So Long Golden Handcuffs!

After 6 years with his old job--the perks of which included 7 weeks of vacation--Lance has moved on. Along the way, he collected the fancy new title of VP! He has worked so hard over the years for this, and I am so proud of him.

The 6 weeks of vacation has served us well over the years.

We got to see London...

France

Normandy and Brittany--this is me escaping the Nazi embankment. If you enlarge it, I think you would agree that my face was "fierce" and worth of honors in Tyra's Top Model competition. You should also notice that *both* feet are actually off of the ground.

Holland

Germany

Mexico--our friend *love* this picture, let me tell you.

Switzerland

and Italy!

I am now officially shacking up with a VP. Sa-weet! He even got his own fancy press release today, and he will be in the San Jose Mercury News on Sunday.

ThreatMetrix Adds Fraud Prevention Expert to Executive Team

Former F-Secure and Verifia Director Lance Jacobs to Lead Global Sales Efforts LOS ALTOS, CA–January 26, 2010–ThreatMetrix™, the fastest growing provider of device identification for preventing online fraud, today announced the appointment of Lance Jacobs to vice president of sales. Jacobs is tasked with accelerating ThreatMetrix adoption into the company’s rapidly expanding financial services markets as well as its broadly established customer base in retail, social networks, alternative payments, and casual gaming. He inherits a sales pipeline that has doubled quarter over quarter since ThreatMetrix began selling its SaaS-based solutions in the U.S. in January 2009.

“We’re very excited to add Lance to the team,” said Reed Taussig, president and CEO, ThreatMetrix. “He’s a highly skilled sales executive with extensive online security and fraud prevention expertise. Over the past six months sophisticated fraudsters, typically operating from outside of the United States, have specifically targeted the financial services industry. ThreatMetrix believes that 2010 will demonstrate double or even triple digit growth in the adoption of fraud management tools across all financial services sectors. Traffic to these sites is at an all-time high, but the threat of online fraud is worse than ever. Companies need new tools to combat fraudsters and ThreatMetrix technology is a key part of the solution.”

Jacobs’ career spans 15 years in management, business development, sales and marketing in the software industry. Prior to ThreatMetrix Jacobs was director of North American business development at F-Secure, the publicly held IT security and anti-virus software provider, where he built relationships with service providers such as Cox, Charter Communications, CenturyLink, Shaw Communications, Dish Network, DirecTV, WildBlue, and many others. Earlier in his career, Jacobs was director of business development at Verifia (since acquired by Quova), a pioneer in Internet IP geolocation technology. Jacobs is a graduate of Utah State University.

“ThreatMetrix is a remarkable company and the timing of this opportunity couldn’t be better,” said Jacobs. “There is incredible demand for solutions that deter cyber crime without disturbing the customer experience. Device identification solutions are widely viewed as having this ability. ThreatMetrix has been developing device identification technology for five years and thus is uniquely positioned to dominate the market – and that’s exactly what we intend to do.”

To celebrate, I cooked him up a fancy spaghetti dinner, and then gifted him with a bag of Teuscher chocolates. I only stole 3 of them, which is probably a record for me.

Congrats, VP! I am glad you have moved up and on, but I will miss our traveling life of leisure.