The regulatory landscape led global banks and financial institutions into a compliance arms race. Shiran Weitzman, along with his fellow co-founder at Shield, recognized an opportunity to develop a cutting-edge platform built around artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and other advanced technologies, that outperform the outdated legacy vendors that dominated the market. As banks and financial institutions became more reliant on electronic communication channels like Slack, Zoom and WhatsApp, a trend sped-up significantly by the pandemic and today’s work from home environment, Shiran has led Shield on a trajectory of steady growth since its founding.

What is now an award-winning workplace intelligence platform that enables regulated companies to detect market abuse, gain behavioral analysis, mitigate toxic workplace culture and ultimately automate surveillance over all employee communication 2 of 3 channels, started with the simple belief that there is a better way to address compliance. Before founding Shield, Shiran was the owner of his own consultancy firm, and it was one particular client project that inspired him to find a better solution for banks to stay compliant across electronic communication.

Working with one of Europe’s leading banks, the project dealt with a specific challenge in communication compliance and ended up costing the bank millions of dollars, took over two years to solve and required multiple platforms to address. It was then, with an entrepreneurial spirit, that Shiran realized there was a clear market failure that he could solve.

Banks and their customers, more and more, were becoming reliant on personal devices and messaging applications beyond email to conduct every-day business. Shiran knew these services had already become commonplace, and there was an immediate need for an end-to-end communication compliance platform to mitigate risk and prevent nefarious behavior from going unchecked. Then, the pandemic hit, everybody started working from home and needed Zoom to accomplish any kind of business. The new way in which we worked only accelerated an already fast-moving trend within finance, and Shield, under Shiran’s steady guidance, was able to address the needs of its growing customer base and meet market demand.

After impressively bootstrapping itself since its launch in 2018, Shiran led Shield’s first fundraising round, announcing in January 2022 its $15 million Series A that included an impressive list of investors, including Macquarie Capital and OurCrowd with significant participation from Mindset Ventures. With the funding, and under Shiran’s leadership, Shield was ready to expand into new territory while ensuring its platform continued to adapt and meet market expectations.

As a result of Shield’s increasing customer base, Shiran continued to drive company momentum following the Series A news by launching the company’s US operations and establishing its North American presence with the hiring of a proven RegTech sales leader. With regulated financial services firms forced to navigate evolving regulatory pressures driven by pandemic volatility, a tightened labor market, the emergence of cryptocurrencies and more, Shiran had the foresight to strategically position Shield so it could provide its cutting-edge compliance solutions to companies globally, not only in the United States, but also Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.

The United States wasn’t the only new office Shiran established over the last year. With an opportunity to tap into high quality tech talent, Shield opened up its innovation hub and research and development center in Lisbon, Portugal in 2022 as well. Within its Lisbon office, and under Shiran’s stewardship, Shield will drive the development of solutions and projects for customers worldwide, including further enhancement to its platform, which recently introduced new, industry-defining features.

This summer, Shiran introduced Shield’s most robust and significant platform upgrade to date, which features eDiscovery capabilities that empower compliance teams to work better. With Shiran’s direction, Shield’s latest version was developed through countless rounds of in-depth conversations with compliance users, resulting in a modern, dynamic platform that is solely built so today’s compliance professional can quickly search and drill down the right results while gaining access to smart analytics and insights across the full eDiscovery flow.

Shiran knows today’s compliance landscape is dynamic, especially as companies rely more and more on electronic communication platforms like MS Teams, Zoom, Slack and WhatsApp to conduct standard business operations that would not have been considered pre pandemic. With regulators in the U.S., U.K., Europe and throughout the world rapidly adapting policies on the fly, Shiran’s business acumen and foresight are enabling Shield to provide advanced capture, archive and surveillance over eComms channels, which is much needed today. Solidified by its rapid growth so far, Shield is a proven, tailored platform, critical to companies across regulated industries, which is why Shiran Weitzman, its dynamic leader, should be named a Rising FinTech Star.