Fraudology
Market Volatility & The Trust Playbook: Navigating Fraud in Two-Sided Marketplaces
Welcome back to Fraudology.
In this episode, I’m sitting down with Mark Porteous, a longtime leader in e-commerce fraud and trust who knows two-sided marketplaces from the inside out. Mark spent nine years at StockX, where he started in customer support before building the company’s fraud program from the ground up. And honestly, that is one of the best ways to learn marketplace fraud prevention because you see the customer complaints, the chargebacks, the seller issues, the account problems, and the policy gaps before anybody has officially decided they belong to a fraud team.
We get into what makes online marketplace fraud so different from traditional e-commerce. In a standard retail transaction, the merchant controls the inventory, the pricing, and fulfillment. In a two-sided marketplace, the platform may be trusting one person to sell, another person to buy, and sometimes a third person to deliver the product. Every additional participant creates another identity question, another fraud vector, and another opportunity for marketplace scams or policy abuse.
The deeper theme of this episode is market volatility fraud. Prices can change dramatically because of a sports result, a viral release, an artist announcement, a celebrity event, or a sudden shortage. When that happens, legitimate customer behavior changes, but fraudulent behavior changes too. Sellers may decide not to fulfill because they can resell the item for more. Buyers may file friendly fraud chargebacks after prices fall. Stolen cards may be used to purchase high-demand inventory. And risk models that normally work well can suddenly start treating good customers like fraudsters.
Marketplace fraud prevention cannot stay on autopilot. Fraud leaders need strong policies, clear escalation playbooks, reliable fraud intelligence, and real collaboration with vendors, data teams, customer support, marketing, product, and leadership.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
- How Mark moved from customer support into building a marketplace fraud program from the ground up.
- Why two-sided and multi-sided marketplaces create more complex identity, payment, seller, and fulfillment risks.
- How marketplace pricing volatility can trigger seller non-fulfillment, policy abuse, first-party fraud, and chargebacks.
- Why World Cup ticket pricing is a real-time example of market volatility fraud.
- How friendly fraud can increase when buyers repurchase the same item after its secondary-market price drops.
- Why fraud models and vendor strategies cannot be left on autopilot during high-demand events.
- How approval rates, false declines, fraud risk scoring, and card-not-present fraud need to be balanced during sudden demand spikes.
- Why fraud leaders need playbooks, policy enforcement, and clear escalation paths before an unexpected event happens.
- How to work with marketing, product, growth, finance, customer support, and security without becoming the team that says no to everything.
- Why strong fraud storytelling must always be supported by fraud analytics and measurable business impact.
You should listen to this episode if you:
- Work in marketplace fraud prevention, trust and safety, fraud operations, or fraud risk management.
- Manage buyer fraud, seller fraud, marketplace chargebacks, seller verification, or payment fraud prevention.
- Work for a ticketing, sneaker, collectible, resale, delivery, or multi-sided marketplace.
- Need a better approach to fraud monitoring during major events, product releases, shortages, or pricing spikes.
- Want to improve collaboration between fraud, customer support, product, growth, marketing, finance, and security teams.
Episode notes & key takeaways
Marketplace fraud prevention starts with understanding every side of the transaction
One of the biggest differences between traditional e-commerce and a marketplace is the number of people the platform has to trust.
In a two-sided marketplace, there is a buyer and a seller. In a multi-sided marketplace, there may also be a restaurant, driver, courier, service provider, or another participant involved in completing the transaction. Every additional participant creates another identity question, another fraud vector, and another opportunity for marketplace scams, marketplace account fraud, or policy abuse.
That is why seller identity verification and Know Your Seller, or KYS, controls matter so much. But identity alone does not solve everything. A real buyer and a real seller can still collude. A legitimate seller can still manipulate fulfillment when a price changes. A long-term buyer can still file a friendly fraud or first-party fraud claim when they regret a purchase.
Marketplace fraud detection has to look beyond whether an identity is technically valid. It also needs to evaluate behavior, transaction context, prior history, pricing changes, relationships between accounts, and whether the activity makes sense for that specific marketplace.
That applies across online marketplace fraud, resale marketplace fraud, sneaker marketplace fraud, collectible marketplace fraud, and other high-demand environments where buyer and seller incentives can shift quickly.
Market volatility creates fraud and abuse opportunities on both sides
The World Cup ticket example in this episode shows exactly how marketplace pricing volatility can affect buyer and seller behavior.
A seller may agree to sell a ticket for $1,700. Then the team wins, demand increases, and that same ticket is suddenly worth $2,500. If the marketplace does not require immediate fulfillment, the seller may decide it is financially worthwhile to cancel the original transaction, pay a non-fulfillment fee, and resell the ticket for more.
That is policy abuse, even if the seller is a real person and the ticket is real.
The buyer is left with a refund, but that may not solve the actual problem. They may have already purchased airfare, booked a hotel, traveled to the event, and planned the entire trip around having those seats. Telling them to repurchase the same ticket for another $1,000 does not preserve trust.
The opposite can happen too. A buyer may purchase a ticket for $3,000 and then watch the market price drop to $1,500. They may file a chargeback, claim they did not make the purchase, and then repurchase at the lower price.
That introduces:
- Friendly fraud.
- First-party fraud.
- Chargeback prevention challenges.
- Card-not-present fraud exposure.
- Policy enforcement questions.
- Customer trust problems.
These are not isolated fraud events. They are predictable consequences of market movement, weak policies, delayed fulfillment, and misaligned incentives.
Fraud intelligence and monitoring cannot stay on autopilot
When pricing, demand, and transaction volume move quickly, fraud teams need enough fraud intelligence to understand why.
A spike in order volume does not automatically mean there is a fraud ring. A jump in average order value does not mean every large order should be declined. A sudden increase in international traffic may be completely legitimate during a global event.
At the same time, real payment fraud can hide inside that surge.
That is where fraud monitoring, fraud analytics, fraud risk scoring, fraud detection models, and behavioral context become essential. Teams need to understand whether they are seeing:
- Genuine changes in demand
- Stolen card activity
- Marketplace account fraud
- Coordinated buyer and seller behavior
- Promotion abuse
- Limited release fraud
- High-demand product fraud
- Fraud detection models creating unnecessary false declines
Fraud vendors cannot be left on autopilot either. A vendor that assumes chargeback liability may become more conservative when order values rise, while a non-guaranteed vendor may be more willing to approve risky transactions.
Neither model is automatically right or wrong.
The important thing is staying involved in the fraud strategy, understanding how the vendor responds to volatility, and making sure the approval approach supports payment fraud prevention, marketplace fraud prevention, and healthy growth.
That is where fraud risk management becomes practical. It is not just about stopping loss. It is about balancing marketplace fraud, false declines, customer experience, and revenue in real time.
Strong playbooks and cross-functional trust protect the marketplace
Fraud teams cannot predict every sports result, viral product, celebrity event, shortage, or limited release. But they can prepare a reusable response playbook before the next market volatility fraud event happens.
That playbook should define:
- What triggers an escalation
- Who owns the response
- Which fraud metrics matter
- When vendors and leadership are contacted
- How buyer and seller complaints are handled
- When rules, models, or policies may need to change
- How customer support, product, marketing, finance, and security participate
This is also why Mark recommends building a trust center of excellence. Marketplace fraud does not belong to one department. A seller fulfillment failure affects customer support. A promotion affects marketing and finance. A fake seller affects identity, payments, support, and legal. A chargeback spike affects fraud operations and executive leadership.
Fraud leaders are most effective when they act as strategic guides instead of automatic roadblocks.
