I’ve spoken a lot about why Detected’s partner-first GTM strategy matters, but as we move into Phase 2 of a plan we set in motion in mid 2024, I thought I’d take the chance to share more about our unique approach.

We are the only platform in the market which is the combination of these 3 things:

• Proven at Enterprise with direct global customers who are over 3 years into using the platform.
• Enabled via partners for them to sell as their own or via co-sell agreements.
• Built from day 1 to be a KYB platform, not a retro fit based on market demand.

In this article I'll talk briefly about:

• Why We Partner Rather Than Go Direct
• What Makes Our Technology Unique
• Why Large Risk, Fraud and Compliance Businesses Look for Partners: Not In-House Build
• Market Demand Is Moving to Platform (and Away from Point Solutions)
• What’s Next?

Why Partner Rather Than Go Direct

Anyone who’s tried to sell compliance into an enterprise knows the wall you hit: Trust. Not just product trust, but brand and institutional trust that’s been developed over decades. Whatever way you look at it- people who work in Compliance are risk averse.

When a global bank, supply chain giant or payments powerhouse onboards a vendor, it’s not just about tech specs or UI polish. The actual business of compliance is risk transfer and reassurance as much as it is technology.

I’ve learned: the people who own these relationships, the established organisations, bring that reassurance to the table. In fact, it’s their core currency. Some of them trade on it so much that they don’t build new products of their own, but that’s where we come in.

I’m often asked why we don’t just raise $50m and go hard direct and own the market. Honestly, it’s a perfectly valid approach...but A) being dictated to by a range of big VCs is my idea of hell and B) we have a strategy that is working in a unique time in an important market.

Also, most organisations, and I can see why, will trust a proven incumbent over a new entrant, whatever the feature sheet says.

That’s why our strategy works: empower the trusted players. Their relationships. Their context. Our Platform. Everyone wins.

In the past year, we’ve seen a large digital identity business launch KYB using our platform. Their customers only ever see their logo. But they know, at a technical level, they’re running the most advanced and robust KYB available. It works because the underlying trust in the reputable brand is retained.

What Makes Our Technology Unique

I have written about this in a lot of detail in previous articles so won't spend too much time on this topic but time and time again we are told that what we have built is the best in it's class. Plenty of companies claim to be “comprehensive” or “all-in-one.” Under the hood, most are piecemeal buildouts, or a legacy fraud or identity system with a few KYB add-ons.

We built Detected as a KYB-first business. It’s in our DNA, and you can see it everywhere in the platform. This week we have pushed a huge release which levels us up even more, centered around the configurability and intelligence of all of the customer facing workflows

And more than the tech, it’s about focus. Since launch and until around 9-12 months ago, every meeting, R&D spec, and roadmap iteration has been about KYB and only KYB. We have recently added full KYC flows as we evolve into a full compliance platform. That’s allowed us to get so deep, with such strong foundations, and answer so many specific vertical needs as well as adding new features and functionality quickly, that new entrants simply can’t catch up.

Why Large Risk, Fraud and Compliance Businesses Look for Partners And Don't Build

Over the last 4 years, there have been consistent acquisitions in this specific space in and around the $100-$150m mark at way above SaaS revenue multiples. This is because big businesses know the value of a platform and know they are very unlikely to execute on building it for themselves - but why?

Engineering Focus Away From Core Product: Spend a year building the 'MVP' which has 10% of the functionality of a true platform only to hit a wall or get distracted. They are right to get distracted, by building products in their core offering to ensure they drive harder into areas which customers trust them to focus on. There is also an underappreciation of the complexity of a full platform build and I have seen this play out multiple times.

So, after an initial “let’s just build it” move, many of the world’s most respected compliance, risk, fraud, and identity specialists come back to a partnership model. They have teams sales, customer relationships, and support- but Detected handles the hard, ongoing platform work underneath once the platform is implemented.

The generate revenue more quickly and without the build cost. Their clients’ needs are met on time. They get to focus on their value-add. We stay heads down, ensuring the new features are added consistently and that the platform is performant & secure.

Market Demand Is Moving to Platform (and Away from Point Solutions)

It’s hard to overstate this change: five years ago, people accepted that compliance would be a choreography of 5–10 micro-vendors, sliced by use-case, region, or data type. “Point solution” was almost a compliment- bespoke tooling for a complex world.

Now? Those cracks are where risk accumulates- one integration drifts out of spec or simply the manual work required to manage it all gets too much.. Regulators are explicit: gaps between systems or caused by people are no longer tolerable.

The industry is coming full circle. Customers want:

• Consistent controls and validation for onboarding, monitoring, remediation, and reporting.
• Greater operational efficiency (one vendor, one integration, fewer handoffs).
• Real-time, unified data for proactive risk management and instantaneous reporting under audit.
• Configurability to adapt to local rules without yet another micro-vendor in the chain.

For partners and their customers, platforms like Detected deliver exactly that: a single control pane, extensible for every regional, vertical, or workflow need, built safe by design.

It’s aqualitativechange, not a tweak. And, based on the conversations I have every single day, that threshold crossed for the industry in late 2024.

What’s next?

We’re moving into phase two of our 2024–2025 plan, and here’s what’s happening:

• Our partners (who are predominantly risk, fraud and compliance specialists (although we are formalising a partnership with one of the worlds largest payment providers) - are taking Detected deeper into their portfolios, for example selling the platform to partners as well as customers and prospects.
• We are going bigger - We will be announcing a global Strategic Alliance shortly with one of if not the biggest name in the risk and compliance industry, a business with over $2bn of annual revenue.
• Feedback from the market accelerates us further: every custom workflow, every new data vendor, every new risk rule and every localised reporting standard is shared across the ecosystem for everyone’s benefit. This comes as a result of not having to have a narrow focus in a specific vertical to deliver on a direct GTM.

If you have questions about how this model could unlock value for your business - or you’re facing a build-or-buy inflection- let’s connect. The opportunity is too big to not at least have a conversation about what is possible.