31
You got to know who people are and what they should have access to and you need to make people's experience more frictionless in so many different ways.
1:00:40
So I think the next five years will be transformative.
1:00:43
I would love to talk about where the business can expand to physically next and is so airports I talked about the NBA arena experience you know that I had more recently.
1:00:53
What is like currently happening and where will that proliferate in the coming you know couple of years?
1:00:59
So um enterprise identity first of all I think there's a lot more we can do in travel.
1:01:04
So I think going for an endto-end experience what we call home to gate is the opportunity whether it be a reserve parking spot or your Uber whether it be the ambassador and our new concierge program taking you either to our automated lanes which we're working on or ultimately to the gate.
1:01:22
I know when I had three little kids and all the suitcases like all you want is somebody to help you.
1:01:25
Uh and so putting together that journey is still an opportunity in travel, creating off-site screening, privatized screening, lots of opportunities to transform travel in stadiums and arenas.
1:01:38
With the World Cup coming in a year and with the Olympics coming two years after that, I think that there are some big opportunities to enhance the experience and enhance security in stadiums.
1:01:46
We're partnered with the Clippers where you can use your face for age verification to buy a beer.
1:01:50
Steve Balmer did build the arena of the future and I think there's a lot to be learned from that.
1:01:57
But like why should you need anything when you go into a stadium?
1:01:59
You're a guest and you should have a great guest experience and you know there's long lines to get a hot dog, long lines to get a beer.
1:02:07
You pass your driver's license and your credit card down.
1:02:10
That's super private to have it come back.
1:02:12
Like none of that makes sense.
1:02:12
And so creating better and safer experiences in sports stadiums ahead of the World Cup, but certainly around the World Cup.
1:02:22
Uh we have this new capability to uh read your passport and the echip.
1:02:24
And so that's both real ID compliant which is we didn't even talk about real ID which is you know a little bit of a hub out there.
1:02:32
And so uh both for domestic but for international fans as well.
1:02:34
We want to be welcoming for all the fans who want to come and create safer and easier experiences.
1:02:41
But then after that like I think health care is an extraordinary opportunity both for workforce and for patients to create safer and easier more compliant more efficient experiences at check-in at trying to you know uh recover your account and get the information on digital health records.
1:03:03
You know I like to say in healthcare that it was professional.
1:03:04
until it became personal when my husband was diagnosed with cancer and trying to get his health records.
1:03:12
You had to go to the fourth floor to get a CD ROM at Memorial Sloanketering.
1:03:16
You then brought the CD ROM back to your office so you could digitize it so that you could send those scans to other hospitals whether it be Hopkins in Baltimore or in Israel or Japan or Italy.
1:03:27
And it was so incredibly hard. I thought this is crazy. This is his data. This is our data.
1:03:32
And it was so hard to get on the portal if I lost my password. Maddening. It's insanity.
1:03:39
And once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.
1:03:41
So I think the opportunity to transform health care, you know, employees who, you know, it takes minutes to log on a system because there's different systems and they have to do it multiple times a day.
1:03:52
Those are times that they could be helping their patients.
1:03:56
Not to mention, you look at cyber attacks on healthcare data.
1:03:58
Um, so there's so many ways to transform the workforce and the patient experience.
1:04:06
Uh, you know, medical bankruptcy is, you know, a big problem because you don't know what you have coverage for and you don't know what you're going to be out of pocket for.
1:04:15
Uh, you know, it's crazy.
1:04:18
My husband passed away 20 months ago.
1:04:18
I still get bills and I'm like, such a bad experience on so many fronts and it's 20 months later.
1:04:26
So I know that our health care system needs extraordinary help to create safer and easier experiences.
1:04:32
Um and to connect it all, you think about tellaalth, you think about rural areas, you think about are you the doctor?
1:04:39
Do you have those certifications?
1:04:41
You think about temporary staffing.
1:04:42
Like you just keep going for the opportunity set for a secure identity platform that is not a point solution but can be used in multiple ways in that industry.
1:04:52
Um, and it it's an industry that operates on pretty slim margins.