The goal is not to say no to growth. It is to explain:
- What risk the decision creates
- What controls can reduce that risk
- What data should be monitored
- What thresholds should trigger action
- How policy enforcement should work
- How promotion abuse, refund abuse, and return abuse will be managed
That is how fraud operations, fraud strategy, and fraud risk management support the business instead of operating separately from it.
Fraud leaders need data, credibility, and time to recharge
Fraud professionals usually have great stories because they see sophisticated and sometimes unbelievable behavior every day. But one dramatic example is not enough to change a product roadmap or secure more resources.
The strongest fraud story combines:
- A clear example
- The number of similar incidents
- The financial impact
- The operational burden
- The customer impact
- The expected value of fixing it
Without data, leadership may treat the issue as a one-off. Without a clear story, the numbers may not feel urgent or memorable.
Fraud leaders need both.
That combination helps teams improve marketplace fraud detection, strengthen seller identity verification, justify payment fraud prevention resources, reduce false declines, and prioritize the right work across online marketplace fraud and resale marketplace fraud programs.
They also need to protect their own ability to make good decisions. Fraud rings do not wait for office hours, and high-severity incidents can pull teams into nights, weekends, and holidays.
That constant exposure can create exhaustion and make fraud professionals more likely to assume bad intent everywhere, including from their own coworkers.
Strong marketplace fraud prevention depends on experienced people who can think clearly, collaborate well, and make balanced decisions. Exhausted teams cannot sustain that forever.
Final takeaway
Marketplace fraud prevention is not just about catching stolen cards or blocking fake accounts.
It requires understanding how buyers, sellers, pricing, identity, fulfillment, chargebacks, policies, promotions, vendors, and real-world events interact. Market volatility can change those relationships overnight.
The marketplaces that protect trust best are the ones with strong fraud intelligence, flexible fraud monitoring, clear buyer and seller policies, reliable seller identity verification, effective KYS controls, prepared playbooks, and fraud leaders who understand how marketplace fraud, payment fraud prevention, chargeback prevention, fraud analytics, fraud risk scoring, and false declines all connect.
Because trust in a marketplace is earned in drops and lost in buckets. And once it is gone, it is very hard to get back.
Episode resources & links:
Connect with Mark Porteous | LinkedIn
- Senior Director of Safety & Trust
Connect with Karisse Hendrick | LinkedIn
- Host of the Fraudology Podcast
- Award-Winning Cyberfraud Expert
- Ecommerce Fraud Prevention Consultant
- Startup Advisor, Keynote Speaker, and
- Consultant to Fortune 500 merchants
Episode transcript
Karisses Hendrick
00:08
Welcome back to the Fraudology Podcast. Well, today I get to talk with someone who I have known for several years and have wanted on the podcast for a while. It just hasn't worked out. But now it does work out. So I'm really excited to have Mark Porteus on the podcast today. He is a longtime leader in the e-commerce fraud space, specializing in marketplaces. Very few people know marketplace fraud the way Mark does. And we're gonna talk about that today, specifically how market volatility impacts abuse and fraud in marketplaces. And I think even if you don't work for a marketplace, you're gonna find this really fascinating. because there's some real world examples that we can give that are current and in the headlines that will explain exactly what we're talking about. So with all of that, welcome to Fraudology.
Mark Porteus
01:02
Thanks for having me.
Karisses Hendrick
01:03
Yeah, I'm excited to do this.
Mark Porteus
01:05
Yeah, looking so you're right, it's been a long time coming, but happy to be here now, excited to talk about the topics.
Karisses Hendrick
01:11
Yeah, so I ask this question to everyone when we start out because everybody's answer is different. How did you get started in fraud prevention?
Mark Porteus
01:21
Yeah, you're right. Everybody does take a different road. What I've found in kind of my conversations, interestingly enough, is that a fair amount of us have similar stories, but you're right, all of them have a little bit different tweaks. So the last nine years I’ve been working for StockX marketplace specializing in current culture goods. Sneakers and streetwear, things like that. And I got started with them in 2017 as a customer support agent. And there were 56 of us at the company at the time and there was no fraud department. And so what we had was, just an, it all getting worked through CS. And you know we, this customer support team, handled chargebacks. And again without there being a fraud team, mostly just hearing about it, you know, in different ways and seeing it. And after a little bit, I started diving into fraud a little bit more from that front and finding a couple of fraud rings along the way. And so our CEO at the time and our COO at the time asked me to spend a little bit more time on that, and so I did a pretty deep dive, came back with them with the findings, and they were like, great. We'll have you start building out a team related to this now that you know what it looks like. And so they had me just kind of transition out from CS to building out our fraud team kind of ground up. And so I started on there, and with chargebacks and buyer fraud and some of the seller fraud aspects, and was building it up from there. And then we, they brought in Travis Dawson, who a lot of people that watch this will know, and he kind of helped mentor me on the fraud industry as a whole. And yeah, from there we built out a pretty strong fraud program and trust program and focusing in on buyer fraud, seller fraud, identity, chargebacks, the the whole nine.
Karisses Hendrick
03:15
And something that I have learned about two-sided marketplaces that do deal in like current culture goods, 'cause there's a few of them, you know, I think the biggest one that everyone thinks of from fifteen, twenty years ago is eBay, right? I think of like the beanie babies back in the day when eBay was just starting and how, you know, all of a sudden the pricing would go up and the value would go up and then this would go down, which we'll talk more about in a little bit. But something I've noticed about those of you that work for those companies is you guys are really on the front line of probably some of the most sophisticated fraud. I think you guys in crypto and money transfer are really who see fraud on the front lines. New tactics and the sophisticated guys that do this for a living, that have, you know, resources.
Mark Porteus
04:03
Yeah, I think, you know, marketplaces especially are unique because there's different aspects about right? So like you could have a two-sided marketplace where you've got buyers and sellers. You can have multi-sided, such as some of the like on-demand delivery, right? Where maybe you've got a restaurant that is, you know, going to be providing the goods, but there's an identity component to that because there's aspects of people that will try to create fake storefronts. Then you have you know a buyer on the other side who's expecting an item delivered to them, but there's also the aspect of, like anything else, is there buyer fraud there? Is there credit card fraud? All the normal aspects that we have related to that. Is the person on the other end, again, identity comes in from the aspect of is the person on the other end legitimate? Or would the third aspect, a driver or a delivery person, a courier, right, walking into something that's concerning? Additionally, there's a fraud and identity aspect related to that courier. Are they legitimate? Do we know who it is? Who is the company trusting with that? And so with all of those different aspects working along the way, it creates these multiple different areas of you know fraud exposure. And so it does make it a little bit more interesting related to the marketplace aspects with how many vectors there are. And really how, I'd say, forged in identity verification they all are. Because it really comes back to you and your team needing to know who you're dealing with at every step along the way.
Karisses Hendrick
05:41
Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, that kind of brings me in. I mean, you've answered this a little bit, but you know, like I mentioned before, like every vertical within e-commerce has its own kind of flavor of fraud and abuse related issues. But there are several kinds of marketplaces. You've kind of talked about a couple, but can you dive into you know some of the issues that they pose and can you talk about them?
