A Lake Oswego fraud detection company has enlisted an Amazon veteran as its new chief product officer.
In his new role for Vesta, Nick Tostenrude will set the company’s global products strategy and lead its product portfolio, the company said in a statement. He will also build and lead a product management team to work with customers and identify new business and product opportunities.
Tostenrude spent 10 years at Amazon in retail sides, working on the Kindle product, and at Amazon Web Services, where he was most recently general manager of Amazon Fraud Detector. He counts more than 20 years of product experience.
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“Nick's deep understanding of product management combined with his experience building fraud prevention solutions to protect Amazon and Amazon's enterprise customers make him the ideal person to drive our product roadmap and development efforts,” said CEO Ron Hynes in a written statement. “Under his leadership we can continue to iterate our existing solutions to consistently add more value for our customers, while simultaneously developing entirely new products that help them stay ahead of the curve and keep fraudsters at bay for years to come."
Vesta, which launched in 1995, was a local fintech industry pioneer, building a solid business serving telecommunication customers. Vesta’s platform helps protect against credit card fraud while ensuring that safe transactions aren’t also rejected.
Hynes took over as CEO in 2019 and has moved the company more into the e-commerce realm. The company raised $125 million in private equity last year as part of this new growth strategy.
“I've listened to leaders from hundreds of companies over the past five years tell me about the challenges they face in building adequate protections against sophisticated fraud attacks. It's a big investment for them that often distracts from their primary business," said Tostenrude in a written statement. "I'm impressed with how Vesta's solutions help customers eliminate fraud and increase approval rates for legitimate transactions so they can put focus back on their primary business.”
Tostenrude was co-founder and CEO for EnableMart, an online distributor of assistive technology for people with disabilities. He sold that company to MRN Inc. in 2008 and was director of operations, then president of e-commerce, for MRN. He was also an early team member at Vacasa in 2009, according to his LinkedIn.