1:04:58
Clinical trials, you know, I always said, I would love to put my husband's data up there and you find us versus I go find you.
1:05:06
It is a maddening experience to go through nih.
1:05:10
gov, which has thousands of clinical trials, to see which ones could apply to you, only to find out that he had a procedure or something that then meant it couldn't apply to you.
1:05:21
So the opportunity for transformation for better outcomes in a more costefficient way are here and now.
1:05:30
So those are just a few I could keep going.
1:05:32
It's identity is foundational across so many industries.
1:05:34
We want to make sure clear we're not boiling the ocean.
1:05:38
So there's a few areas we're really focused on right now.
1:05:40
Um but I think over time they continue to expand.
1:05:44
H how how were you able to lead through the experience with your husband and co like how did you yeah how did you do it?
1:05:57
You know sometimes I ask myself the same thing.
1:05:59
Uh again, I think I have these blinders on and I'm very focused on what's in front of me and um you know for co you've seen you know you saw 911 right like people are like well how could that happen here you saw the financial downturn of 2008 you see co it's like you see challenges every few years going back to embrace change you saw the dot bust like every few years. It's different.
1:06:29
But it was just like this is it.
1:06:32
What are you doing about it?
1:06:32
I don't get sort of wrapped up in the how could this be?
1:06:37
I, you know, I it just is.
1:06:41
And [ __ ] happens in the world that you would not expect on the positive and the negative.
1:06:48
I believe that it can and I believe that you need to be prepared.
1:06:51
and I seem to do best under uh pressure and stress, which I should probably try to flip that.
1:06:58
Um, and so I am prepared for crisis.
1:07:02
I guess also working in the stock market, it's like crisis is all, you know, people, you know, they're like, can you believe in the market's down?
1:07:10
And and I actually sent my son a few weeks ago, he's 17, a list of stocks that for the first time I thought were interesting because I wanted to show him the buy low, sell high, right?
1:07:17
It was down during the tariffs and everyone's freaking out.
1:07:21
freaking out. I was like this is the moment right um and it happens all the time you know they only are happy when the stock market goes up it's like that's not that's not the rule so I think you know co it was just head down and have your priorities which is first
1:07:37
of all lead from the front take your salary to zero right and put that money in a fund for the people I think that sets a tone from the first day that we're we're going to make it through and we're in we're here for you um and we're also going to have to make some hard decisions. So, communication key. Um, my So, communication key.
1:07:51
Um, my husband, that was a different kettle of fish.
1:07:58
Um, I'm the paranoid one who was always like, "Is this lump?
1:08:00
Do you think this is cancer?
1:08:01
Do you think this is cancer?" And he was like, "Stop."
1:08:02
And then it was, but it wasn't me.
1:08:08
Um, you know, in the in the heat of the moment, it was fixing him, right?
1:08:13
There's a 3% chance of survival with pancreatic cancer.
1:08:18
So going back to blind optimism, like why can't we be one of those 3%.
1:08:20
We can be 49 and a half years old, incredibly healthy. Um, so there's that.
1:08:26
There's being there for your children, which is your job, right?
1:08:28
Like got to be there for them. This isn't about you.
1:08:31
So I think I like helping other people.
1:08:34
And so you just blinders on.
1:08:38
This is the mission and we're going to tackle it and failure is not an option. We didn't win that one. Um, and then it's okay.
1:08:48
Well, how are we going to make sure that other people with the Brocka genetic mutation are aware of it?
1:08:55
How are like, how are we going to honor Mark's spirit and his life?
1:08:57
And how are we going to make a difference in the world?
1:09:01
I send my kids off to school every day with the saying, make the world a better place.
1:09:04
I think that that's all of our jobs.
1:09:06
And so, um, really now fighting for genetic screening and really wanting everyone to be genetically screened.
1:09:14
In Finland, they screen umbilical cord blood for 75 cents when a child is born and tell them their genetic situation when they're 21. Like, that's smart.
1:09:24
We should be doing that here.
1:09:26
Um, so I just I'm very missionoriented.
