- New York City is home to some of the busiest airports
and most famous sports and concert venues in the world.
It's also home to Clear, a company that makes getting
into those places easier and safer.
As CEO, Caryn Seidman-Becker has propelled
a once bankrupt company into a leader
in security and convenience.
- I believe you will give
up your wallet in the next five years.
- As a woman CEO, did you ever go to pitch investors?
And someone's like, why should you be the CEO of this?
- One guy leaned across the table and said
what makes you think you can be the CEO of Clear?
- And?
- I leaned across the table and said
because I am a complete and total animal.
(laughs)
- I'm Monica Langley, this is the Inflection Point.
Welcome to the Inflection Point,
so of course my first question is when was that moment
in your life when everything stopped
and your life changed forever?
- So my inflection point was
I was in my daughter's kindergarten class,
my older daughter who's now 19.
And we were cutting patterns and every other parent
is cutting it perfectly and I'm like struggling
and my hands are stressing over the scissor.
And my phone's ringing 'cause I'm running a hedge fund
and I'm trying to cut the pattern and the market
is melting down and Congress is trying to figure
out how to save America.
And I'm like, what am I doing?
- What year was this when the market was melting down?
- 2008.
- Okay, so we were in a financial and economic crisis
in the United States.
And you were a young woman, a young mother
and running a hedge fund.
- I was 36 years old, I had been working 24/7,
which I love on Wall Street since I graduated in 1994.
I had three kids, a five year old, a three year old
and a one year old.
- You were busy.
- I was busy, but loving every minute I thrive in chaos,
or I think I thrive in chaos.
- When this happened?
And you're cutting the pattern,
do you feel like the music stopped?
- I literally had a WTF like right in front of me.
(laughs)
- Oh my goodness.
- I was like, what am I doing?
It was sort of I don't know that the music stopped
as opposed to I took a breath and said,
what I've been doing is amazing,
I'm a very passionate person but I didn't wanna do
it tomorrow anymore, it's sort of like
I just wanted to do something materially different,
I wanted to start over in a different place based
on everything I had known and seen.
And it was this moment of like confidence of I can do it.
I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid of failure,
I'm not afraid of risk, I've seen other people
from Jeff Bezos to Steve Jobs to Michael Bloomberg,
build these businesses from nothing
and I've had a front row seat to some of them,
I can do that.
- So it's interesting that you said you felt confident
'cause I would think you have felt vulnerable
at that moment.
- So I think I'm a super type A personality,
and every day of my life, I've never felt like
it was good enough.
So it's not like at one moment I felt like a failure
I think at that moment I actually had clarity
that this has been amazing.
And then tomorrow it's going to be something else.
- Let's go a little bit to what made you have this ambition?
What was your childhood like that got you
to be such a triple A personality?
(laughs)
- At some level, my guess is you're born with it.
But you know, I grew up in a way that
you do what you need to do to go forward,
whether it be cleaning the gutters or mowing the lawn
or raking the leaves or helping your parents
with the dishes, both my parents worked full time.
My mom was a super mom and a super worker
and put her kids first.
And so I just grew up believing you could do anything,
you had to do anything and that you had
to be your very best.
So my parents were very grades and academic focused.
- Oh good.
So then what though turned the trigger to you that I think
I wanna go to New York and go to Wall Street specifically.
- Ah, I loved New York.
So I knew when I graduated college that I was coming
to New York city and I came here with no job.
- Really?
No Job?
- No job, my parents were none too pleased.
- But you got a job?
- I got a job as a junior analyst in risk arbitrage,
I didn't exactly know what it was I said,
I will be the first in, I will be the last out
and I will be your cheapest employee.
And I was definitively all of those things.
- And this goes to one of your things you talk about a lot
is you persist tirelessly and you have a favorite word.
- I do have a favorite word, I used for my college essay
it was indefatigable and I defined it and used it
to describe me, which means persistent and tireless.
And it's one of our core values here at Clear.
There's lots of no's in this world and that just means
you gotta come back in a different way and never give up.
- So you got to New York, what was that like for you
as a young woman on Wall Street?
Because I don't think there are that many.
- I didn't notice.
So I loved the movie with Melanie Griffith working girl.
I had my fake coach briefcase.
