In conversation with Veridox’s Founder Dan Sandler

Outward recently led the £1m funding round – you can read more about our investment thesis here. For now, let’s hear from the founder himself.

Insurers are losing over half a trillion dollars a year to fraud worldwide. Despite the scale of the problem—and knowing it will only worsen as AI enables fraudsters—insurers still rely on manual reviews of photos and documents to identify forgeries, often with the human eye. Veridox utilises AI to automate this process, delivering accurate results in seconds instead of weeks or months.

I’ve started several businesses over the years across property, car rental, and tech. Doing it alone is tough, but finding the right co-founder is even harder. I didn’t initially set out to do this alone; Veridox evolved from a business I already owned, so it started with myself by default. From day one, I saw the gaps—I’m not a developer, and sales isn’t my forte. That’s why I brought in Amy, our Director of Sales and Partnerships. Her experience in startups and her ability to adapt quickly meant she could get us in front of enterprise clients fast. Once we validated the opportunity, I brought in Joey, a trusted CTO with whom I previously built and sold a company. He owns the tech, I own the vision, and we work well together. While I began as a solo founder, I’ve always built Veridox as a company, not a one-man show. I trust my team greatly and treat each of them as a co-founder in their own right.

Before Veridox, I ran a car rental business and developed a vehicle damage app which had a large user base but no clear revenue model. At the time, I read about the 300% rise in motor insurance fraud claims due to AI manipulation. I spoke with an underwriter at a major insurer, who confirmed they needed help fighting fraud. I thought my existing app might assist, but it wasn’t the right fit. After the five other insurers begged me for a solution, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I spent a month exploring how to tackle the problem and built a MVP in two weeks. When a $3 billion insurer asked to pay for and test that MVP—even though it didn’t work perfectly—I realised I had to develop a usable product. In December 2024, one week before Christmas, the same insurer tested the updated version and identified £50,000 worth of fraud in under five seconds. That’s when I decided to go all-in on Veridox—a satisfying Christmas present to myself.

I always ask whether they’ve worked in a startup before or started their own business. I like to operate with a lot of trust, autonomy, and delegation. I’ve learned the hard way over the years that I don’t have all of the answers, and I want to be surrounded by people who aren’t afraid to try new ideas, push back, or ultimately see things I’m missing. Someone with startup experience or entrepreneurial background tends to understand this mindset much better than someone coming solely from a large corporation.

You’ll probably laugh when you hear the answer, but I didn’t flinch when I heard the question. I’d choose Marcus Williamson, a fellow Outward portfolio founder. We’re at the same stage in business and life, with similar backgrounds and challenges. We live in different cities but talk regularly. I find his perspective, thought process, and objectiveness both inspiring and helpful.

It started when I was, really young, about 10 years old. I remember wanting to know lyrics to songs and not being able to find them. I thought that others may have the same problem and so I came up with the idea to sell copies of my school mates favourite songs for a pound. Spoiler – this didn’t really take off as a business, but it did spark my curiosity to solve problems, and that that’s never really stopped.

The North is great. I think it’s been historically overlooked because of London’s dominance, but the creative and entrepreneurial scene in Manchester is, in some ways, much better. Everyone knows everyone here. Manchester isn’t as spread out as London, geographically speaking, so it’s easier to find startups. Plus it’s cheaper to run and scale with local talent. I think there’s an unwritten barrier of intimidation for founders in the North looking to VCs in London and maybe a mindset of VCs in London who haven’t had to look North for deal flow, leading to a natural disconnect. If a VC took the initiative to spend some time in Manchester and organised something small, I’m confident they’d be inundated with great founders.

Exiting my first business, Tab—a platform for order and pay—was a surreal experience I’ll never forget. My then-cofounder Joey (now Veridox CTO) and I started it in 2015. We grew the platform, but ultimately couldn’t turn a profit, so we decided to shut it down in 2019. To save costs, we deleted all the code from GitHub, since hosting it was costing me a couple of hundred pounds a month and didn’t seem worth keeping alive.

Fast forward to March 2020—just as the pandemic hit—and order and payout systems suddenly became highly valuable. Out of the blue, I got a call from a CEO offering a six-figure sum to buy the app. There was a problem, though: we had deleted all the code, and once it’s moved to the GitHub trash, it’s permanently deleted after ninety days. We were on day 85. Retrieving it from the trash was not straightforward. We raised a ticket, received an auto-reply promising a response within ten days, and tried everything else—emails, DMs, posts to every platform, and calls to every number.

Eventually, we got a response, and somehow managed to restore the code with just two days to spare. That restoration allowed us to proceed with the deal, alongside offers from some of the biggest drinks brands in the world, and successfully sell the company.