1:09:32
Um, I care about people deeply, the clear people and especially my family.
1:09:37
And so I feel like you have to be a difference maker and you got to lead from the front and you just do.
1:09:48
Thanks for talking about it and telling us about it.
1:09:50
Um I'm fascinated to learn more about genetic screening and and it's probably something that you mentioned before we started recording that there's this strange like ignorance is bliss tendency that we have around our health.
1:10:02
Um maybe you can say just one degree more about what you've learned about that and how we might change it.
1:10:07
Yeah, you know, in a world of I I'm incredibly curious and um I was not curious about the Brocka mutation.
1:10:13
I didn't know much about it besides I had heard about it from an about Angelina Jolie a while ago.
1:10:19
Um and my husband's brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in April of 2021 and it was the first time we found out that he was broa positive.
1:10:29
So my husband was uh screened and I remember he peakedked his head into the study in June of 2021 and said I'm broa positive and I was like okay we're going to deal with this like so we went and we had him you know tested for we had him scanned for skin cancer and we had a cat scan to make sure that you know his organs to baseline it because he was 49 and a half.
1:10:51
His brother was eight years older.
1:10:53
It all came back good in July 2021.
1:10:55
Turns out they missed it.
1:10:58
Um, and he was diagnosed in January 2022 with stage four pancreatic cancer that had metastasized to his liver.
1:11:05
And what we learned about the brocha mutation at that point was that two and were Ashkanazi Jews that two and a half% of Ashkanazi Jews are Brocka positive.
1:11:16
That is one out of 40 people.
1:11:16
That was a shocking statistic to me. We had no idea.
1:11:22
And to know that if you're genetically screened early, you can monitor it. you can be on top of it.
1:11:28
There's all sorts of things you can do.
1:11:31
It uh significantly raises a woman's chance of ovarian cancer and breast cancer, uh skin cancer, pancreatic cancer, and for men, prostate cancer.
1:11:40
Mark's dad had prostate cancer, you know, 17 years ago, maybe more than that, but nobody bothered to test him for BA.
1:11:47
And so our family is on a real mission with our Warrior Mench Foundation in honor of my husband and his legacy um to get the word out on genetic screening.
1:11:57
We bought 2,000 kits for our synagogue thinking if we just give them to you, you'll go home.
1:12:01
All you have to do is spit and send it in. Easy.
1:12:04
Um and so we bought 2,00300 were picked up uh for the high holidays.
1:12:11
And the rabbi who was a dear friend of my husband's my husband was chairman of our synagogue uh spoke about it.
1:12:16
We had little um flyers on everybody's seat.
1:12:19
I mean, what else are you doing on the high holidays? You could read it.
1:12:22
Um I mean, you can also pray.
1:12:24
Uh and 320 or so have been turned in.
1:12:28
So only 25% of the tests that were taken have been turned in.
1:12:32
Of those 320 and change, seven of them are positive, which means that 2 and a half% is actually there.
1:12:40
And of those seven that were turned in, then somebody had their sister tested and she was positive.
1:12:47
Somebody had their kids tested and they were positive because you have a 50% chance of passing on the Brocka mutation if you have it.
1:12:53
And so, you know, right now I think the count is 10 or 11 people who will be proactive in their health screening and can hopefully avoid, you know, uh, cancer or get it really early, which is the name of the game.
1:13:09
Um, but for the thousand people who didn't turn it in, we made a video, including my son.
1:13:14
I thought, well, if they see an incredible kid without a dad, they'll be motivated.
1:13:20
Our rabbi has spoken about it.
1:13:20
But to think that a thousand people took it, $250,000 of, you know, capital that went into it and that they don't want to know after that two and a half% that means that, you know, 25 people have it and haven't done anything about it. That's devastating.
1:13:37
So really figuring out ways that people can save their children, save themselves, um early intervention.
1:13:45
I I think genetic screening is so important not just for cancer but for other things.
1:13:49
I don't think ignorance is bliss.
1:13:51
I think people think it can't happen to them.
