Overview

Yinglian Xie is currently CEO and co-founder of DataVisor, a successful fraud detection technology startup based in the Silicon Valley. In five years, DataVisor has grown from a company of two to a rapidly growing business with 100+ employees in US, China, and Singapore with customers across the globe.

Prior to founding DataVisor, Yinglian worked at Microsoft Research for more than seven years on a number of projects with a focus on advancing the security of online services using big data analytics and machine learning. Her work helped protect millions of users of various Microsoft services including Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail), Bing.com and Bing Ads. This was also where she met DataVisor’s co-founder and CTO Fang Yu. Their work during this time also laid the foundation of what would later become DataVisor.

Over the years, Yinglian saw firsthand the evolution of cyberattacks targeting Microsoft. Cybercriminals and fraudsters were becoming more sophisticated, utilizing a variety of tools and techniques to get around existing security systems and detection methods. The increasing number of online services and the wealth of personal information was also making it harder for businesses to protect themselves and their customers. Yinglian became increasingly concerned that the threats facing internet services was outpacing innovation in cybersecurity.

Fast forward to today, DataVisor has protected more than 3 billion users globally, including some of the largest financial institutions and internet properties including Pinterest, Yelp and Alibaba Group. Investors also have recognized the company’s potential, with top-tier venture capital firms such as NEA and Sequoia China backing our company. This February we closed a $40 million Series C round, with which I plan to expand both our product development and business teams in order to further improve our products and expand our business globally.