Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Blake Hall - Combat, Service, and Innovation - [Invest Like the Best, EP.408]
Tue, 28 Jan 2025
My guest today is Blake Hall. Blake is the co-founder and CEO of ID.me, a secure digital identity network with over 100 million members. He was an officer in the United States Army and served our country for four years as a a rifle platoon leader, the battalion reconnaissance platoon leader, and as the battalion logistics officer. We explore his formative years in the military and transition into entrepreneurship. Blake shares powerful stories from his time leading scout sniper missions in Iraq, including how his unit achieved a 90% success rate in high-stakes operations through relentless preparation and learning. He shares the origin and evolution of ID.me, a company dedicated to verifying digital identities to combat fraud and simplify login experiences. We also discuss the role of identity in the modern economy, frameworks for building company culture, and evaluation of executive talent. I am ridiculously inspired by Blake, and I am so grateful for him and all of the Americans who serve our country. Please enjoy this discussion with the brave and courageous Blake Hall. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Ramp. Ramp’s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Ramp is the fastest-growing FinTech company in history, and it’s backed by more of my favorite past guests (at least 16 of them!) than probably any other company I’m aware of. Go to Ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. – This episode is brought to you by Alphasense. AlphaSense has completely transformed the research process with cutting-edge AI technology and a vast collection of top-tier, reliable business content. Imagine completing your research five to ten times faster with search that delivers the most relevant results, helping you make high-conviction decisions with confidence. Invest Like the Best listeners can get a free trial now at Alpha-Sense.com/Invest and experience firsthand how AlphaSense and Tegus help you make smarter decisions faster. – This episode is brought to you by Ridgeline. Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. I think this platform will become the standard for investment managers, and if you run an investing firm, I highly recommend you find time to speak with them. Head to ridgelineapps.com to learn more about the platform. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Show Notes: (00:00:00) Learn about Ramp, Alphasense, and Ridgeline (00:07:48) First Combat Experiences (00:09:30) Leadership and Responsibility in Combat (00:13:28) Lessons in Leadership and Grit (00:18:32) The Importance of Credibility and Skill (00:22:05) A Defining Moment of Leadership (00:28:52) Transition to Civilian Life and Founding ID.me (00:50:27) Understanding Identity Through Time (00:51:08) Telecom Networks and Bad Actors (00:52:38) Moving Away from Passwords (00:54:13) The Trust Graph and Source of Truth (00:57:25) Digital Wallets and Government IDs (01:07:11) Challenges and Security in Digital Identity (01:21:36) Leadership and Company Culture (01:33:53) The Kindest Thing Anyone Has Ever Done for Blake
Chapter 1: What are Blake Hall's early experiences in combat?
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Chapter 2: How did leadership shape Blake's military career?
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This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. Invest Like the Best is part of the Colossus family of podcasts, and you can access all our podcasts, including edited transcripts, show notes, and other resources to keep learning at joincolossus.com.
Chapter 3: What lessons did Blake learn about credibility and skill?
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My guest today is Blake Hall. Blake is the co-founder and CEO of ID.me, a secure digital identity network with over 100 million members. He was an officer in the United States Army and served our country for four years as a rifle platoon leader, battalion reconnaissance platoon leader, and as a battalion logistics officer.
We explore his formative years in the military and transition into entrepreneurship. Blake shares powerful stories from his time leading scout sniper missions in Iraq, including how his unit achieved a 90% success rate in high-stakes operations through relentless preparation and learning.
He shares the origin and evolution of ID.me, a company dedicated to verifying digital identities to combat fraud and simplify login experiences. We discuss the role of identity in the modern economy, frameworks for building company culture, and evaluating executive talent. I am ridiculously inspired by Blake and I'm so grateful for him and all the Americans who serve this country.
Please enjoy this discussion with the awesome Blake Hall. Blake, I was wondering where to begin our conversation based on prior ones that we've had. And one place that is really interesting for me and I've always been fascinated by is your experience in the military and specifically the experiences you've had that have taught you lessons that you think would be pretty impossible to learn.
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Chapter 4: What was a defining moment of leadership for Blake?
had you not had the experiences you had in the armed forces. And so maybe you can tell us a little bit about a sketch of what you did. And then I want to spend some time on some of the formative stories that have shaped your worldview that maybe you wouldn't have been shaped that way had you not had those experiences.
Thanks, Patrick. I think you're always formed by your childhood first, and I grew up around amazing people in my life.
