How Detected Is Becoming The Must Have KYB Platform

There’s a moment every founder waits for - the tipping point when your solution transitions from “Maybe we should try this” to “We must have this".

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We are not there quite yet, but we’re seeing that tipping point come into view. I've spoken before about tenure in the compliance industry being important in the minds of buyers who simply won't take a risk by buying a product from a newly formed business.

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One of the ambitions I talked about often in the early days was for Detected to become ‘mandate software’ - software that when executives move to new organisations, they insist is used.

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Our sales cycles are shrinking, even while our product capabilities and therefore price grows. That’s the dream, right?

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I would say this but I do think its true, it is because of how good Detected is - but it's also more than that. This is a shift in how businesses want to buy their compliance technology- and it resonates with the same wave Shopify rode when it became the e-commerce platform everyone knew and trusted.

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There’s something powerful that happens when your product stops being explained and starts being expected. Detected is reaching that point with an increasing number of buyers who are coming to us not with a list of questions, but with a checklist of deployment steps. This shift really isn’t just anecdotal - we see it in the tone of emails, in the urgency of meetings, and in the way procurement teams engage. It signals something deeper than product-market fit; it signals belief.

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A belief that we’re building what’s next. That KYB doesn't have to be painful. That operational excellence and compliance standards can live in the same sentence.

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A New Era of KYB Purchasing

For years, compliance teams approached technology, and specifically the technology used for KYB, like a patchwork quilt - layering one tool on top of another just to meet the latest requirement. It was reactive. Each new regulation triggered a quick fix, not a strategic rethink. Over time, this created complexity, slowed teams down, and stifled innovation. Most of their energy went into making legacy systems talk to each other rather than building something better.

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And when it came to change? They’d evaluate every possible risk - sometimes to the point of analysis paralysis - before reluctantly signing off on yet another tweak to a fundamentally broken process.

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But that’s changing. Today, conversations start in a completely different place:

• They’ve heard about Detected, or at least the view of having a single platform for KYB - from colleagues, on LinkedIn, or at an event where I’ve shared our story. That social proof matters. It gives them confidence before they’ve even seen the product.
• They arrive already curious - convinced of the value modern KYB might bring, or at least open to validating what they’ve heard.
• And most importantly, they’re ready to move. Because they know that making wholesale changes is the only way to have a meaningful impact. This has only happened in the last 12 months before then the layering of a mix of tools was the default and we needed to spend a lot of time explaining the power of a platform and our platform wasn’t quite at the level it needed to be.

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It’s not that compliance concerns have disappeared. But we’ve started to become the safe bet - the platform that fits the enterprise standard while making everything feel simpler, faster, and more connected.

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In practice, this means that what once required three demos, multiple proof-of-concept stages, and a 60-page risk assessment is now often moving straight into implementation design. The narrative has flipped. We used to lead with "Why Detected," and often it’s "How soon can we start?" And when you’re no longer convincing the market that the problem matters—because they know it does—you get to focus on showing how you're solving it better than anyone else.

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From Slow Burn to Rapid Buy-In: The Shopify Parallel

Let’s rewind to Shopify’s early days: as a relative unknown, it faced the typical uphill battles in convincing retailers to invest. But once its credibility soared and everyone was talking about its ease of use, integration, and reliability, the sales cycle condensed. That same trust factor is what we’re witnessing with Detected:

• Brand Credibility: The more businesses use us, the stronger our reputation grows. This trust acts as a shortcut for new buyers - less scepticism, more eager buy-in.
• Network Effect: Just like Shopify got recommended by entrepreneurs to entrepreneurs, our customers champion Detected to their peers in compliance and beyond.

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I know that this Shopify analogy might seem like I’m overreaching but for reasons I have explained before, it is set to be a very similar story.

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It’s not just about recognition—it’s about predictability. Shopify became the go-to platform because people trusted that it would work as promised. That’s the type of muscle memory Detected is now creating in the KYB space. When a Head of Risk or Chief Compliance Officer moves from one company to another and immediately sets up a meeting with us, that’s not brand awareness - that’s operational trust.

