online-reputation
(4)
SmartCustomer
SmartCustomer (formerly Sitejabber) is a San Francisco reviews platform that helps buyers spot trustworthy online businesses and helps businesses collect, manage, and surface authentic customer reviews. Born in 2007 out of a National Science Foundation grant to fight online fraud, it has grown into a two-sided marketplace of trust - said to have helped 200M+ buyers and gathered more than 25M reviews across 140K+ businesses - and now positions verified reviews as fuel for AEO/GEO visibility in AI answer engines like ChatGPT.
Michael Lai
Michael Lai is the CEO and co-founder of Sitejabber, a consumer review platform that has served more than 100 million shoppers and collected over 10 million reviews, and of SmartCustomer, an unbiased brand discovery tool launched in 2025. A Stanford computer scientist and Harvard MBA, he started Sitejabber in 2007 after a co-founder couldn't tell whether an online medical-equipment seller was a scam. His work sits at the intersection of consumer trust, transparency, and the messy fight against fake reviews and AI-generated content.
Loti AI
Loti AI is a Seattle-based startup that scans the public internet to find, verify, and remove unauthorized uses of a person's face and voice - including deepfakes, AI impersonations, scams, and leaked content. Founded in 2022 by Luke Arrigoni, Rebekah Arrigoni, and Hirak Chhatbar, the company began protecting A-list celebrities through talent agencies like WME and CAA, then opened a free consumer tier so anyone can claim control of their own likeness. Its automated takedown engine removes flagged content with roughly a 95% success rate, typically within about 17 hours.
Naveen Gupta
Naveen Gupta is the co-founder and CEO of Birdeye, a Palo Alto-based AI-powered customer experience platform that serves over 100,000 businesses globally. Inspired by a personal struggle to find a quality surgeon for his mother at Stanford, Naveen and his brother Neeraj built Birdeye in 2012 to help businesses manage their online reputation and grow through customer feedback. Under his leadership, Birdeye crossed $100M ARR in 2023, raised over $93M in total funding, and pioneered what Naveen calls 'Experience Marketing' - the discipline of turning customer satisfaction into organic growth. A veteran of Yahoo and RingCentral, he brings deep product and operational expertise to one of SaaS's quietest success stories.