My grandfather was a war hero in World War II, fought and landed at Anzio as a 17-year-old Browning automatic rifleman, standing guard on the Rhine when Germany surrenders, won a Bronze Star with valor for crawling out in front of three German machine gun nests as he was splicing a line that allowed the forward observer to call in artillery that beat back a Nazi counterattack that was about to wipe out his battalion.
which today would probably be a different medal, but was a bronze star with Valor in World War II. And then my dad served for 30 years, West Point graduate, was brigade commander. And so I think the lens I grew up in was really about purpose and around service, like a full appreciation of America. that what we enjoy in this country is quite rare in terms of our freedom.
And those freedoms are supported by the bravery of young men and women who are willing to sacrifice everything at Omaha Beach and Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
And so for me, I didn't actually want to go into the military, but I felt I needed to in order to serve and learned a lot of lessons along the way that we can talk about, but really grateful for that upbringing because I think it gave me a context and appreciation for what we enjoy as far as our way of life that I might not have had if I'd grown up in a different way.
And what was the brief timeline of your personal experience in the armed forces? What did you do? Where were you? Paint the picture for us.
I went through ROTC at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. And in 2000, it was peacetime. It was just a way to pay for school. And then 9-11 happened. And overnight, I realized that when I graduated in 2004, I was going to go to war. And I figured if you're going to go to war, you might as well play with the varsity. So I resolved, I wanted to be an army ranger.
And my mom's from Queens. So growing up, my grandfather on my mom's side had driven me around the city and showed me the Twin Towers and the Chrysler building and everything as a kid. So it was super personal to me, as I'm sure it was to a lot of Americans. And I wanted to defend the country after we had been attacked in that way. I commissioned, I went
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Chapter 5: How did Blake transition from military to civilian life?
So I fought in Mosul, every neighborhood in Baghdad, Karbala, outskirts of Fallujah and Lake Tartar, so got the full tour. And our mission over there, right before we went into combat in Mosul, We had some three-letter agencies come in and say, hey, listen, forget everything that you guys have learned about reconnaissance and precision engagement.
You're just going to be running kill capture missions against senior Al-Qaeda leadership. And we're going to give you some equipment and some intelligence assets to help you do that. And the next like 15 months, that's all that we did was run down mostly Al-Qaeda vehicle bomb networks. I was 23 years old at the time. And so it was quite a lot of responsibility.
Can you describe maybe anecdote sounds like the wrong word, like a story within the story of that 15 months that pops most immediately to mind to zoom it in on a specific episode, just to understand what you were doing?
I think leadership starts with caring. I remember when I got to Mosul, and still to this day, I'm just terrified of letting my friends down. And so when you, I had 32 scouts and snipers. I'd met their wives and their parents and their kids. And if you make a wrong decision in combat, you could lose like a fourth of your platoon, just like bam, your suicide belt just gone.
And so the first thing I did actually is I got to Mosul and I went up on top of a hill and I got down on my knees before God. And I said, there's a verse from Isaiah that says, no weapon formed against me shall prosper. And so I claimed that promise for my men. And God was just amazing to us over the next 15 months. But the mission set, my first firefight was in a neighborhood called Tahrir.
And as we were going through, it's in northeast Mosul. It's, I think, the same mosque that was there where Baghdadi made himself the caliph of ISIS, of the Islamic State. And we had a high-value target in the neighborhood. And as I'm getting my guys out of the trucks, we're in these Strikers. They're a 2010 vehicle. They have eight wheels. They can do about 55 miles an hour.
So it's, I think, to a layman, it's almost like a lightweight tank with a .50 caliber machine gun on top. And it's got the sound signature F-150. It's pretty quiet. And as I'm getting out, the three-letter agency attachment is like, hey, sir, he's like, be careful. This commander's marked as extremely hostile and dangerous. And I was like, what? Al-Qaeda commander is not extremely hostile.
Like anything else, as soon as you get a little cocky, I was in a courtyard talking to some of the folks and then just had AK rounds like hit right over my head. The cinder block was spraying into my face because the rounds were that close to where I was at. And we were immediately into a firefight. That was my first firefight. I thought a lot about, will I be brave when it counts?
And will I care more about the team and my job than about myself? And so we basically, it was these three Al-Qaeda fighters that were shooting at us. I put my snipers up in Overwatch. I got the team aligned. I was running through an alley as we were getting shot at. Felt like my heart was literally beating out of my chest. It's really hard to describe just how loud combat is and the adrenaline.
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Chapter 6: What role does identity play in the modern economy?
And I think as a leader, you have to understand those team dynamics, too, because the whole point of leadership is to be inversely correlated with the context. When the team's playing not to lose, you have to counter that with extreme aggression in terms of the mindset to offset because you know where the team's headed.