I had my coffee, I had my journal and like in I went,
and I was just,
I must have blinders on but I thought
I was the luckiest person on the face of the planet.
And I found as a woman on Wall Street
that nobody thought of me differently.
- But then you started your own hedge fund.
- Yes.
- In 2002?
Tell us the name of the fund.
- So we named the fund Arience Capital,
which stood for art and science because my view of investing
and it continues to be so it's part art part science,
it's the quantitative and the qualitative.
And went about raising money not that many people wanted
to invest at first but one individual did.
And his name is Bill Miller from Legg Mason.
And so he invested $50 million, and we launched
a few weeks after I had my first daughter.
- And did you feel pressure at that time
either from peers or from yourself to get the investors?
- I felt pressure to be successful.
I felt pressure for the results.
I felt pressure to be right.
I felt pressure to show them that I could do it.
So I wore a green sweater on the first day
of investing 'cause green meant go
and like literally didn't leave my seat that day
- As a woman CEO of your fund, did you ever go
to pitch investors and someone's like, 'How do you think you,'
'why should you be the CEO of this?'
'Why should I invest in you?'
- Yeah, I've had two moments as a leader, as a female leader
where people clearly showed me that maybe because
I was a woman, they were not as believing in me as perhaps
I would've liked them to have been. - What did they say and how did you react?
- One was, I was 29 so before we launched,
I was pregnant with Olivia,
I was probably eight months pregnant and I walked in
not feeling my most fashionable self to begin with
but here I am talking about my stocks, I love stocks,
I'm passionate about them and thought I did great work.
And the guy said to me why should I believe
you'll come back?
And I was like, I don't even understand the question,
I'm sorry, would you be asking that to my husband
who was gonna have a baby too in a month?
The whole thing was very puzzling to me.
And ultimately when he wanted to invest
we not take his capital.
- Hmm, interesting, what was the other?
- We were raising capital for Clear and we were out
on the West Coast and one guy leaned across the table
and said, what makes you think you can be the CEO of Clear?
- And?
- I leaned across the table and said
because I am a complete and total animal.
(laughs)
- How did he react?
- He leaned back and I kept a picture of him in my photos
just for a little inspiration and motivation.
Let the haters be your motivators.
- Now let's go back to Arience and you ultimately did close
your fund from your inflection point moment.
And what was that like for you?
- I wanted to make sure that we placed all of our people.
So we had 20 people and wanted to make sure
that they all ended up in the right place
'cause that was a decision that reflected me.
And I think as a leader, right,
I think the saying is jump first, eat last.
And so making sure that everyone was well taken care
of was really important to me and it hard to tell them.
So I think that really pained me the most.
I think afterwards I definitely had moments that I felt
like a failure and when I would be at a dinner
and someone would say, what do you do?
And I didn't have an answer.
And they would literally pass right over me to then talk
to my husband and I was like, I'm still the same person.
Like that really bothered me that you were defined
by what you did as opposed to who you were.
- Well, then you found Clear, and the interesting thing is
you had been all your life on Wall Street,
making bets on companies and suddenly you turned
and now you're the CEO running a company that people
are making bets on.
- Correct. - How is that?
- The shoe was on the other foot.
Well, one of the reasons that it took us a while
to go public, I kept saying,
I don't wanna shareholder like me.
(laughs)
And because I thought rightfully so that
I owned the company.
So I would like sit in the front row, write horse shack,
I was asking all the questions, but yeah,
that was opening myself up to that kind of conversation
on a daily basis and that understanding,
I understand what it means to be a fiduciary.
And it's a very serious responsibility.
- And the investors though would be happy
because as on the day of your IPO, it soared 30%.
And shortly after that, your stock went up 50%.
So the bets have paid off one would say.
But do you still feel like you look at your own company
as from the outside in sometimes or more as the builder?
- I look at it as the builder, but again
when we were investing that's how I looked at it.
I said, where could this company be in five years?
What are the secular trends?
How could we build it?
It's way harder than I thought to build a company
from a culture, from a competitive landscape,
from a how the world works, but also really exhilarating.
- Well, let me say, I love Clear.
I can walk up to the airport line and I see
all these frazzled travelers they're out of sorts,
and I go up and I show my eyeball.
And one of your people escort me to the front of the line.
How did you know it was going to turn to be such
a seamless easy and safe experience?