1:13:53
And I understand that feeling.
1:13:55
I used to look at people who lost someone and be like, "Oh, that is so sad. They lost someone."
1:13:58
And now I my kids and I laugh like that's us.
1:14:00
People look at us that way.
1:14:03
Um, and we don't want to be victims.
1:14:06
We want to be change makers.
1:14:10
I I have this question I did not expect to ask.
1:14:12
Um, what what is the most powerful uh idea or ritual derived from your religious tradition and faith?
1:14:21
I would say it is two things.
1:14:21
Um, it is the morning and night prayer that we do with our kids that I thought um and it was really Mark led the way on that.
1:14:30
the best way to sort of ground ourselves in the morning and to help go to bed in the evening.
1:14:38
I would say the other thing is Shabbat dinner, bringing people together on Fridays for Shabbat.
1:14:43
Um, when I grew up it wasn't that much fun.
1:14:46
It was like the four of us at a table, but we have lots of people and lots of fun and flowing wine and we do high lows and act of kindness.
1:14:54
So, everyone goes around the table and talks about the best part of their week, the worst part of their week, and something nice that they did.
1:15:00
Some people call it happy crappy.
1:15:00
Um, so you know that's been a great way to get our kids to talk to share our own vulnerabilities with each other.
1:15:08
Um, and it, you know, I will say when my husband died, our friends all created a sign up and everyone hosted a Shabbat and it held my family up in a really hard time.
1:15:23
Incredibly beautiful and powerful.
1:15:23
Hard to know where to go from there. I know. Back to biometrics.
1:15:26
Say back to back to free cash flow. Even dog. What do you got?
1:15:35
Pro for the name of the guy at that VC fund.
1:15:39
Yeah, maybe the right question is the power of relationships in leadership.
1:15:44
One of the things that about you that interests me most is this just incredible energy that you bring to the situations that you're in.
1:15:55
and um you've now led this business for a long time.
1:15:58
You've led a lot of people.
1:16:00
You've led them through really hard times.
1:16:02
You've led them through a lot of success.
1:16:03
Maybe the fun way to ask it is what you respect most in other leaders.
1:16:08
I'm sure you've also spent time with, you know, so many of the great, you've mentioned a lot of them already.
1:16:14
Um so many of the great leaders.
1:16:16
What do you most respect when you see leadership in others? I do love energy.
1:16:21
It's it's what I'm drawn to like positive big daring energy.
1:16:26
Um I love leaders who also can take that energy, stay quiet in a room and empower others to speak.
1:16:35
So like when you went to Amazon or when you went to Apple back then there were other incredible leaders who you know would share their stories.
1:16:44
Ron Johnson was running the stores at Apple when he spoke like he was the man.
1:16:46
And so you felt like, God, there's so many big brains around the table. Uh the power of a team. I love sports.
1:16:53
I used to want to be a sports reporter.
1:16:55
I thought Brent Musberger was all that.
1:16:57
So I wor for the Michigan Daily, but I never quite got to football.
1:17:00
I was more on like the club soccer and volleyball.
1:17:02
A team, the power of a team, the joy of winning as a team, the like I always am I marvel when somebody screws up and they just help each other up.
1:17:15
They cheer each other on.
1:17:17
Um, I aspired to do that as a leader.
1:17:21
They're tough and they're dedicated. Um, they're creative. They're nonconformist.
1:17:28
Those are the leaders that I like.
1:17:28
And I think if you look at Ed Breen and Jeff Boyd and Bob Milad and Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs and a bunch of other leaders, they're all very different.
1:17:38
I don't think there's a cookie cutter way uh to be a leader, but I think it's authenticity and humility and big thinking and discipline and you know the 5 a. m.
1:17:52
thing and I you know I just I love it all and I love that each one is different and what makes them tick.
1:17:59
I have a couple questions about company building just like a retrospective on 15 years of doing this kind of categories.
1:18:06
What have you learned about hiring?
1:18:08
That I'm not as good as it at it as I would like. Oh, say more about that.