Mark Porteus
06:06
Sure. So we talked a little bit about buyer fraud, seller fraud. Additionally, there's the aspects of collusion, right? What happens when you are in a situation where multiple sides of a transaction are working in tandem to you know, try to pull off something that's just completely unexpected. And again, that's where you want to make sure that you know who you're dealing with on each side. But again, collusion makes a unique opportunity. Because it might very well be, you know, Mark Portius. And it may very well be Karisse as them. But if they're working in tandem, again and you know, an order is not as expected. It's way outside of the norm of a price or volume, value, things like that. It can make things difficult. Additionally, there's, you know major market volatility events. Again, some of these items when you're dealing with marketplaces, it's not the price of a company that is setting. It might be marketplace pricing that's happening and, you know, kind of dynamic pricing that's happening. Or just the market setting it. And so, you know, one of the, and some of those produce some of the more challenging things. And I'm wearing the US national team shirt today. Today's game day against Bosnia. And so like I'm in World Cup fever right now. And one of the things I've been watching very closely over the last few weeks has actually been the challenges that our friends on the ticketing market places are dealing with right now. Because again this is, you know, a major sport. And a major event that's happening in North America. And you know it only comes around every four years. And so there's just a lot of eyes on it and there's a lot of things going on. And things with the ticketing marketplaces can change and fluctuate so much. And those create such unique problems. And again there's, you know, from when you think about it from like, you know, the buyer side. You've got people that are all over the globe coming to North America right now for these matches. And so let's say I'm going on to one of the ticketing marketplaces because I need to buy the tickets for my next event. Well, I'm gonna be coming in with say you know, a German billing address and a device info that totally tracks back to Germany and my IP history's all in Germany, but now I'm in the States or I'm in Mexico or I'm in Canada and you know I'm I'm trying to get items from there that's gonna look a little odd, right? And so you've got to be mindful of that and not hitting false, you know, false declines as it relates to the buy side. But then again you've also got people who are going to be using that situation and these tickets going up in value to try to buy fraudulently. So it makes it difficult as you're tuning the models to make sure you're hitting correctly on that. And then additionally on the sell side, you run into really unique examples and issues. Because from the sell side, in these aspects, you have everything from straight up fake sellers who are trying to pose like they have tickets and just get the money and then try to ghost but never had the tickets. All of the aspects that you need to do with identity verification for, you know, ensuring that sellers are legitimate in these marketplaces. But then these volatility events. You know, they bring in fraudulent actors because of their values. But then there's also the like policy related things. And that's been some of the more, kind of high profile things that some of these ticket marketplaces have been dealing with over these last few weeks.
Mark Porteus
09:48
Because we'll take the US for example. I was out in Los Angeles for their home opener against Paraguay and you know tickets were, you know, initially very expensive related to how FIFA released them with their dynamic pricing, which like I could go on about, but we'll save that for another time. But there was their release. And then tickets actually went down in value on the secondary market. And so, you know, you've got them kind of coming down for a point and then before the match, they started to go back up. I know because I was watching very closely. Started to go back up, and then the US has this blinding performance. Wins you know, wins big, and now it starts hitting fever pitch. And I was watching the pricing for the next match in Seattle. And the order average for the Seattle tickets skyrocketed after the US won. So when that happens, you've got this unique position where, okay, I bought, let's say, you know, I bought for some of the tickets around that time where I want to say in the, you know, 1700 a pop range. And then they surged up to like $2,500 a pop. And you know, some of the ticket marketplaces don't require immediate ticket fulfillment. And so I might be a seller, and having sold those. And now I still have in my possession and I see that they're up, you know, say a thousand or more a pop.
Karisses Hendrick
11:20
Because the US won their game, right? So like pre-game they're, you know, maybe seventeen hundred, but then once the US won, then all of a sudden that price goes way up because the demand goes up. And now, you know, I don't know what exactly it was, but that there's usually some kind of event that happens, right? Whether it's like you know, some YouTube influencer with the LaBuBus, or, you know, a sneaker release, or ticket, you know, concert tickets, you know, maybe the artist has announced it's their last tour after the tickets have been purchased. Like there's usually some kind of event that occurs outside of the marketplace that impacts the price going way up, right?
Mark Porteus
12:07
Yeah, if you find, you know, it could be any one of those. It could be any sort of event. And if it happens in between the point of sale versus fulfillment, now it presents a situation where maybe the seller doesn't want to fulfill. And you know, they look at it from the perspective of, all right, well I'm just not gonna. I'm gonna say I don't have these I'm gonna not fulfill and then I'm gonna take my chance and I'm gonna resell them again for more. And a lot of marketplaces have mechanics in place to try to hold accountability for that. Usually it's in the form of a fee, but for the sellers sometimes it's a math problem, right? Like all right, my fee might be X. But my next sale is Y. I'll take that difference. And so it's important for us in what we do to, you know, really be focused in also with our teams related to the policy aspect of what we do. Because a lot of people think of policy abuse related to returns and a lot of things that happen on the buy side. And that's totally normal because so, there's you know, a lot more that's happening on that front. But from marketplace perspective. It's not just thinking about it from that perspective. We have to think about it from the sell side as well. And what happens on that end and make sure that we do have strong policies in place as well as, you know, reporting and intelligence. To be able to look for, you know, scenarios where, did a seller commit to selling a ticket, say at price X. Didn't fulfill, sold again, same items at price Y? Okay, well that should flag and then accountability needs to, you know, happen on there. And you know, it's important to balance out a lot of places. We'll be thinking a lot about the seller specifically and making sure they got the supply. As well, they should, but it's important to be holding accountability and making sure to do right by these by the buyers in these situations
Karisses Hendrick
14:02
Yeah
Mark Porteus
14:03
because a lot of what's happening, like I'm seeing in some of these stories that are out there, you know, somebody flies to Seattle because they believe that they've got tickets that they've purchased at say $1,500 a pop, but then now they find out after they're in Seattle with their hotel and all the other stuff that sorry you're not getting the tickets. Here's your refund. You can repurchase at 25, $2,700 a pop.
Karisses Hendrick
14:23
Right
Mark Porteus
14:24
And like that's that's a really tough thing to be putting somebody in the position of making. And it just erodes trust. And like brand trust takes years to really build up with people, but in high profile events such as big releases or events like the World Cup that don't come around that often and, you know, people really plan for. If your policies aren't strong and your identity, you know, met you know, mechanics aren't strong, you can find yourself having trust get eroded with your consumers very, very fast. And have them leave them running to, you know, your competition, which is the worst case scenario. So those aspects really are huge. And again, right now is just, you know, a really prime example of it with the cup being in North America and just the way that, again, pricing from the very beginning has happened. This has been by far tickets for this, World Cup have been by far the most expensive that we've ever seen in world football and soccer. So it's been really interesting to see. And then kind of on the flip side to that. The US, again they play today. I thought about flying out to San Francisco for the match. Decided not to, but I was watching tickets pricing for a long time. Part of the reason I decided not to was ticket prices when I was looking were like, get in was somewhere around $2900 a pop. And like that's crazy to me. And so I was like, all right, never mind, not going to do it. But over the last couple of days, it has really drop down. We're talking like $1,700 a pop. And so again, now if you think about the flip side to that. If I bought, say, a week ago, or you know, five years ago, whatever, and I paid three grand for my tickets. And they haven't been fulfilled, or maybe they have been filled, maybe I haven't. But I see that they're actually valued at $1,500 now. There is part of me that's absolutely going to be considering charging that back and cleaning. Oh! It wasn't me. It's claiming the fraud stuff, you know, all the friendly fraud things that, you know, we as merchants have dealt with on the chargeback side. So, you know, these volatiles.
Karisses Hendrick
16:33
Yeah. And then buying again for the seventeen hundred and still getting to go to the game.
