Conventional startup wisdom says, “Focus on a niche, define your ideal customer profile, and double down.” We’ve always focused on KYB, but early on, we felt pressure to narrow our focus to one industry or use case.

We resisted narrowing to a single ICP and built methodically towards a platform that is valuable across industries. We had good reason: as we engaged the market, it became really obvious that every sector shared the same KYB pain points- of course they all had some hyper-specific nuance around the edges- but at the core, it was the same challenges. What started with online marketplaces in our research quickly expanded– we saw banks, accountancy firms, logistics providers, fintechs, insurers, and supply chain businesses all struggling.

As you may know, prior to Detected, I had zero knowledge of KYB or even of Compliance, but just assumed it was pretty good. I remember speaking to one of the biggest banks in the world, who was literally emailing new customers a spreadsheet to fill out for onboarding- unsurprisingly, most potential customers didn't do that and went to a competitor with a slick 5-minute signup. That conversation was 3 years ago, and the process is still exactly the same. The low standards and lack of progress in this industry absolutely blows my mind.

The same pattern repeats itself in sector after sector: KYB processes are a complete mess, whether it is a marketplace vetting sellers or an accounting firm verifying clients. We realised that by solving the problem for them all meant we could create far more value than by tailoring to just one niche.

Sticking to this broad vision hasn’t been the easy path.

In hindsight, holding our nerve and building for breadth within KYB set the stage for what Detected is today: the most complete KYB platform on the market, equally at home in an international bank’s risk department or a two-sided marketplace’s onboarding flow.

Configuration Without Complexity in One Platform

While planning this article, I have been thinking about how it happened that we now manage to serve such a wide mix of industries and use cases with a single platform. It is a mix of two things:

1) listen to what potential customers want, and build it - I very regularly get the feedback 'finally, someone built what the industry needed'

2) we have always insisted on making the platform “simple, powered by complex” - we don't feel the need to overcomplicate the product to prove ourselves, it needs to be simple for our customers with the magic happening behind the scenes.

Take our Customer Portal as an example again. It’s not a one-size-fits-all questionnaire like most businesses we see in RFPs - it's a collection of independent but tightly connected modules. Every Detected client gets a portal that is entirely no-code configurable– you can decide which questions to ask, which documents to collect, which checks to run, and in what sequence, all through an intuitive UI. The portal can dynamically react to the user’s context: their country, company type, risk profile, the product they’re applying for, etc., and present a tailored set of steps. There are literally unlimited combinations of these journeys available, but configuring one doesn’t require engineering work- it’s point-and-click. This means an accounting firm can set up a different onboarding flow than a fintech, which in turn can have multiple flows for different risk tiers of customers. Each sees only what’s relevant to them. And because the portal is fully white-labeled, the end-user feels like they’re interacting with the company’s brand at every step, not some third-party system.

Behind the scenes, our Case Management system and Decision Engine are equally configurable. A client can define their own risk scoring rules– for example, what constitutes “high risk” versus “low risk” can be tweaked to match their risk appetite. The platform orchestrates thousands of data points– from corporate registries, credit bureaus, sanction lists, and importantly, the information a business owner provides– and automatically assign a risk score based on any combination of logic the client chooses. There are then configurable automated actions based on the score, such as customers receiving a specific request for information automatically.

If that sounds complex, that’s because under the hood, it is complex. But we’ve made the interface for clients simple: drag-and-drop policy building, setting threshold values in the platform, all without writing code. And crucially, our Decision Engine isn’t just scoring, it’s also automating. If an application’s risk score comes out below the approval threshold, you can let it auto-approve. If it’s above, you can automatically flag it for manual review and have a specific compliance checklist assigned, or even auto-reject in extreme cases. You can set automated actions (“if-this-then-that” rules) in the case management workflow– for example, “If any director is a Politically Exposed Person, require a senior manager sign-off”- and the system will enforce that. Compliance teams configure their ideal process once, and Detected makes it happen

This level of configuration, paired with process automation, is how we are both broad and deep. A local bank in one country and a global e-commerce marketplace might have very different KYB requirements; we serve both by not forcing a rigid process template on either. Each gets a bespoke workflow, but delivered through the same Detected platform. That means we can be equally valuable to a Big Four accounting firm checking corporate clients, a fintech onboarding SMEs, or a logistics company vetting new suppliers– all without building separate products or custom forks. We built one platform capable of handling all these variations as configurations.

Importantly, this doesn’t mean the platform is complicated to use– quite the opposite. The compliance lead at one client described our admin interface as “LEGO blocks for KYB policies.” It’s powerful but intuitive. Not all customers will use all features, but every customer has access to every feature because there is only one version of the platform. The magic lies in the configuration. We’ve eliminated the need for engineers to get involved in compliance workflow changes, which is a game-changer. T

The result is that our customers can adapt faster (when regulations change or they enter new markets) and they don’t feel “stuck” with a rigid system. In feedback, we often hear that this agility is one of Detected’s greatest strengths. In a world where regulations and risks evolve constantly, having a KYB platform that you can reconfigure on the fly, without months of development, is a huge competitive edge.

Partner Strategy: Depth Over Volume in Go-to-Market

One of the interesting commercial challenges of having no single ICP, of being useful to many types of customers, is figuring out how to reach them all efficiently. We definitely under-appreciated this in the first few years of the business. We’re a lean team with big ambitions, and at times, we diluted our focus by chasing dozens of different verticals on our own.