- So the benefit of buying a company in bankruptcy
out of bankruptcy is it was around.
It was around for five years
and there was a history to study.
And so we believed in biometrics as solving
the great problem, which is in a post 9/11 environment
that which made you safer, became less easy,
and that which was easy made you less safe.
And that by biometrics were the 'and,'
- Now explain what biometric means.
- So biometrics are the things that make you uniquely you.
So your fingerprints, your eyes, your face, your voice
they are uniquely yours, nobody else has them.
Humans and zebras both have biometrics,
no stripes are the same.
But my belief was that we could change
the way people live, work and travel.
Because if you look at all of these physical experiences
from an airport to a cruise ship, to checking in at a hotel,
to getting into a sports stadium, to going to the hospital
or the doctor's office, to coming into an office building,
they're all full of friction.
And so we had this view that Clear could be a solution
that could really change customers lives,
make them far more productive, make them far happier,
and make our country safer.
So it was this Shangri-La platform.
- And you are a nervous flyer.
- Yes, I think part of Clear was solving a lot
of my personal issues and I think that's probably
how businesses start within your own vision
which is I'm always running late, I'm super busy,
I'm a stressed out flyer, I was stressed out before 9/11
from turbulence after 9/11 from terrorism.
And then when you have to start leaving your kids
and traveling and it just becomes a whole lot a lot.
- Clear had 190,000 customers before bankruptcy.
How many do you all have today?
- Today we have over 10 million members.
- Wow, you've gone big.
- This has been a really big year.
And I think both between us helping businesses
come back better, and people are coming back
to travel and expecting frictionless experiences.
We've been growing an enormous amount in the airport
and we've been growing with our health pass product
and other products and other verticals
whether it be sports stadiums, music festivals,
offices, restaurants.
And so it's a real moment, it's never been a better time
to be a secure identity platform and the vision that
we had in 2010 is absolutely becoming a reality.
- Let's talk about privacy.
How can you ensure that people's data or their fingerprints
or their eyeballs or whatever stays private?
That is a big question for so many consumers right now.
- If you look at the email we sent in 2010 to members
when we restarted Clear, we had a customer pledge,
and in that email, it says, we will guard your privacy.
That was a pledge unto itself.
That was when there were three of us in an office.
So we actually think privacy done right is part
of the Clear ethos and something that we're really proud of.
I'd like to think that we build that trust every day
but you gotta wake up and rebuild it.
And so the world changes, circumstances change,
and you gotta keep doing it, you gotta keep saying it,
and you gotta keep living it.
- So now you are clearly expanding into all kinds
of areas and you've called it the convenience economy.
Tell me about that.
Where is Clear going?
- So it was always part of our initial thesis,
if you look at day one we said today
we are travel central company tomorrow
we are the defacto secure identity platform
in leisure access commerce.
So that was part of the vision almost 12 years ago.
And it's what we had been working on before COVID,
which is people want frictionless and trusted experiences
into sports stadiums, office buildings, et cetera.
Certainly COVID helped accelerate that vision.
It was probably five years of business development smooshed
into a few months.
My view is leader's job is to look around corners
and understand where the world's going.
That's what I did as an investor.
And we thought that there would be another card
in your wallet and that was gonna be your vaccine.
- Which turned which out to be true.
- Turned out to be correct.
Innovation is about bringing people
what they did not know they wanted.
And that's our job as leaders, that's our job as Clear.
- What do you think is going to be the game changer for you
when you can say we are now pervasive?
- I believe you will give up your wallet
in the next five years.
Why would you be carrying around pieces of paper
and plastic to represent who you are and stuff about you?
Your passport represents your identity and your citizenship.
Your vaccine card represents your identity and your vaccine.
Your credit card represents your identity
'cause conceptually it's you even though my kids take
my credit card all the time, you should be able to walk out
of your house and have your entire day
be frictionless and nonstop.
You shouldn't have to be pulling stuff out.
- So I can throw my thick wallet away within five years?
- I think so.
- I mean, who wants to have to right schlep that stuff?
- Yes, and it's in their back pocket and it's thick
and it's in a rubber band, it's in the clip,
making the world a better place.
- And safer and easier.
- Yes, that is the vision.
- I love your vision.
Thank you so much for being here today.
- Thanks for having me, it's been fun.