The Call That Changed Everything: My Bet on True Trust
Hey there,
As of last week, I'm no longer at Panther Labs. Short stint, amazing team, but sometimes life has other plans—especially when you live by the mantra, 'attempt the impossible because everything else is just... meh.' I'm about to put that to the ultimate test. This is why.
The Night That Crystallized Everything
Last year, my co-founder Jon got a call that no one should ever have to take. His wife's name on caller ID. A man's voice claiming to have kidnapped his family. Demanding $5,000 or they'd be hurt.
Jon's heart jumped. He muted the call, scanned the room. Kids were there. His wife was in the next room. Everyone is safe. But here's what haunted us both: what if they hadn't been home?
In that moment of panic, all of Jon's security training, his 20+ years in this industry—meant absolutely nothing.
There was no way to verify the threat was real or fake. No proof.
Just panic and a voice that sounded convincing enough to destroy a family's day and possibly savings. We spent hours and hours over periods of months discussing this and our combined 40ish years in security we realized there is just a gap.
The Thing About Trust
Working incident response for so long, I learned a bit more about the phrase trust is earned over time, one thing I learned is no one defines the reference of time trust is earned over. When you walk into a crisis, whether it's an outage affecting millions or your family in danger, you have about 10 seconds to establish trust. If you don't, the damage spreads. Fast.
With decades of combined building security systems at Amazon, Dropbox, Wells Fargo and beyond: we've built elaborate systems to verify passwords, and human to system verification but no system to truly verify human to human.
This isn't just a technical gap; it's a human failing in our digital world.
There’s no way today to verify who’s really calling or texting — and attackers know it.
- The kidnapping scam.
- The grandparent scam.
- The CEO wire transfer fraud.
- The help desk social engineering attack.
They're all the same attack: someone you trust appears to need your help immediately. This is the proven time crunch method for social engineering. Your training says 'verify first' but your brain screams 'help now'.
And in that critical 10-second window, there's no reliable verification system that actually works.
None.
Why I'm Going All-In
This is about using everything I've learned from my journey—from sleeping on the streets to building security for hundreds of millions of users—to solve something that fundamentally matters: the absence of verifiable human to human trust in digital communication.
We're building GetTrusted: cryptographic proof of identity across every communication channel. This isn't experimental tech or 'blockchain marketing bullshit. This isn’t a new password manager. It’s the missing trust layer for everything digital. It's real, mathematical certainty about who you're talking to, deployed where it's needed most.
When Jon's phone rings next time, he'll be able to know in seconds whether it's really his wife or a fraud. When your elderly parent gets that 'emergency' call, they'll know before sending money. When your employee gets that call from the CFO for an urgent wire transfer request, they'll know before clicking send. When you Helpdesk gets a call asking for a password reset - it won't cost you $380M dollars.
The Personal Stakes
You all know my story. Justice-involved. Homeless. Window cleaner. Trucker. Cook. Then somehow, impossibly, a security leader at some of the world's biggest tech companies.
Every step of that journey taught me something about trust—how fragile it is, how hard it is to earn, how quickly it can be weaponized against you.
I spent years hiding from my past because society told me I had to. But building GetTrusted has reminded me why I started writing here in the first place: our scars don't disqualify us from greatness. They're the source of our credibility.
The same life experiences that taught me how systems fail, how people exploit trust, how desperation drives decisions—that's exactly why I am so drawn to this problem and the solution.
What This Means
Starting today, I'm full time the CEO and Co-Founder of LastID with GetTrusted being our first product. Jon and I are opening early access soon, we just got approval for our most recent build and working to start a rollout to replace the authentication theater with actual trust.
For families, it means never again wondering if that urgent call is real.
For businesses, it means stopping Business Email Compromise before it costs you millions.
For everyone, it means digital communication finally gets the trust layer it always needed.
The Impossible Standard
Remember when I said I believe in attempting the impossible? Here's what impossible looks like:
Building enterprise-grade cryptographic identity verification that works across all platforms, requires zero technical knowledge, and actually gets adopted by regular people.
Creating a trust overlay of any business in minutes not years, that is built for preventing crisis.
Creating a trust network that makes the entire internet safer, one verified relationship at a time.
Proving that a formerly incarcerated guy and his brilliant co-founder can build infrastructure that protects millions of families.
If that's not impossible enough to be worth doing, I don't know what is.
What's Next
I'll keep writing here about the journey. The technical challenges. The fundraising realities. The moments when "impossible" feels more like "insurmountable."
But I'll also share something else: what it feels like to bet everything on a problem that really matters. To build something that could protect your grandmother from losing her life savings, your business from wire fraud, your family from the terror Jon felt that night.
This isn't just another security startup. It's the culmination of everything I've learned about trust, failure, redemption, and the power of impossible attempts.
And honestly? We’re not just launching a product. We’re launching the future of trust.
No MFA, no password, no VPN will protect you if you don’t know who’s on the other end. That’s what we’re fixing.
Stay curious, Matt
P.S. - If you want to follow the GetTrusted journey more closely, you can join early access at gettrusted.app. Follow our blog at blog.gettrusted.app. And if you're a security leader who wants to see how we stop impersonation attacks, drop me a line at demo@gettrusted.app. I will be in Las Vegas Aug 4th - 6th if you want to chat let me know!
P.P.S. - For those asking about Panther: incredible team, solid product, just not my impossible thing to build. Sometimes the right opportunity means leaving good situations behind. No hard feelings, just different mountains to climb.