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We’re not trying to mimic Shopify in terms of vertical or scale. What resonates is the trajectory, the early grind and then the inbound tipping point. That sequence is familiar. But the unique part of our journey is how enterprise clients are aligning around a shared understanding that something foundational needs to change in KYB—and that Detected can be that foundation.

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Easy on the Surface, Powerful Under the Hood

I often say Detected is “simple where it should be, complex where it counts.” For example, when a business profile is created, we automatically populate the ownership structure and against pre-defined criteria build out the blend of associated people and automatically screen them - all of that information instantly impacts the pre configured risk score. The thing is, it just happens and if the only output the compliance team wants to see is the change in score being alerted, that's all they see.

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Reduced friction is a game-changer. When compliance teams see that they can trust that Detected provides the whole onboarding journey and ongoing monitoring capability from a single platform that integrates to their existing CRM it becomes a no-brainer.

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The broader business impact is very important too, and the perceived complexity which meant that ‘KYB slows down sales’ is gone because we’ve shown that the opposite is true!

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The magic is that our clients don’t have to see all of that happening unless they want to. It’s not just automation—it’s smart abstraction. We allow teams to focus on exceptions, not the process. And when you build in intelligence that gets better over time, the system actually becomes an ally rather than another system to manage. We’re quietly transforming KYB from a blocker into a strategic advantage.

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The Sales Cycle: How Quick Is Quick?

We’re not just guessing that our sales cycles are shrinking we’re measuring it (of course). Our average time from the first call to contract signed is 10 weeks and with one of our strategic partners, we even had a bank move from a first conversation in September to a signed contract in March.

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I’m going to repeat that - a bank. From the first intro call to a signed contract for a platform which replaces its end-to-end KYB operations in less than 6 months - unheard of.

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So while the deeper capabilities of Detected have grown, the path to contract has become shorter. Here’s what’s fueling that:

• Pre-Educated Buyers: They’ve researched KYB thoroughly or have heard about us before we even talk.

• Enterprise-Ready Tech: Security and IT teams sign off faster when they see our certifications (ISO, SOC2 2 and GDPR), compliance posture, and robust feature set.

• Proven ROI: Seeing is believing. Seeing the stats from existing clients provides tangible proof that becomes a green light for new prospects.

• Partner Credibility: It is not just Detected that is saying Detected is great, we are being introduced to customers by established names in the industry

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This kind of momentum builds confidence internally for our buyers. Procurement teams feel safer moving quickly. Risk teams see that the path has been walked before. And for us, it means we can move from initial conversation to full deployment within the same budgeting cycle—a milestone that was nearly impossible even two years ago.

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We’re seeing a bigger shift in the market - buyers don’t just want to check a compliance box anymore. They want an end-to-end platform that evolves alongside the ever-changing regulatory landscape. The acceleration of our sales cycles is a symptom of that shift.

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They’re done waiting: The “wait and see” approach is risky in a rapidly evolving compliance climate. They’re also ready to grow and being targeted with metrics aligned to that such as application and processing times.  Embracing modern KYB helps businesses move faster, onboard partners seamlessly, and sleep better knowing they’re covered.

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It’s not just KYB they’re trying to solve for. It’s reputation risk. It’s operational drag. It’s the loss of revenue caused by inefficiency. Detected answers all of those problems in one motion, which is why the current shift isn’t just about new buyers- it’s about legacy replacement. We’re starting to see companies rip out stitched-together toolsets in favour of a unified approach. That’s a huge change in appetite.

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The Road Ahead

For me, the lesson is clear: When you solve a mission-critical problem and do it in a way that people trust you change the buying conversation. It has taken longer than I ever thought, but it is worth waiting to be where we are now with sales cycles decreasing for an enterprise product which is increasing in value.

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We increasingly see potential customers get in touch wanting to know how quickly they can start, not whether the product is up to scratch.

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It’s a sign that the KYB market is finally ready to leave cumbersome, patchwork approaches behind and adopt the platform approach now that there is a platform capable of doing it all.

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