1:18:12
I assume historically that everyone wants to win and that wired like you. Yeah.
1:18:18
Like of course, aren't like And I have three kids and I show up at the field trip and I don't miss a soccer game at a birthday party, but I'm also sending emails at 2 a. m.
1:18:25
So, of course you can make it all happen and like you want to, right?
1:18:29
and you just want to run and you're curious and it's not just a job, it's a way of life.
1:18:37
And I'm often disappointed and I go in with that bias and I don't ask the right questions because I go in with this positive bias that you know, you want to live it and you want to do it and customer says jump and you say how high and I'm not right.
1:18:52
Um, and that is consistently disappointing to me and so I'm working on that.
1:18:56
I'm attracted to people who have humble beginnings, who have overcome adversity, who don't fear failure, who want to be a team player, who are straight shooter and non-bureaucratic.
1:19:10
Clear's the biggest company I've ever worked at.
1:19:12
Um, and so, you know, again, hiring those people, great success, but I need to work on my bias of everyone wants to do it my way.
1:19:25
And I would say also, I'm on the Home Depot board and I have learned so much about growing people internally from Home Depot.
1:19:32
I've learned great leaders.
1:19:34
I mean, incredible leaders, an incredible company.
1:19:36
They grow people internally and in the most magnificent way.
1:19:41
They take talent development really seriously.
1:19:44
And so I've learned a lot from that.
1:19:46
And so we have great success stories of clear of people who have been here eight and 10 years on a 15-year-old company started you know in one place have had five different jobs and are significant leaders at clear and so I love those stories but people are motivated by very different things and you have to understand their motivation and their incentives and uh then where they fit in the organization.
1:20:07
You don't want everyone like me.
1:20:08
Do you have a theory as to why more people aren't wired in uh this way about I don't know how to describe it like a this is not a drill type you know attitude towards life.
1:20:21
Do you have a theory as to like or or like when were you always like this?
1:20:25
Did you like wake up or was there like a moment or a precipitating thing like I I know no other way.
1:20:30
I don't this you just don't get it why others are not like this. I don't get it. My kids don't get it. happily.
1:20:38
They're all sort of wired like uh like me and Mark.
1:20:40
And life is for the living.
1:20:43
I mean, um this is a great country.
1:20:47
I have a lot of gratitude.
1:20:47
I didn't start with much of anything.
1:20:49
My first job, my salary was $24,000 a year.
1:20:54
Um my sister was FedExing me cash, you know, because I didn't have enough to uh you know, pay my bills.
1:21:00
So, I don't I don't know any other way.
1:21:03
Um, you know, I used to watch the last lecture by Randy Pouch and you know, he talks about Tiger and Eeyore and one of my anniversaries my husband bought me a tiger stuffed animal and it's like energy, positivity, be tiger.
1:21:16
Who wants to be around the WW?
1:21:18
Yeah, life is full of challenges.
1:21:20
Life is full of disappointments.
1:21:23
I've experienced more than my fair share and I have gratitude and optimism.
1:21:26
And I also think when you see the other side, you know this is it.
1:21:32
So live your best life and make a difference for others and pay it forward. Be a change maker.
1:21:38
It's I don't know any other way and I don't understand others who don't.
1:21:42
Nothing gets me more energized than someone who cares and loves their the thing they're building so deeply.
1:21:47
Uh James Dyson just was making the rounds on the internet for like an 8 minute keynote. He's 70 or 80 years old.
1:21:55
There's something beautiful about the marketing advantage that comes just from that, just from the passion that that just oozes off these people creating these things. And I get that from you.
1:22:06
And so that's part of the answer is just like care deeply and love the thing that you're building.
1:22:09
Um, what else have you learned about marketing?
1:22:12
Since you're running a consumer subscription business, you have to reach a lot of people.
1:22:17
What are the good and bad lessons that you've learned about what to do and not to do in marketing?
1:22:21
You know, it's interesting.
1:22:21
I would say the same thing for genetic testing that your biggest competitor is inertia. Yeah.
1:22:26
Getting people to to do anything. Move is hard.