Mark Porteus
16:37
Exactly. Like, you know, playing the you know, doing the whole run with the card company. The, you know, however you, someone might buy their items and trying to run through whatever I can do, taking it to pre arb, you know, going the whole nine to see if I can get my money back, but then buying for a lower price. So, you know, in the marketplace side, the intelligence aspect of it is really crucial to make sure that you see the full story because maybe you take action against the person and then they, you know, raise holy hell on whatever social media platform and somebody says to you, hey, I see this person, you know, they say they filed a charge back and now this action's happening, they've been a good buyer, whatever. Sure, that's that side. But you need to have the intelligence to be able to say, yes, they bought from us at three grand, filed a chargeback, took it the distance, got the money, and then repurchased at 1500, right? Like how do we want that to be normal activity on our platform? And so again, it's just these volatility events create all of these different problems that exist that require strong policy to be put in place. Strong intelligence on how you, you know, identify these and then you know how you put together the story for defenses along the way. So again, it's just, it's a really interesting aspect. And this is such an interesting time for how it's playing out. And again, like, you know places see this over the course of, you know, if it's a Super Bowl or something, you're talking about like one event. The interesting thing about the World Cup is that this is, you know, a month or so long and you've got buyers from all you got customers from all over the globe. It's spanning three different countries. And so it's just a really unique experience as it's related to this, but it is creating a lot of vectors that can be exploited. Or, you know, be open to fraudulent scenarios. Or you know, abusive scenarios.
Karisses Hendrick
18:39
Right. And a lot of times when these, you know, volatility events occur, there's not a lot of warrant. You don't get a heads up, right? That kind of defeats the purpose. And so that's why it's so important. I just wanna highlight what you were saying. That's why it's so important to have good strong policies in place. And to have that intelligence already coming in. And to, you know, have the identity piece really zoomed in as well. All of those pieces together. Because it's just gonna happen real quick. And you're gonna get, you know, your senior leadership team going, wait, wait, wait, we're in the headlines. You know, there's bunch of Twitter or X or whatever they are, threads about us. Like and it, when you were talking about just brand trust and how quickly it can be eroded, it reminded me of a phrase I remember somebody in trust and safety sharing with me once. That trust is earned in drops but lost in buckets. And that's super true when it comes to marketplaces. I think because a lot of times the marketplace itself, the company itself isn't the one fulfilling the items most of the time. So you have to have a lot of trust that the person who is the seller on that platform actually has the merchandise that they say they have. And that they're going to give it to you. You have to trust in that marketplace brand in order to do that. And you have, if that is gone or if you start to see people playing games and they're allowed to, you know, they're allowed to postpone fulfillment until after the USA game to see how it, you know, it shakes out. Or they're allowed to do, you know, things like that. Then that's what's gonna happen. You know. It, the brand trust goes away. And when brand trust goes away, then your val like the company profits go away.
Mark Porteus
20:36
Yeah, and you know, as you talked about, you're right. The volatility events can happen at any time. And they are relatively some of them can, some of them can come out of nowhere. Some of them are a little bit more predictable, right? Like this run so far, again take take the World Cup or you know, March Madness. Some of these events that can happen over a longer period of time, you can kind of anticipate when some of these will happen and you know what to do about those. Again like this World Cup is a little bit interesting because everything has just been so high priced with it. And it's breaking all sorts of records on different things. And it's one of those aspects of, as I mentioned, you need to have good policy in place. And good you know, on both sides on what's going to happen, if a seller can't fulfill. You know, related to the seller. What's gonna happen for a buyer if a seller can't fulfill. And it's usually a question of do you give a refund or do you source it? Marketplaces usually will, you know, have an aspect where they might be able to source other items. And that's kind of that's clearly what you know these buyers related to these ticket things, that's what they're looking for, right? Like I purchased 100 level tickets to the Seattle, you know, the match in Seattle, and that's what I expect. And so if the seller can't fulfill, I expect somebody to, you know, be able to source me one hundred level tickets. But if the price goes up then the business starts finding themselves in a situation where they're going to start making decisions on it. And what I've found in my time is it's important for us as, you know, on the side that we sit on as the merchants to have good playbooks in place for it. Because again, you can't predict every one of them. But you can put into place a playbook that will help guide along the way of what to do. As well as like, this has happened. Here's how we identify it, here's who we notify. Here's how we present the, you know, who's going to be making the decisions along the way at certain, whether it's dollar thresholds. Or whether it's volume thresholds. Or how viral something's gone. Whatever the case might be. Making sure to have understandings of here's who's getting involved along the way, and here's how we come up with decisions to make, and how we're going to treat those. And then again with these playbooks, you can start working that in with different leadership levels of what are going to be the decisions made on what we're gonna do, how we're gonna treat customers along the way. You know, not treat customers, it's not the word I'm looking for here, how we're going to handle customer complaints along the way or customer issues, right? It could be totally different things along the way. And so it's it is very smart. And kind of what the way I always approached it was: let's build these playbooks along for scenarios that can be dropped into most situations with slight tweaks along the way. That makes it so much easier than like, oh my gosh! This is happening! The sky's falling! You know, that the the thing scene from the office where everyone's running around, you know, and like trying to find the problem. Like so it, you know, it just makes it so that you can have a playbook in place, a quarterback driving it, a coach making decisions, like it just helps organize along the way and turn these really volatile situations into something that can be controlled, controlled better.
Karisses Hendrick
23:57
Right. And you, you mentioned a little bit around buyer chargebacks. But another part of, you know, market volatility is that, you know, there's gonna be more fraud as well on the buyer side if those, the demand and the price for those tickets go up. Right. So you've also got you know people trying to, use steal you know, use stolen credit cards to purchase. Because I don't want to pay for those three thousand dollar tickets. But I'll steal somebody else's credit card and use it to buy them. You know. Or the, or they're so they can file chargebacks for different reasons, right? There's strictly fraud, there's also the friendly fraud reasons, or first party fraud reasons that you mentioned before. Where, you know, hey, I bought the tickets for thirty five hundred and now they're two grand, I'm not paying that difference. I'm just gonna, you know, call my bank, say I didn't do it, and then repurchase. Yeah, so there's a lot of things we talked a little bit about the seller impacts, but I wanted to dive in a little bit on the buyer impacts as well when it comes to fraud.
Mark Porteus
25:01
Yeah, with these you know, with these volatility events, whether it's tickets or it's products, you know, whatever the the item might be, right, like you know, in the sneaker space, maybe somebody wears a pair of shoes at halftime of the Super Bowl that no one's before and then bang, like they're they're off charts, right? So like in these volatility events that can happen out of nowhere. Really what you want to make sure you have is a strong process in place if you're using a fraud vendor to, you know, review your purchases. Make sure you really understand with them the, you know, strategy around your approval rates. And both like what is your expected, but then what can happen and you know understanding and digging in with them the aspects of the behavior and how you want them to to perform. And making sure that, you know, you or your teams are mindful and staying with your vendors closely to dive in or like fine-tune that strategy. Looking at examples where there was a false decline. And you know, talking to the vendor about why that should have been allowed. Vice versa, working with them on the aspects of you know, things that were approved but then came in as chargebacks. And you know working together on understanding those things so that the tuning can can be done. And then also working with them on when things start going unexpected. And you know, volume is way up or price is way up. Most of them will start having alerts that will start showing up. Understand what is the course of action when alerts start going off for them. As well as like, you know, if you as a merchant should have very similar reporting to understand if things start going outside of the norm. If you think like, you know, here's a high bar of what order volume or order volume looks like, here's a low bar, most of the transactions are going to be happening somewhere in here. Do you have intelligence and reporting that will show when something starts going right here. Or something falls off right here? And working in with your partners along the way. Or your own teams, if this is all internally built. Which is very common as well, is working through with the teams to fine-tune what is expected there. And make sure that there's good alerting in place to identify that. So that you can understand like is is this collusion? Is something going the charts? Or, you know, or in the wrong direction because it's total market manipulation? Or did something just happen that is creating real demand or a real sell-off? And that's just normal market mechanics happening in the wild. And, you know, need to be allowed to allowed to perform. And it's again those are things like, I tell anybody that talks to me about like, hey, what did you do with your approval rate strategy? How do you, you know, go about it? It's just don't leave it on autopilot. Make sure to be very involved with the strategy on that. And understanding how, if you're using a partner, they are approaching it and how they are seeing it for your business. And if you're doing it yourself or with you know, a data analytics team, making sure that again it's not on autopilot, you understand what's happening there. So that you can really help impact and tune the strategy along the way.
