Philip Shoemaker, founder and CEO of new identity rights and deepfake detection platform PersonaShield, is as excited about his first customer as any entrepreneur can be. That’s not just because the deal validated his new venture, but also because the customer is someone he, “an old skater,” has personally been a huge fan of for decades: global skateboarding sensation Bob Burnquist. The craziest part about it? The deal started with a “like” on LinkedIn.
One day while scrolling, Shoemaker happened upon a post from a friend of his, and he saw Burnquist had “liked” it. He reached out to the friend asking, is that really THE Bob Burnquist? It was, and it turned out that the friend and Burnquist were real-life close friends. Luckily for Shoemaker, the friend was willing to make an introduction.
“Bob wanted to meet me because of my background at Apple, and I started advising one of his companies, and he started advising us on features for [PersonaShield]. So it was kind of a you-scratch-my back-and-I'll-scratch-yours-type of scenario where we're both helping each other out, because we're entrepreneurs that are trying to make things happen,” Shoemaker said.
Philip Shoemaker, founder and CEO of PersonaShield
At that time, PersonaShield was still trying to figure out if it was purely a takedown company or would focus on image generation with safeguards.
During a conversation with Shoemaker, Burnquist expressed he was feeling really worried about deepfakes, specifically people using his face to falsely endorse products to manipulate his fans, especially his many Brazilian fans who are economically disadvantaged. But at the same time, he was stepping into a role heading up the new X Games League, and he was thinking it would be great if people could generate images of the competitors as a new form of fan engagement.
Hearing Burnquist’s nuanced thoughts about how he wants his likeness to be used made clear that unauthorized deepfakes and authorized usages are all part of the same problem — and would need to be part of the same solution.
Read the full story on how PersonaShield is trying to build her product here.
Top photo: Image generation sample for skateboarder Bob Burnquist. Credits: PersonaShield