When they're overly sort of risk-taking, you need to try to mitigate risk and pull it back. But the other thing was, similar to entrepreneurship, we were given a novel problem set. And so I had a team, we had a mission, But we had never practiced for using signal intelligence and different techniques to basically be a SWAT team. That was new.
Chapter 7: How does ID.me combat fraud and improve security?
And so a lot of it was just the scientific method of having a certain way of doing things and then codifying learning. So when we would come back, we would say what worked really well that we should keep, what didn't work so well. And over time, that led to a lot of specialization and
So maybe the arc in terms of performance, if you can codify learning and feedback loops, the average success rate for these kill capture missions was like 44%, I think, give or take. And in the first three months, we were in the 20th percentiles, which is to say that we sucked. But around month three, we hit average.
And then we caught the head of the Mujahideen Shura Council for Mosul, which is this clearinghouse of nationalist and extremist Islamist groups. And we caught the spiritual leader of northern Iraq for Al-Qaeda. So we were designated the kill capture force of choice for northern Iraq. by Colonel Townsend, who went on to become a four-star general. But by the end, our success rate was over 90%.
And I think by some metrics was like leading the theater in terms of our efficiency. So there was a lot. That was my first real job. I had a lawn mowing business and like life gardening, but that was my first real job.
What did you do to drive from average to 90% as the leader?
I was relentless in preparation. I had an amazing team where there was a lot of prior selection that had gone into it. So in recon, you get to pick whoever you want. So I had already screened my team for certain skills to make sure that I had a good group around me
But the platoon leader is responsible for the maneuver and for getting the folks to the right place at the right time and orienting them to target. So I spent basically all of my free time studying these terrorist cells, their pattern, what was called pattern of life, where they would be on a Tuesday for lunch, what their tendencies were. And it's just like anything else.
Humans get lazy and they get complacent. And if you're willing to put in the time, you could really get a feel for how this person is. operated and where they were likely to make a mistake. It was that. And then just, I think the biggest difference between mediocre leaders and great leaders is great leaders plan for contingencies.
So before we even went on a mission, we would plan for all the things that might happen. So when it did happen, we knew what to do. I think relentless preparation and learning is is just so important because it both inoculates you against risk proactively.
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Chapter 8: What are Blake's beliefs on leadership and company culture?
He went across an intersection that had one of these 500-pound bombs underneath it. And my platoon was the first one to... respond to that scene. And it was devastating, as you might imagine. He was just severely concussed, but was just relentless in terms of providing aid to his guys, getting them into the trucks. I'm going to get emotional about it, so I'm sorry.
But we raced a few of the guys who were critically wounded to the green zone, to the combat support hospital that was there. And Phil was just unbelievable. When we finally, when his men were taken care of, he was so concussed, he was puking and he knew that he was about to just pass out. And he just grabbed me by the lapels and he said, Blake, my guys take care of my guys.
And that for me is just, that's what it is right there. His men love him for it, that when the chips are down, you care more about other people than yourself. And his like will, even though he was physically really banged up, got him through it. And I think, man, America is super lucky to have leaders like Phil Schneider. He was decorated for heroism for what he did that day.
I have a question, which is a hard question to ask and maybe an impossible one to answer, but I'm asking it because I want the way I think of you is like you've gone a level up. And the way that you started ID me was to serve this community in a deep and real way. And we'll tell that story in a minute.
But this is also abstract for us that haven't been in service, certainly not in such incredible harm's way.
I'm just curious to help people understand the people that are doing this for us, the nature of taking life or seeing life taken amongst your friends as the ultimate stakes and try to help people understand those stakes because I'm sure the answer is there's no way of understanding it unless you go through it yourself.
But this is the ultimate sacrifice that so many people put themselves in this kind of harm's way. Do you have a closing thought on just the nature of that life of living that experience that people can understand why this group is so critical to support?
Yeah, I'll try to do justice to it because I lost some wonderful friends who were just amazing people that gave their lives for this country. Richard Henkes, my interpreter, Roy, who died with the platoon that followed us. Garrett Slaughter, Ryan Dennison, just wonderful people. And if you serve this country, it's because you believe that people have a right to live free.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's the core of what we enjoy, but it is protected at great cost. And you want to protect the weak and the vulnerable who are being oppressed, truly oppressed in terms of values and what they are allowed to say or do. And the way that manifests, we would have, there was an Iraqi woman. She was Sunni. and her husband was Shia.
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