Karisses Hendrick
28:27
Well, and the type of vendor that you use is gonna impact your authorizations as well, right? Like whether that vendor has, is on the hook for the chargeback or not, for example. If all of a sudden your AOV skyrockets. You know, still using this, you know, FIFA example. If all of a sudden, you know, typically your tickets go for, you know, maybe around a thousand dollars for two or something like that. And all of a sudden now it's three grand. If you have a, you know, a provider that takes on the chargeback risk, they might be inclined to think that those are really risky. Because those are going to look at first like outliers to them. And they're not going to want to approve them. But if you have one of the build your own, so to speak. Or the fraud vendors that don't take on the chargeback liability, they might be a little more lax about that. Because it's not on their end. But you want to be, you know, aware of those things and you want to be a little more vigilant when there's higher dollar or higher risk. So it's that consistent balance of, I hear you saying this too but just highlighting. It's that consistent balance of managing your your approval rate with all the also making sure that the risky transactions, you know, that are that where identity isn't, you know, able to be verified, where you know, cards are stolen, that those are getting declined.
Mark Porteus
29:53
Yeah, it's and that's kind of the point I'm making on. Be involved in your strategy and understand, you know, working with a vendor. What's what's their strategy? How are they going upon it? Because you're right, conventional you know, thought is if you're using a vendor that is ensuring chargebacks, when there's high purchases or high volume, they're going to be more inclined to start declining soon. And there's certainly examples of that that are that are out there. But if you work with your vendor on like understanding that strategy, you can really help put in place aspects to not start the auto declining so fast. If there's ways to be in touch about, you know, what's happening. And allowing a little bit of a runway. Again, it and this requires two way street. It requires the vendor to have faith in you as the, you know, person running the strategy on the merchant end. And it requires you to have trust in your vendor that they're, you know, going to know that you will be responsive and you are, you know, looking out for their interests as well to ensure that things don't just get out of control for the sake of bringing in bringing in more revenue. But you know what you'll see with those is you know if things start getting declined faster, it's because there's skin in the game for them as well. But that helps kind of keep you from not going, you know, into one of the programs as fast. This is like, you know, again, the conventional thought on say uninsured would be like, hey, you're gonna have more volume in there. And you know, that some of these higher value orders might be getting through easier because there's not the exposure there for the vendor. But then maybe if these are fraudulent and this is not a legitimate case, more start getting through faster. It's not as, you know, critical to start bringing that in because the skin in the game's not there. And then maybe you find yourself in the program. So again, like those are two different schools of thoughts. I've I've seen them both. I've been on them both. I've got thoughts on those. But really it's, I don't see as, you know I look at it from the perspective of everybody has to assess what their business is. And what, you know, what they've got that they're bringing to the market. And then understanding which of those works for them. And then again, working with the company or the vendor to understand their strategy as well as yours. And which ones line up better with yours and who you can create a better working relationship with. Who you have more trust with. Again, it similar to what we were talking about with the marketplace aspects is. It's about brand trust and company trust. Who do you believe can can deliver on what your strategy is. And not just here's how we treat fraud prevention and we will bucket you in with everybody else and you'll be just, you know, a peg or a spoke in the wheel. It's make sure, that you fit in with them. And can create that that trust and accountability to be there when things are going well. And then when things start getting a little shaky, understanding that problems always happen. This is, this is why we're in this space. And it's always there, is that it will be there. But understanding that when things start going awry, it's you know, you can work through to to get to you know good outcomes on the other side.
Karisses Hendrick
33:19
Right, right. And I think that one thing that you said there, you know, as far as building that trust with your vendor is communication, right? Like as soon as you know, like another example came to me with when Kobe Bryant passed away, right? Like all of a sudden all of his merchandise, you know went up in value very quickly on the secondary market. I remember we were out to brunch with friends when we got the news. And one of my friends kind of dabbled in reselling on a couple different marketplaces. And she was like quick I need to buy you know some Kobe you know shoes. So I can, you know, for cheap now. Because the stores haven't figured it out yet. And then sell it on you know. So there's so many different examples of that. But you know, picking up the phone and calling your vendor. And saying, hey, this is probably what's gonna happen in the next 24 hours. We're gonna see a lot more volume. We're gonna see higher dollars than we're used to. You know, just be aware that you can expect that. And let's, you know, we've got this playbook. We've talked this through before, we've talked through this instance before. Here's, you know, how we, here's what we're gonna do. And you have your internal playbook and then you have your external playbook too with your vendors. And you know, making sure that they're aware of your business model. And to your point that you're not just being, you know, put into a cookie cutter. Because marketplaces especially are so unique for so many reasons. You know, you mentioned at the top of the episode there's one sided marketplace, there's two sided market. Well, one sided marketplace, I guess would be traditional e-commerce, but two-sided marketplaces, there's three-sided marketplaces.
Karisse Hendrick
34:58
There's you know all these different ones and they have so many different players and just different different flavors of issues, right? Different different types of ways to abuse policies. Different types of ways to steal from the company in different ways. So having your vendor, and your company understand, hey, we're a two-side marketplace. But we fulfill our own products. We have less risk than if we, if our sellers fulfilled their product, for example, right? The traditionally marketplaces that fulfill their own, or traditionally marketplaces that have their sellers fulfill the goods. You know, or like food delivery with restaurants, right? Like you're counting on that restaurant to make that meal and have it ready for a delivery driver to pick that up. And take it to the the buyer. You've got three different players and none of them actually work for the marketplace. So, you know, you need to verif that's where identity comes into play. That's where looking at, you know, their past behavior to understand, you know, what their future behavior is gonna be. Do they have a history of, you know, 2,000 orders fulfilled? And, you know, the buyers have been fine with everything they've shipped? Or is this a brand new seller that's claiming to have something really rare? That might be a little bit more suspicious.
Mark Porteus
36:21
Absolutely. And you know, you you called out one of the examples of a volatility event that I know well. And you know, they're they happen, right? As I mentioned, they they happen. It's all about just making sure that you've got the playbook in place. And again, they're not they're not unique to marketplaces, right? Like, you know, think about somewhere around 2019, 2020, you know, e-commerce places suddenly like I, you know, you might have seen toilet paper and paper towels, masks, and like all like all the stuff that was just being emptied from the shelves. Like, you know, you it's all any one of the big box retailers, right? All they're all empty now. And so then everybody's running online and you might be sitting there and your reporting shows like, how did we just get a few thousand orders of masks or again toilet paper? Like that was that was one of the first things I remember walking along the stores being completely cleared out. so unexpected events, they happen to e-commerce, they happen to marketplaces, they're not you know, they're not unique to just one area. And so it's important that's why it's important to do the playbooks, right? And to and to make sure that you've got these you know, these really detailed and important aspects of understanding what are you gonna do in these scenarios to ensure that you know they're not just my gosh, we have no idea what to do here. Again, they might be slightly different in each case. But you set in place these playbooks, these policies, these things that can be used as guides to help make decisions fast. Because if there's one thing that volatility events show is that you do need to be in a position to make decisions quick. And so that's why it's important to have these in place so that you can be guided to make good decisions. And so that you you know you make these playbooks in you know, I'll call them peacetime, where you know it something's not happening right now so that in wartime when things are going very fast you're not making decisions out of emotion and just with like whatever cut hits your brain first. You've actually thought about some of these scenarios and have something to help guide along the way.