Having no single ICP, at least in the early stages of a business, makes growth extremely difficult. A well-defined ICP means everything from the messaging to the pricing can be incredibly targeted to ensure it resonates - I massively underestimated this, but I am glad I did.

By trying to be all things to all people, we became all things to all people from a product perspective. Years of ‘this bank needs this’ and ‘this marketplace needs that’ and it all goes on the roadmap, means we now have the most complete KYB platform in the market.

But, having a product doesn’t matter if nobody is using it, which is why we flipped to a partner-driven go-to-market strategy, which gives us distribution without requiring a massive direct salesforce for every industry.

What does that mean in practice? It means we’ve teamed up with established players who already have distribution and trust in those industries. For example, we partnered with a leading AML data provider, ComplyAdvantage, to combine our KYB platform with their world-class financial crime data in an integrated offering. Instead of us knocking door-to-door on banks and fintechs, we have ComplyAdvantage (which many of those institutions already rely on for AML) bringing Detected into the conversation as their KYB partner. It’s a win-win: their clients get a seamless KYC/KYB solution, and we get distribution through a trusted channel.

We’ve done similar things with other partners– for instance, our collaboration with GBG, a global leader in identity verification, led to the launch of “GBG Detected,” an end-to-end KYB offering combining our platform with GBG’s data and reach. When a listed business with 1500+ people puts their name alongside ours, it sends a strong signal to the market about the confidence in our product.

Another example is in North America where Visa refer us to their customers when looking for a KYB platform - the sort of credibility that money can't buy.

The partner strategy allows us to stay focused on building a world-class product while our partners help bring it to the world. Instead of hiring an army of salespeople to call on accounting firms or logistics companies or regional banks, we integrate with partners who already serve those segments. This approach also lends tremendous credibility. Detected may be a relatively young company, but when an established firm introduces our platform to a client, it eases any concerns. We’ve seen prospective customers go from “Who are you guys?” to “Oh, I’ve heard of you, my friend at XYZ Bank was talking about Detected,” in a short space of time. The network effect is kicking in, accelerated by these partnerships and the reputation we’re building.

Another advantage of scaling via partners is that we can maintain depth over volume in our go-to-market efforts. We don’t need to flood the top of the funnel and risk stretching our implementation and support teams too thin. Instead, we work closely with select customers on deals where we know we can deliver exceptional value, and we ensure those deployments are wildly successful. Each success then drives more success, as happy clients and partners spread the word.

It’s a deliberate, methodical way to grow, very much in line with how we’ve built the product itself. I’d rather have 50 customers who pay good money across 5 industries who absolutely love the product and make it core to their operations, than 100 customers who use a fraction of the features and pay very little. Depth creates advocates; volume, if not carefully managed, can just create noise. By leveraging partners, we achieve breadth in reach but still keep our customer engagements deep and high-touch.

It hasn’t been lost on us (or on our partners) that what we’ve built in Detected is potentially game-changing at a global scale. The more we integrate into others’ ecosystems, the more it feels like Detected’s platform could serve as a new infrastructural layer for business verification worldwide. We’re already seeing hints of that– for instance, when a bank signs up through a partner and deploys Detected, it effectively becomes part of that bank’s core infrastructure for onboarding. Multiply that by many institutions and industries, and you can see how Detected becomes the default platform. It’s an exciting prospect: our technology reaching its full potential as part of a larger organisation or global infrastructure that amplifies its impact .

We don’t explicitly plan for “end game” scenarios, but we recognise that our partner-centric model is organically positioning Detected as the KYB solution that bigger platforms and enterprises want under their hood. And we’re okay with that! In fact, it validates our approach– we set out to be the best KYB platform, not necessarily the biggest brand. If being the best means our solution lives inside a larger ecosystem to achieve massive scale, then that is a natural and positive evolution.

KYB as a Competitive Advantage, and Just the Beginning

It’s been nearly 5 years since we wrote the first lines of code for Detected. In that time, we’ve navigated plenty of tough calls– what to build, what not to build, which feedback to listen to, which to ignore. The decision to build broadly useful capabilities rather than narrow ones was arguably the defining choice in our journey. We didn’t listen to the voices telling us to pigeonhole ourselves. We stuck to the belief that KYB is a universal problem that deserved a universal solution.

Detected has become what I honestly believe is the most complete KYB platform in the market. Our capabilities have proven valuable to an accountancy firm verifying its clients and to a global bank onboarding merchants and to a tech marketplace vetting new sellers and to a logistics provider validating suppliers. Not many products can say that without becoming a bloated mess. We achieved it by being disciplined, focusing on one brilliant product rather than many, but making that one product configurable to fit any context.

We are not done. In fact, I feel like we’re at the tipping point of something even bigger. The momentum is building– sales cycles are shortening, inbound interest is rising, and the market is waking up to what modern KYB should look like. Detected is becoming the go-to name, the standard that forward-thinking companies insist on. My early dream, which you’ll know if you’ve followed the business for a while, was to see Detected become “mandate software”- the kind of platform that, when an exec changes jobs, they insist their new company adopts. We’re closer to that reality than ever. Every time I hear about a Head of Compliance moving to a new firm and quickly calling us up, it reinforces that we’re on the right track.

The next 3 months for the platform are huge - we have 3 distinct areas of the product where we are pushing ourselves, even by our standards, harder than ever before. I won’t say too much now, but what I will say is that doing the much harder thing of solving KYB first has been the perfect foundation to expand more deeply into being a full compliance platform.

As I always say - to everyone who’s been part of this journey- our team, our customers, our partners and our investors, thank you.