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David Briggs
Director & Co-Founder
David Briggs is a director and co-founder of GeoComply, a market leader in fraud prevention and cybersecurity solutions.12 He has extensive experience in the tech and gaming sectors, with a career spanning over 25 years across the UK, Europe, Asia, and North America.1
Briggs co-founded GeoComply with his wife Anna Sainsbury in 2012.1 The company, headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, specializes in geolocation compliance for the global media, fintech, and regulated gaming sectors.12 Prior to his current role as Member Board of Directors, Briggs served as CEO of GeoComply from 2018 to January 2022.2
Before GeoComply, Briggs held significant positions in the gaming industry, including:
- Managing Director at Ladbrokes (1999-2007), where he was part of the founding team that grew it into Europe's largest online betting and gaming company.2
- Group Corporate Development at Barclays (1998-1999).2
Briggs holds a Master of Science in East Asian Business Studies from the School of Oriental Studies and has limited working proficiency in Japanese.2 He is also known for his philanthropic efforts, partnering with Chevening to offer scholarships for Canadian applicants, with a focus on supporting candidates from Metis, Inuit, and First Nation communities.1
Highlights
Exciting news in Geolocation Compliance land!
Honestly it's really something when you see major players recognizing the importance and value of what better location and fraud tools can mean to an operator success!
I have long been an admirer (and sometimes a customer!) of OpenBet and while their footprint has always been more European than North American, if they can educate their global customers on just a few of the advantages of "geolocation you can bet on" then this can really expand the market for everyone.
For operators, this can materially reduce not just the cost of fraud, but also the friction that users have to deal with out-dated IP geolocation based rules engines.
Really looking forward to seeing how much Jordan Levin and his team can share the good news of how geeky geolocation data can save the world!!!
Good post from Scott Longley on the news from Crypto Land re CZ's remarkably short prison time.
At the heart of this case is the question of "what is the point of rules without enforcement"? Binance clearly grew as big as it did by deciding to "move fast and break things" and avoid following rules which got in the way.
Has anything changed with Binance's settlement and CZ's sentence?
The answer to me is almost certainly not. In the little portion of the crypto world that I can at least speak confidently about, I can see that Binance still relies on an IP address to determine if they are legally able to transact with a customer (and that the customer is not in Russia, North Korea, etc) - even though you can spoof that IP address's location with a VPN easily....
I know there are plenty of other ways to judge what Binance has or has not learnt from its fines but it seems a fair bellwether to check their actual commitment to following pretty basic rules.
Obviously, as a founder of a geolocation compliance company, you can argue that I am hardly being objective. But then again it is hard for me to not point out when a company like Binance is trying to claim that black is white in terms of what it is meant to be doing for compliance and what it is actually doing.
In the words of their own investigation team; "Here’s the thing about VPNs. No exchange blocks VPNs, for the record. No crypto exchange blocks VPN activity."
I don't think this issue is over and arguably there may still be twists and turns for CZ beyond this one three month sentence....