Karisses Hendrick
38:33
Yeah, you know, going back to your, you know, 2020 example just really quickly with toilet paper, I think there's a difference there when it comes from an e-commerce site or a retailer. And that is that the price can't go up. Because then there's things like price gouging laws and things like that, right? But on secondary markets, there's really no, it's fair game, right? So if somebody was selling toilet paper on eBay, for example, they could mark that up for as much as they possibly wanted to. Or, you know, Facebook Marketplace or whatever wherever they were selling it. And so traditional e-commerce companies don't yes, they have supply and demand, and yes, sometimes demand goes up, but they don't have the same issues as marketplaces do with volatility because the pricing doesn't change, right?
Mark Porteus
39:26
The volume might, right?
Karisses Hendrick
39:28
The volume will, for sure.
Mark Porteus
39:30
If you're thinking about it from a perspective like, you know, as we know, fraud prevention and fraud alerting isn't one sided on like just price, right?
Karisses Hendrick
39:39
Right. A hundred percent.
Mark Porteus
39:40
And so if you know you're sitting there one day and suddenly, you know, if this is the normal aspect of paper towels that get sold on your online, you know, place. And then suddenly in the last hour your traditional thought process would be like something is happening that's wrong, right? Someone is just clearing us out of this, and that's, and there'd be a lot of people who might rush to like think, it's a fraud ring, shut it down. But that's where trying where it requires the need on understanding of again working with either internal tooling if that's what you're using, or your vendor if that's what you're using. Is this expected? And what are the signs that are there? Are there true signs to show that this is unexpected activity? Or is this if all of it looks legitimate. Again, maybe there is a response that's happening to you know a situation that you want to allow to have happen. But again, in the in the end, it's also related to the policy, right? Like, you know, maybe it's, maybe there is a volatility event that's happening. But it's one person with a bot that's grabbing all of what you have. Is that what you would want to happen? Probably not. It's all it's all about like balancing out policy with playbooks. And making sure that, you know, you work these scenarios and these potential events. And you know simulations to understand what can happen. And what would you like to have happen in these situations. So yeah, it's tough like thinking through these. But again they happen. And so my feedback has always been to prepare the best that you can to be able to be in a position to make smart decisions as they come. But then be flexible to you know adjust to whatever is happening. But to be guided smartly by what you've seen in the past.
Karisses Hendrick
41:34
Right. I think that's where experience comes into play. Because there's, I I've worked with merchants in the past that haven't had somebody that knows fraud and has been in fraud for, you know, other companies or for a long time and talked to their peers and, you know, that type of thing. And if you have someone new overseeing fraud. Or you have a VP of ops or something like that who's kind of overseeing it. They don't have the foresight to know, oh okay, if this happens, this is what's gonna happen. Like understanding cause and effect. Understanding that, okay, if there's a giant pandemic again, we're gonna see we need to stock up on toilet paper. And we need to understand that people might be buying, you know, 10 cases, whereas we used to just see, you know, one one package per person. You know.
Mark Porteus
42:25
Limit two per customer.
Karisses Hendrick
42:26
Yes, exactly. Then you start putting in your policies of two per customer. But then, you know, the other the other thing that I've seen and that makes me laugh, I can think of the exact merchant it was, but there are merchants that offer really good you know, they, their marketing department decides, hey, we're gonna say if somebody buys this video game, they get a $20 gift card for a future purchase, right? That's gonna totally impact, it's gonna change good customer behavior. But it's also gonna change bad customer behavior. And those of us who have been in this industry long enough and seen that time and time again. Or talked with our peers and heard about it enough, we are able to tell, you know, leadership when marketing comes and goes, hey, we've got this great idea. Or, you know, something that they can that you can actually in you can influence before it happens. It's maybe not in the market, It's internally. Because sometimes you can create it, you know, yourself. But you know, to be able to say, hey, just a heads up. If you do that, here's what's gonna happen, right? We're gonna see a lot of buyer fraud. We're gonna see a lot of stolen credit cards to get those gift cards. To then combine them all and sell them off. Or you know, hey, we're gonna see, you know, going back to the World Cup example, if USA wins their first game, we're probably going to see the second game tickets go up quite significantly. And here's what's going to happen. And be able to advise leadership. Now, leadership isn't always going to want to hear it. Just from my own personal experience. But it's important that you know those of us that have been around a while, do issue words of caution. And be able to control what you can control.
Mark Porteus
45:15
Yeah, and that's a, that's a good point. And I think you know, my advice there, my thoughts on that would be, try to be, you know, merchants or people that work on the side that we do, to try to be most of the time a guide and not a roadblock. And really understanding the, you know, think through the larger aspect of say one of those examples, right? What is, what is the goal of the company or of the of leadership at that time? And what can you do, or we do, as people that sit in this chair to help get there? Right? How can we, like, instead of that's a bad promo, or a bad release. The here's how it's gonna hit us. It's more like, all right, cool.
Karisses Hendrick
45:02
Mm, mm.
Mark Porteus
45:03
Here's some of the things we're gonna tweak on our side just to make sure we can maximize that. Because it's, whether it's marketing or growth or you know biz dev, no one's out there trying to lose the money. They just might not know of some of the things of they could be getting that we could, you know, you could get hit by. And so it's a standpoint, advise on some of these areas and then tune where you can be with again the goal at your business is to make money. And to be, try to be profitable and, you know, make sure you're serving your customers the best way. And so again in those scenarios you definitely have to protect them, but my advice is always in this do it in the spirit of collaboration and advisement. And then you know, pick your battles. Because there's going to be a time where you're gonna be like, that is a terrible idea.
Karisses Hendrick
45:56
Yeah.
Mark Porteus
45:57
And here is why. And it is so important to show that. And to really make that case. But to pick those scenarios like, don't be an alarmist. Don't say that's a terrible idea every single time. The decisions just don’t come to you, the thoughts don’t just come to. The thoughts don’t come your way, the information doesn’t come your way. And you find out one thing has launched, and you are dealing with the aftermath. And so I always try to advise people to think about it in the spirit of collaboration there with whether it's your growth team, your marketing team, your biz dev team. Whatever the case is, you know, that you're working with. Try to do it in the spirit of collaboration. And understanding that you're trying, you're both trying to achieve the same goal. Like you want healthy growth. And that's always the way to put like here's how I can help drive healthy growth. And minimize that which is gonna be a drag to whatever promo it is that that's happening. And so that is always the recommendation I make is partner with those teams coming at it with a point of, you know, believing in positive intent. Because it's usually what there is there's positive intent there. You might just have to help tweak things just a little bit to make sure that positive intent turns into positive results.