1:22:29
Like again, the test was free.
1:22:31
All you have to do is spit. Like not hard. Yeah. So hard. Yeah. Save your life. Save your kids' life. Really freaking hard.
1:22:41
So inertia is really a tough thing to overcome.
1:22:45
So trying to get incent people to move and to do things takes a little bit of time.
1:22:52
You got to cut through the noise.
1:22:54
I do think having humans bring it to life like we did uh with our ambassadors, but um word of mouth is powerful, but also it's a fragile world we live in.
1:23:04
So a fund manager used to say it's the elevator, it's the staircase up and the elevator down, right?
1:23:10
And we've experienced that, right?
1:23:13
somebody tweets something negative, it's one person's opinion in a moment in time goes viral and that's the story. So, um it's fragile.
1:23:23
I think I could do a better job quite frankly.
1:23:26
I think I was saying before on the uh investor front of sharing our story and telling our story and humanizing our story.
1:23:32
Um, I certainly think we have opportunities on that, but it is hard and it is fragile.
1:23:46
And I also think you live in a consumer world of what have you done for me lately?
1:23:50
It's like, you know, I used to say with Nike, they they changed the game like there used to be one sneaker every I don't know year and then they started speeding up, you know, innovation and it was like what's the new sneaker?
1:23:59
Consumers want to be surprised and delighted all the time often. Yeah.
1:24:04
You know, it's like what have you done for me lately?
1:24:06
And so living in that world, you have to be launching features and products.
1:24:09
You have to have an accelerated product roadmap.
1:24:12
You have to talk about it.
1:24:12
I think Uber and Airbnb have done a really good job of talking at sort of having two launch points a year to talk about their products and innovation.
1:24:20
Uh we just sort of put it out there.
1:24:22
Somebody was saying the other day like the heavenly bed that I think the Weston did, right?
1:24:28
They did some event in Time Square and it was a big deal.
1:24:30
They said, "We have better beds in some of our of hotels, but we didn't tell anybody." Right.
1:24:35
You've got to capture people's attention and you've got to surprise and delight them and you also have to apologize when you do wrong and make it right.
1:24:42
Anything you've learned about investors that's interesting to you being a company rather than a colleague?
1:24:49
Sometimes I'm surprised at the lack of big picture questions.
1:24:54
um really like we're right here.
1:24:54
And I'm like, well, you know, the long term is made up of a bunch of near-terms, but I feel like you would want to understand the long term to understand how the near-term fits into it.
1:25:05
Uh there's a lack of questions on free cash flow and how we spend the free cash flow.
1:25:10
Um I don't even know that one looks at the cash on the balance sheet.
1:25:15
You know, people tell me that I wouldn't understand how people invest today because there's all these pods and quants and that wasn't there when I left 15 years ago.
1:25:22
So, I was a valueoriented investor, which means different businesses have different return and growth characteristics and should be valued accordingly.
1:25:28
That's how I looked at it.
1:25:30
So, I thought Apple when we bought it for $14 with I think $9 a share of cash on the balance sheet was a value stock.
1:25:35
Um, and the street thought they could earn 60 cents and I thought they could earn a dollar and then from there here's where we go.
1:25:40
Apparently, that doesn't happen as much.
1:25:42
So, but I still think that long-term valueoriented investing is the thing that yields the greatest fruit.
1:25:50
I had the um pleasure of sitting with um Charlie Munger uh two years ago in his backyard and like he's mesmerizing, right?
1:25:59
And I believe that that is how you create long-term value.
1:26:05
What what most stood out from that day, what did he say that most I mean probably the fact that he still lives in that house. Yeah.
1:26:11
Um and he was just in his backyard.
1:26:11
Um his grandchild was in the house.
1:26:19
uh the stories that he would tell, the crispness of his mind, his humor and his humility.
1:26:24
Uh for someone with that kind of storied success, uh he signed his almanac.
1:26:31
Um I I think it was his humility and his curiosity like tell me about your company, right?
1:26:35
Tell me about what you think biometrics can do. What can the margins be?
