Yardstik Raises $30M to Keep Checking Workers After They’re Hired

A background check usually runs once, right before someone starts. Then it stops. The risk, of course, does not. Licenses expire, certifications lapse, driving records pick up disqualifying entries — and nobody looks again.

The 2026 report from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners puts a number on what that costs. Occupational fraud runs about 12 months before anyone catches it. And 43% of cases surface through a tip, meaning fewer than half are found by the organization itself.

Yardstik, which sells fraud prevention and background screening to employers, has raised $30 million to work that gap. Harbert Growth Partners led the Series B, announced on August 27, bringing total funding to $65 million.

From a photograph to a live feed

Yardstik bundles pre-hire fraud detection, background screening and post-hire monitoring into one platform it calls a Human Trust Platform.

The legacy industry, in CEO Andrew Johnson’s words, “was built around a single moment in time” while workforce risk changes daily. Fraud signals before a check runs, monitoring after a hire, real-time credential visibility: none of it, he argues, should be a premium add-on.

His framing of the difference is the clearest statement of the company’s thesis. “If a license lapses the day after someone’s hired, an employer should know that day, not at the next annual review. That’s the difference between a photograph and a live feed.”

The new capital goes toward motor vehicle reports, OIG exclusion monitoring, and automated alerts when a worker’s license, insurance or certification expires.

The pricing decision is the notable part. Yardstik recently shipped Fraud Insights and Continuous Monitoring and made both standard for every customer at no extra cost. One gives a live view of aggregate fraud signals across a workforce; the other automatically enrolls screened workers into post-hire monitoring. These are exactly the features a competitor would meter.

149% revenue growth, 98% retention

The company started in Minneapolis in 2020. Co-founder Matt Meents moved to the board in October 2024 and Johnson took over as CEO. He began at Compellent before senior roles at Branch and Dialpad, both of which crossed $100 million in ARR during his tenure.

Revenue grew 149% year over year. Account retention over the past three years sits at 98%, customer satisfaction at 99.4%. The company placed 861st on this year’s Inc. 5000.

Customers span gig marketplaces, staffing, healthcare, transportation and logistics, and childcare, including Gopuff, TaskRabbit, Liveops and H&R Block.

Brian Carney, general partner at Harbert Growth Partners, pointed to that retention figure as the reason for the investment: customers keep finding value in protection that extends past the hire.

Yardstik plugs into major applicant tracking systems including Greenhouse, Lever and Bullhorn. More interesting is the API. Gig marketplaces and platforms can white-label its fraud prevention, verification and monitoring inside their own products.

Not fighting the giant head-on

US background check spending reached $5.1 billion this year, and 96% of employers screen. This is a saturated market, not an emerging one.

Checkr dominates it, with over $800 million in gross revenue, more than 120,000 business customers, $680 million raised and a $5 billion valuation. Yardstik’s $65 million is not in the same weight class. Checkr also already sells AI fraud detection that catches altered IDs and faked test results.

The incumbents are entrenched too. Sterling holds regulated industries, HireRight and First Advantage the multinationals, GoodHire the small-business end. Canada’s Certn competes on price at $13.99 per check across 200-plus countries.

Identity verification players are moving in as well. Persona launched candidate verification wired into Greenhouse and Workday. Socure entered workforce verification, and newcomer Tofu specializes in synthetic identities, deepfakes and proxy interviewers. As AI makes resumes and IDs easier to fake, the category keeps expanding.

Yardstik’s chosen position sidesteps all of it. It doesn’t compete on per-check price or country coverage. It attacks the industry’s premise that screening is a one-time, pre-hire event, moving the battle by making monitoring standard and skipping brand competition entirely through white-labeling. Rather than fight Checkr by name, it embeds inside the platforms.

That does mean cutting into its own margin. Whether 149% growth and 98% retention cover the cost is a question the next round will answer.