Karisses Hendrick
47:16
Very well said. And I'm glad that you said that. Because that is true. We need to balance it. I learned early on in my career that if you say no to everything, to your point, you stop getting invited to meetings. And you find out about the promos at the same time as the customers. That really kicks me in the butt when my CMO decided to put the entire website 40% off on the day of Thanksgiving. And I didn't find out about it until the email went out to customers. And I mean, this was 20 almost 20 years ago, so we didn't have the technology that we have now. I was manually pushing orders through all day on Thanksgiving. And not spending time with my family. And I was like, okay, maybe I should try to change my approach. And, you know, at the next role I was in, I tried to say, okay, you know, I understand that. And that makes sense. You know, we need to build revenue, et cetera. But at, you know, here's what I anticipate happening. And here's what we're gonna do to try to mitigate those risks. While also making sure that they understand that your main goal is healthy growth, as you said. Not just growth, but the healthy kind. Because, you know, I used to remind my teams when I worked on the frontlines that the fraudsters don't pay your paychecks. The good customers do. So and the good customers pay your bonuses too. So you know, that's it's important to balance those. And to make sure that those other teams understand that that's your priority. But, I do think there's something to be said for saying, hey, here's what I anticipate happening if you do that. And without saying no. Just here's what I think is gonna happen, here's what we can do on our end. Or hey, could we change that promo up a little bit. And limit it one to a customer. Or can we, you know, do this or that or whatever. Is it is there room for tweaking it a little bit? Because I do think that you earn credibility when what you say is gonna happen, happens.
Mark Porteus
49:17
Absolutely. And you know, one of the things that I've found is, you know, it's it's best to try to create, you know, I called it the trust center of excellence. And basically you you were you get together in your company with a set of leaders in areas that would affect trust. And make sure that you're all in lockstep along the way and understanding what's going on. Whether it's you know, fraud, info sec, asset protection, product, engineering, customer support, account management. If that's what you've got. Or you know, whether it's your growth team. Whatever, you know, and some, you know, your marketing side.
Karisses Hendrick
49:52
Finance, yeah.
Mark Porteus
49:54
Those aspects like they're all so they're so much more intertwined than a lot of people understand. And you know things that impact one side send the shock waves in and impact everybody else. But when you're on the same page, things are so much easier when you're running promotions, volatility events or customer issues, right? Like you get those, you know, a leader from each one of those all together to have, you know, however regular sinks make sense and understanding what, you know, what are some of the things that are happening. And making sure that you can, you know, from there it also helps you influence roadmaps. And understand what are the priorities that you want coming up. Whether it's on your quarterly readiness planning or what's coming up with your engineering teams. You know, as you as you work through those, that's just such an important aspect. And when you're all working together collaboratively on that, then you get to influence a little bit more. If you're doing it right, then you, you know, your input is heard. And you also know what's going on. Maybe you don't need your input heard every time. Or you know what's happening. And you can adjust and make sure that things are in place so that you've got a promotion that's about to run targeting, say, Mexico. All right, cool. Now I can work with my vendor to talk about the strategy we should have for Mexico. Because there's gonna be a pop that is happening on traffic there. And don't see it as risky. Or whether it's Canada, whatever.
Karisses Hendrick
51:21
As a fraud ring, yeah.
Mark Porteus
51:23
Now you've, you've talked with and planned for. Because you know what's happening. And so those are you know just tricks that I've used over the time that have really helped positively influence areas that can really, at times, if you're not prepared be a drag on on the business. Which no one wants.
Karisses Hendrick
51:42
Right. Right. That's a good point. And you're right, no one wants that. You have to assume good intent on their side. I think sometimes when fraud leaders are venting, it's clear that they aren't assuming best intentions from other departments. They're like, marketing's trying to sabotage us. I'm like, Well, do you really think they want fraud or they want? They're focused on their metrics and their metrics are getting people through the door. And that's all they're thinkin g about. They're not thinking about, you know, are we gonna keep that money in ninety days? They don't, that's not their metric.
Mark Porteus
52:15
It's easy for us to get really cynical. I mean like I'm an above average cynical guy. But like it's easy for us to like get like that or get jaded. Because, you know, we we work with like, or give the term, we work with the shittiest of the shit most of the time. But like it’s, and when you, and when you sit there and you work with it all the time, every time, again. It's easy to get jaded because you see it like that.
Karisses Hendrick
52:41
See it all the time. Yep.
Mark Porteus
52:42
Like when you sit there and all you work with is people who don't have positive intent, it's really easy to think that no one has positive intent.
Karisses Hendrick
52:48
That's a good point.
Mark Porteus
52:50
And that's why it's so important to like, separate out what you do as your part of the business. Versus what the business is doing with you in it. And like that is just a very critical thing to separate out. And and be like it's up to us to be that that balance on understanding those. Because like, if you can make it work for you, it's very good. Because it also services like working in the shittiest of the shit you get all the good stories. And storytelling is such a big part of roadmap development and driving,
Karisses Hendrick
53:32
Policy work too.
Mark Porteus
53:33
releases and policy up exactly. Like you can come back with here are the examples. Here's the story on it. Here's how it impacted our customers and our real life users. And that is what helps, again, get policies adopted, get them built out, get the roadmap influence. That plus the data side, is to, here's the story. And here's how much is happening. You can't just be a good storyteller, with one off. Because then everybody thinks it's a one off. You have to have a good story and then be able to say, and that's one example. It happened seventy five other times, and here's the examples of like here's the numbers on it, here's how much it impacted us.
Karisses Hendrick
54:09
Right, you have to quantify your stories. Yeah, that was another mistake I made early on in my career was, you know, taking the craziest outlandish story and sharing it. And not intentionally, but making it seem like every kind of fraud was like that. And it's like, no. So you have to back it up with forty percent of the time it's this. And ten percent of the time it's that. Just because it's a good story, you have, you have to back it up with data. Or else it's just a story, right? It's just, and then your credibility gets shot when they're like, well, yeah, tell all these stories, but like I don't know how often that happens. Those are probably just one offs.
Mark Porteus
54:45
Yeah. Yep. It can either seem like it's a one off, if you don't explain and show how much it's happening. Or again,
Karisses Hendrick
54:51
Or it can seem like all of them.
Mark Porteus
54:53
You're a good storyteller. And that happened once and then like, hey, thanks for letting us know. We'll think about that, and we'll get to it eventually. And you know, maybe, maybe it's on the roadmap, but it's backlogged. And so it's about making sure that you can tell the story and have the data to back up the amount that's happening so that you can influence the way you need to and the way you can help
Karisses Hendrick
55:17
The resources you need.
Mark Porteus
55:18
keep the business moving. But again it's a balance. You also can't, you know, if you're sitting there working on the roadmap with your product people. And you're looking at what's the stack ranking, it's important to try to be not like as, you know, non-biased and thinking about the business as much as possible. So if you're like, yeah, this only happened a couple of times. We don't need to move it to the top of the list compared to these things which are like mission critical. But again, then knowing when to use that and play that card of like this is a big problem. And we really need that up here.
Karisses Hendrick
55:52
Right, right, yeah.
Mark Porteus
55:54
It's a bit of a, you call it political maneuvering, if you will. And that exists in every company and you have to know when to use your capital and when to save it. And that is that's a tough thing to get on. But I would kind of advise everybody that's listening on this to think of it from a standpoint of try to look at it with, not an unbiased mind. Because like that's really hard for us to do, but really think about it from a standpoint of where do we need this to be? What is the impact on it? And then quantify it. Don't treat it as like, well, I think. Show it as here is how much it's impacting, and here's the value of it compared to that initiative. Because then you can say, this initiative drives better impact than that initiative. And when you're speaking apples to apples on the product side, that's how you get items moving forward on the roadmap.
Karisses Hendrick
56:47
Hm. Very sage advice. And I, I know that from experience as well. Choosing your battles and I think it's also about building your own brand trust in a way. You know, we talked about the importance of brand trust for marketplaces, but it's really important to build your own trust. And be strategic in where you say, okay, I can I can, you know, we can deal with this the way it is. Like this doesn't have as big of an impact or this, you know, I understand reprioritizing the roadmap. And that, you know, this is gonna have to wait. However, like this is the thing that we really need to focus on because of, you know, where things are headed. Or what's, you know, impacting us now. And that type of thing. So very sage advice. I'm glad that we took a little bit of a a turn or a slight right in the conversation to talk about that. Because it is so important and I think that we as fraud professionals, you're right, we look at the shit all day. And we we, when you are looking at everyone that has bad intentions and, you know, looking at every transaction that has bad intentions and talking about that all day, you kind of start to assume that everyone has bad intentions internally as well.
