Tim Goodman recently joined OpenCorporates as the Head of Product & Data, bringing valuable experience as a former product manager at Arachnys, a RegTech. He tells us why OpenCorporates’ data is so important for know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) professionals, and why our mission persuaded him to join us.
What is your role at OpenCorporates? What does it involve?
I manage a team of experts who are constantly trying to improve the coverage, freshness and richness of our data. We are looking at how we can improve what OpenCorporates already does really well.
We are looking in particular at how fresh the data is from national or state company registries. From time to time there is a lag between a company being incorporated and becoming available on the registry, and a lag between it becoming available on the registry and getting into our database. Reducing that time as much as we can is really helpful for our end users – so we’re constantly working to improve our systems to bring it down.
Tell us about your experience before you came to OpenCorporates
For the past four years I worked at Arachnys, a regulatory technology (RegTech) company that has built a KYC and AML tool which provides data to help compliance professionals conduct due diligence – whether on customers or transactions. I left as a product manager, having helped to refocus their products, including reviewing their data sources and API.
What drew you to work for OpenCorporates?
I believe in OpenCorporates’ mission – which really makes things exciting.
At the root of it we want a better world where we really know the people we are doing business with and can be confident that less money is going into the wrong pockets.
But in my day job I am focused on impact first, which means understanding the needs of our users to make the right decisions as to how we prioritise what data we target.
I have been a big fan of OpenCorporates as an end user for quite some time, and I always thought it would be a great place to work. When I spoke to the team, they outlined where they wanted to take things next – and I found their efforts in North America particularly impactful.
Whilst I was still a client, I heard about the improvements in OpenCorporates’ North American data and I thought: “Wow, this can really help power production systems in big firms. It can help businesses get better data, which in turn drives public good”.
The business really has legs and I believe we can become a trusted global source for company data, helping bring further transparency to a world that can be hard to navigate – and that is a mission I want to be part of!
As a former product manager, why do you think the work OpenCorporates does is important?
When you look at the public good we do by bringing transparency to corporate data, it really sets OpenCorporates apart from other data providers.
There are a lot of firms that also provide company data, but they aren’t as transparent how they really go about this, so it makes it hard to leverage their data with confidence. This lack of transparency really calls the data provenance into question.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
At the moment it’s lots of DIY because I’m sorting out my new house. I enjoy going to the local cinema and playing video games.
What is your favourite film?
I would recommend Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. It’s ridiculous but very funny!
Want to know more?
- Why transparent company data should be on your product roadmap
Read more about why product managers are increasingly turning to transparent company data to accelerate product development.
blog.opencorporates.com 