Fighting Fraud is Product Management

Vignesh Krishnan is CEO of Research Defender.

As the CEO of a company that exists to create “a secure, healthy, and efficient sample ecosystem for the research industry,” Research Defender’s Vignesh Krishnan knows a thing or two about data quality — and fraud.

Product managers often wonder about where their research data is coming from and, frankly, if they can trust it. 

“Trust and communication is the most important thing.” Vignesh says. “So when you go to your shopping store and buy food, you trust that the food has been approved by the FDA, and you also trust that the companies aren’t gouging them. It’s the same thing. … You're a product company, you are looking for feedback on your product, and you have a company that you're hiring, wherever it is in the world. There has to be a trust and communication about what you are buying, essentially.”

He takes it a step further when talking about potential fraud in the research industry, in particular: “We, as an industry should not, and cannot, be ashamed or scared of fraud, because I can promise you, there is far, far more fraud in retail. There is far, far more fraud in banking. And in every single digital industry that we work with, there is fraud, and we don’t stop using credit cards.”

“The risk of not collecting data is significantly higher than the risk of there being potential fraud in it,” he says, adding that there are, of course, specific steps you can take to minimize fraud in your research.

Find out what those steps are — as well as Vignesh’s take on the role of product management and how he has navigated his own successful PM career — on this episode of This Is Product Management.

Download the transcript

Here are some highlights: 

• Why a PM is a “mini CEO”
• Why “context is the most important thing in business”
• Navigating as a PM when scaling a company
• The role of engineering in an organization
• How to avoid fraud in research