Mark Porteus
57:59
Yep. Yep. It's an easy pitfall to fall into. It's important that we that we do our best to stay out of that.
Karisses Hendrick
58:05
I agree. It and it really is, it's an important lesson for all of us to learn, I think. I think that's gonna be helpful for our industry in the future. And I've seen it happen already where, you know, we've got new startups coming up and they're actually starting to have trust and safety departments before they, you know, the chargebacks roll in. Whereas it used to be, and you know, I my story is similar to yours as well. You know, fraud department isn't created until chargebacks are in. And the company's losing money. So you know, companies are starting to say, yeah, this is important. We need this. But it does, it is good to have balance in everything that you do, right? Just like you need to balance your approvals and your declines. You need to balance your, you need to be intentional and balance your interpersonal relationships internally as well.
Mark Porteus
58:59
Absolutely.
Karisses Hendrick
59:00
So one last question. You've recently left your position at StockX. What are you doing now and what are you thinking about for the future?
Mark Porteus
59:07
Yeah, it's it's great question. So yeah, I I left my last day at StockX was about a month ago now. And since then I have been doing a lot of recharging right at the beginning. I as I mentioned I went out to Los Angeles for a week with my wife to catch the US game against Paraguay. That was awesome. Like that was, that was a tremendous way to both recharge and then go absolutely nuts during the match.
Karisses Hendrick
59:33
I bet.
Mark Porteus
59:34
You know, hitting hitting both sides of that. And then after that I I you know, I came back and I, you know, didn't focus much on LinkedIn or what I was thinking next right away. I wanna like, I've been going to northern Michigan a lot with my daughters and my wife. And like spending time on the lake. And actually enjoying summer. I haven't really been unemployed since I was like 17. Cause like you know, there was college and then in the summertime I was, I did an internship every summer. And then after I graduated, I was hired right into my career at the time. And I worked in hotel operations for a long time. And as soon as I left that I went straight into StockX like I moved across the country and went straight into StockX. Like a week and a half later. And so in my entire career I've, you know, I've I haven't had a time where I've been in between jobs. I worked for StockX for nine years and before that I was with Ritz Carlton and Marriott, the same company for you know, the time before that all straight through. And so I haven't taken a break. And so I am spending this, the beginning of this time, I've just been you know recharging spending time with the family and it was it was really hard to like get in the mindset of that because I'm always just like what's next? What am I doing? And the nice thing is is like it's not you don't go with it like, I'm either paying attention to what I'm doing next. Or I'm not and nothing is happening, you know. While I was in Los Angeles and then while I was up at the lake. Like, you know, people that are in my network were sending people my direction. Like, you know, because people talk in in our industry. Like everybody that's listening to this, I think, knows that our industry is both wide and small. Like it's you know, there's this every a lot of people know a lot of people. And it's small, our industry. And you know, if you can get a good reputation built and you can get a good network built, people will be working, you know, at times for you. And so there were a lot of people that were reaching out to me, like, hey, I talked to this person, or I talked to this person, I talked to this person. They said that we should we should get in touch. Like there might be something coming up for, you know, later in the summer. Let's just have an intro meeting. And then, you know, you'll have recruiters that somebody might send your way because that's one of the things that I found is like I really appreciate my network and the people that I've come to meet, and I appreciate the people that have spoken on my behalf. Like it means the world to me that people are saying, hey, you should talk to Porteus, and here's why. And so, you know, I I absolutely appreciate it. And for those of you in this situation, like if you're thinking about making a change, like, I want to start thinking about what's next, it's it's terrifying. It absolutely is. But again, it's not just I'm either looking for my next role and it's happening, or if I'm not, nothing is happening. There is an aspect that can be you can be unplugging for a little bit and find it totally fulfilling and recharging. And that's that's really important because again, taking a taking a little bit of a pause in what we do is really important because as I mentioned, we we deal with the shittiest of the shit
Karisses Hendrick
62:43
Me too.
Mark Porteus
62:44
And it can it can be totally draining. And you know,
Karisses Hendrick
62:47
And it can be more than forty hours a week very easily.
Mark Porteus
62:50
A hundred percent. Absolutely. You know, when a when a fraud ring starts busting through at like 3 am Eastern time, you know, and it's it's blowing up all your you know, you're reporting. Your not just sleeping through that. It can be draining. So it is important to take a little time. Which I've been doing. And again, like I just had never done that before. So it's a little bit I mean, I'll be I'll be honest and saying like at times it's it's terrifying. I'm like, am I doing enough? Am I not? But you know, last week I started getting more involved with it. You know, I I don't know when this is gonna air, but right now it's a couple of days before the fourth. And so after this, I'm going right back to the lake and gonna, you know, enjoy the the holiday. But when I get back next week again, I'm getting back to it pretty aggressively at that point. But by now it's I've been able to take, you know, weeks to, you know, I've got a two and a four year old, girls. And like I have so much fun with them. And like, that doesn't always happen if you get caught like some fraud ring hits on the weekend. And like, you're working on the weekend. And and so things that I've missed along the way that this has been really awesome to just get some time with the family. And so it's, it is important to have that aspect of like recharge when you need to. And I mean this also, of like those that you're not unemployed, but you're think like, my gosh, I can never take a vacation. We're so busy. Like, take a vacation, you know, it it's it's so necessary. Like recharge when you can because what we do is really draining. What we see all day is really draining. Like we just got done talking about that aspect of like e-commerce. That doesn't even include like as you get into trust and safety and content moderation.
Karisses Hendrick
64:24
Right.
Mark Porteus
64:25
And like what you see and hear and stuff like that all day. Like our whole ecosystem is very draining. And so take time to recharge when when you can. And that's what I've been doing. So like that's that's like I don't know what I've been doing. What am I looking for next? Open to it. I've been taking meetings and working through kind of what I want to do next. And I'm still working through like, hey, do I want to stay with what I've been doing? Do I want to go this route? Do I want to go that route? I'm kind of working through all of that right now. And like I said I've been taking a lot of meetings with a lot of different types of companies to see what's the best fit. But more and more than anything, I'm looking at it from a standpoint of what is the company fit. And what's the role fit. And making sure that it it meets with what to, what I want to do and what I think is something, not just what can I do. What what do I want to do and what can I bring. It's also you know how can I improve with the direction of the company. Because I I don't want to just go somewhere and none of us should be doing this like just go somewhere to be another spoke in the wheel. You should go somewhere where you can really have an impact and bring something to the table. And so that's that's kind of how I'm I'm approaching it.
Karisses Hendrick
65:39
Yeah, no, I think I think that's great. I I think that's great. And I will include a link to your LinkedIn in the show notes for this episode. So if anyone wants to get in touch with you. Have one, book one of those meetings, I will make sure that that happens. So they can reach out to you on LinkedIn. Mark, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it and I'm glad that we made it happen.
Mark Porteus
66:03
I'm so happy to have been on. Thanks for inviting me. I appreciate your patience all this time waiting for me to be able to join on. Additionally, by the time this airs, I'm hoping that we'll be you know, it'll have resulted in a US win. So you know, go USA tonight. And hopefully they make it happen. But thanks again for having me, really appreciate it.
Karisses Hendrick
66:23
Awesome. Absolutely. Thanks for coming. All right. I will talk to everyone else next week.
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