Why I Started Verify
Two years ago, I started a new chapter in my entrepreneurial journey.
After selling my previous venture Lytho, I found myself at a crossroad. For years, I had been building software that helped organizations manage their digital content more effectively. At Lytho and at most Digital Asset Management (DAM) platforms, the focus was on a fundamental challenge: how do you make images, videos, and other digital assets easy to organize, manage, and retrieve?
We became very good at solving that problem.
But there was one question that continued to bother me:
What happens to content after it leaves the DAM?
Because the truth is, the real value of content isn’t created inside a DAM system. It is created on websites, social media platforms, news outlets, partner channels, and everywhere else brands engage with their audiences. That’s where content gets viewed, shared, modified, republished, and ultimately creates impact. And that was exactly where we had very little visibility.
Our customers would regularly ask questions like:
- Where is our content being used?
- Is this image still compliant?
- Does everyone using this photo have the proper permissions?
- Our embargoed content leaked—who was responsible?
- Is this image authentic, and how can we prove it?
These weren’t edge cases. They were business critical questions. The problem was simple: the technology to answer them didn’t really exist.
The Perfect Storm
At the same time, AI was accelerating at an incredible pace. Suddenly, a new question became just as important as content management itself:
Can we still trust what we see?
Images could be generated, manipulated, altered, or completely fabricated. The line between real and synthetic was becoming increasingly blurred. For brands, media organizations, governments, and enterprises, authenticity became a major challenge.
That was when I met my now co-founder, Hugo Smits. Supported by Chris Hall, founder of Bynder, Hugo had been working on advanced compression technology for years and an early version of an invisible watermark. The concept was both elegant and revolutionary: embedding information directly into the pixels of an image or video without affecting quality or visibility. The moment I saw it, everything clicked. For the first time, it seemed possible to manage and protect digital assets not only inside the DAM, but also beyond it. To follow content throughout its entire lifecycle. To carry ownership, authenticity, permissions, and compliance with the asset itself. I immediately became excited about the possibilities.
From Investor to CEO
What started as an investment in R&D and some strategic guidance quickly evolved into something much bigger. I made a substantial investment in the company and eventually stepped in as CEO. That was the beginning of Verify. From day one, our mission has been clear:
Making the digital world a place you can trust.
Not only by helping organizations prove ownership, but also by helping them understand where content originates, whether it remains authentic, whether it is being used compliantly, and what happens to it once it enters the digital ecosystem.
Solving Real Problems
What has always motivated me most as an entrepreneur isn’t technology itself. It’s solving real problems for customers. I get energized when customers can move faster. When compliance becomes easier. When teams spend less time on manual checks and more time focusing on creativity, innovation, and the work they do best.
That’s why our first use cases are focused on:
- Compliance
- Consent management
- Embargoed content
- Media authenticity
These are challenges that large organizations face every day, where mistakes can have serious legal, financial, and reputational consequences. And while we started there, we never stopped innovating. Not because technology is exciting on its own, but because our customers’ challenges continue to evolve.
From Invisible Watermarks to FrameSeek.ai
Today, Verify has grown far beyond where we started.
In addition to our watermarking technology, we’ve developed our own AI-powered image recognition platform, FrameSeek.ai, capable of identifying images based on their unique “Pixel DNA.” This allows organizations to trace images across the web, even when they have been:
- Cropped
- Compressed
- Edited
- Or altered using AI
For our customers, this unlocks entirely new possibilities. Not just for compliance and governance, but also for brand protection, content intelligence, media monitoring, and measuring the true impact of their digital content. Because ultimately, organizations don’t just want to know where their content is. They want to understand what is happening to it.
An Adventure Bigger Than I Expected
The past two years have been an incredible journey. We’ve helped customers operating in industries where trust is critical. We’ve built technology that many believed wasn’t possible. And we’ve assembled an exceptional team that continues to prove what can happen when talent, ambition, curiosity, and execution come together. Recently, we opened our first office in the United States.
And our Amsterdam office? On the days everyone is in, it’s already starting to feel too small.
Those are wonderful milestones. But what makes me most proud is that we’ve never lost the curiosity that started this journey in the first place. We continue to ask ourselves the same question every day:
How can we help organizations gain more control, more trust, and more visibility over their digital content?
Why Verify Exists
When I look back, Verify didn’t start with a technology. It started with a frustration. The frustration that content management stopped the moment content left the DAM. That brands, media organizations, and enterprises had little visibility into what happened next. That authenticity was difficult to establish. That compliance was often reactive rather than proactive. And that speed, usability, governance, and trust were too often seen as trade-offs. Verify was built to eliminate those trade-offs. To help organizations move faster, stay compliant, protect their content, and trust the authenticity of their digital assets wherever they travel.
And…..it still feels like we’re only getting started.