A lot of people have asked how Retruster started. Well, it’s quite a personal story…

I was working in a company with a very unique CEO. He was an incredible mentor, and he was extreme in everything he did. He worked hard, and played even harder. Nothing was enough adventure, danger or excitement for him, both in business and in life.

Always On The Go

As CFO, I was used to his odd requests at odd times, and I had to be available almost 24/7 to act on urgent information. There would be a sudden call, “Where are we with this issue?”, or “How are sales compared to last month”, and you were expected to have all of this at your fingertips, constantly. When he said “run”, you sprinted.

While this CEO was overseas, I got an email from him, instructing me to transfer a significant amount of money to a new supplier’s account — urgently. This was actually a pretty routine thing. We were constantly engaging with new suppliers who would cut us amazing deals once they saw we had the money, and this man’s word was his honour: if he said he’d have the money to you immediately, he meant it.

Disaster Averted — Just

Something — I’m still not sure what — made me think twice. I couldn’t get hold of the CEO, so I made the call to hold on the transaction, risking CEO wrath and a supplier relationship. Long story short, it turns out the email was fake, even though it seemed completely normal. We almost lost a significant amount of money, not to mention embarrassment and privacy concerns.

When I looked into stopping this from happening to me again, and protecting people I cared about, I realised 2 things:
1) This problem is massive, and costs companies billions of dollars every year
2) There was no effective solution to this problem

So I decided to get together with some of the top minds in internet safety, and come up with a plan to combat these types of fraudulent, phishing attacks. That’s where Retruster was born.

The Solution We Needed

In our next post, we’ll look into the solution itself, and why it works better than anything else out there.