1:26:40
What's the you know total market? Could it go global?
1:26:41
He was just grounded in basics. Um, and he was funny. I felt lucky.
1:26:52
I guess I want to ask the same question.
1:26:54
Two more questions for you.
1:26:54
The first is, uh, tell us about your company.
1:26:58
Where, where could this go?
1:26:58
Like, if you really put your dreamer hat on, what happens in the next 10 years for and because of Clear?
1:27:10
I think the world is safer and more frictionless for consumers and for enterprises.
1:27:13
Uh I think that we should have tripledigit uh members on the platform using it for various use cases.
1:27:22
That contextual identity is really powerful and identity with depth, what we call total identity integrity is unlocking all sorts of experiences and that you could actually leave your home with nothing, not even a phone, and be able to really transact in the world.
1:27:40
And that that makes uh companies more compliant.
1:27:43
It makes cost more efficient. It drives automation. It reduces stress. It delights people.
1:27:48
And everyone is more productive.
1:27:51
I think so much of what we have in this world is because we don't trust each other.
1:27:54
I think identity is about building trust physically and digitally.
1:28:00
So um both in the US and outside the US for clear.
1:28:05
What part of the next 10 years for you personally gets you the most excited?
1:28:10
Like you're going to be leading from the front.
1:28:11
Which aspect is the most energizing?
1:28:15
Making Clear's vision a reality with awesome team members.
1:28:18
And so we're spending a lot of time on on enterprise leadership and one team, one dream.
1:28:23
And that is very energizing working with really smart, dedicated, motivated, high integrity, creative people who all come together with different skill sets. I think that's awesome.
1:28:35
Um, and then I get both excited on the art of the possible with travel because I think travel is going to continue to boom and we are really going to start to unlock innovation to transform it.
1:28:45
And on enterprise identity, you know, I think the way you apply for a job and then onboard for a job and then reset your password and get onto your computer and transact is going to be transformed.
1:28:57
And I think that that is a really important need in a world where cyber security challenges have risen significantly.
1:29:06
So I get excited about the people that I'm doing it with.
1:29:10
Um and the fact that then I can be open to doing other things.
1:29:13
I don't have to be sending the emails and uh talking to the guy about his grandmother. Uh I can I can do more. I I thought of one more.
1:29:23
What is happening in the world in the next couple of years that most opens us up to innovation that entrepreneurs could take advantage of and make us better as a country?
1:29:34
I think the World Cup is a real forcing function for our country and it's only one year away.
1:29:38
I think you know it was in Doha last time uh and in the middle Middle East.
1:29:43
I think the opportunity to bring it to the cities in the US, major cities in the US, LA, New York, Atlanta, Miami, um is huge and that creates a real need in travel.
1:29:54
It creates a real need in sports stadiums and ticketing uh to make experiences safer and easier.
1:29:59
I think we want to be a showcase for the world on what we can do, how we can entertain, how we can drive security for the World Cup.
1:30:07
Then two years later, it's the Olympics in LA, which just had these incredible fires.
1:30:12
And so, how we drive mobility and security and hospitality in LA for the Olympics, I do not think is any easy feat.
1:30:20
I think it will require real leadership and innovation.
1:30:24
And I think those are forcing functions.
1:30:26
You know, you need forcing functions to galvanize people say we got to make it by this date.
1:30:29
Not to mention the 250th birthday of the United States, which comes at the same time.
1:30:34
And I I think that we have not moved fast enough on innovation in this country.
1:30:38
And I think that we need reasons and pushes to move faster to drive private sector innovation and private sector capital.
1:30:45
I think it aligns with the needs right now.
1:30:47
And I think that those will really create opportunities for great companies. I think you're right.
1:30:52
I think we're lucky to have people like you driving this innovation.
1:30:56
And I find you to be just like a total force of nature.
1:30:58
And this is a total blast and a privilege.
1:31:03
When I do these, I ask everyone the same traditional closing question.
1:31:04
What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?
1:31:10
Probably the letters that my husband left me with. Beautiful.
1:31:16
Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.