In a recent article, I described how Detected is building the equivalent of a "Shopify for KYB." That framing seemed to resonate with a lot of people, not because we’re trying to emulate Shopify’s business model (although it would be nice!), but because we share something deeper: the ambition to build infrastructure that other companies can scale on top of.

In Shopify’s case, it’s e-commerce. In our case, it’s global business onboarding and ongoing verification. That goal changes how you build. It changes what you prioritise. And it demands a very different approach to everything from funding to product development.

Since writing that piece, I’ve been thinking about and having conversations with partners about what that choice really means in day-to-day reality. Building infrastructure is not glamorous at all. In the early stages, it’s much (much) slower. It’s harder to explain. It doesn’t impress in a five-minute demo. But it’s a choice we made deliberately, and it’s one we’re doubling down on.

I’ve said this before, but one of our strengths has been our combination of naivety and grit. Neither Pete or I had worked in compliance before, which meant we simply didn’t know what we were up against: especially if you consider that a year after we started the business Passfort and TruNarrative were acquired by Moody's and Lexis Nexis, meaning the most innovative direct competition we had now had serious firepower. But, we are now winning business from customers of both of those solutions, very simply because we just carried on listening to what prospects have said they need and worked relentlessly with our incredible team day in day out to build it.

We’ve always had an idea and, more recently, become certain about the complexity of KYB- especially for businesses that operate globally. Fundamentally, it's not something you could solve by improving a single feature or adding a new data feed, despite what most KYB company websites tell you. There are too many edge cases. Too many jurisdictions. Too many unstructured inputs. We looked at the market and saw dozens of point solutions, each doing something useful. But what was missing was the layer that brings all of that together- a platform that a) understands how to orchestrate the complexity, not just slice off a manageable part of it and b) has the technical capability to continuously improve.

What we’re building isn’t about finding a quick win. It’s about providing a long-term foundation. And that foundation is only possible if we commit to solving the underlying structural problems- things like how data flows between teams and systems, how risk is assessed and re-assessed, how information is versioned and reviewed, and how context is maintained across an organisation.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with micro-innovation. It’s essential. Some of the most exciting companies we work with are laser-focused on one narrow slice of the onboarding journey- say, document authentication or entity recognition- and they do it brilliantly. We integrate them into our platform because they push the boundaries in their domains. But what makes Detected different is that we’ve made the deliberate decision to make our specialism KYB overall. We specialise in bringing the moving parts together and creating unique value as a result, which is different to just being an 'orchestration layer'.

For example, our platform will capture Director details in a country the registry doesn’t provide them, screen them for Peps, Sanctions and Adverse Media with Comply Advantage and then do a non-document ID check with ID3 by GBG - then, run the data points through our risk modelling automatically - then instantly trigger EDD or further customer interaction.

That approach changes what your team looks like. It changes how you scope work. It changes how you sell. In the early stages, it’s slower. You don’t have the luxury of a single user persona (trust me, this has been hell!). You’re not building a funnel- you’re building the system that supports multiple funnels. You have to think about compliance analysts, product teams, integration engineers, revenue operations and risk committees- all using your product in different ways, all needing access to shared context, but at different levels of depth and control.

Let me give you a real example. One of our customers, a global payment platform, included us in an RFP in which they needed to verify new business accounts quickly, but also to consolidate all of the work into a single system. They had one tool for sanctions, another for UBOs, a shared inbox for escalations, and a spreadsheet tracking who had reviewed what. Nothing spoke to anything else. Their team wasn’t inefficient (given what they were working with)- they were drowning in disconnected systems. What they needed wasn’t a better sanctions tool. They needed a platform to serve as a 'control layer' rather than just middleware, which connects data.

We won and replaced that mess with a single interface: one that gave analysts a consistent way to review, escalate, and monitor accounts, all while automatically recording every action and decision in a shared audit trail. We didn’t build a better sanctions engine- we built the system that gives sanctions engines meaning.

And that’s the difference. Infrastructure doesn’t replace the specialists. It empowers them. But someone has to take responsibility for the coordination, the integration, the reliability. That’s what we’ve taken on.

This also affects how we approach product development. We blend, “what’s the next feature our customers need?” with “how can we reshape how compliance teams do this from the ground up?” A big part of our role is to push things forward, and so often our implementation teams act as a reset button on ‘the way it's always been done’.

These choices show up in every part of the company. For example, in hiring, we prioritise system thinkers- people who understand complexity and want to reduce it without oversimplifying.

We’ve also had to become comfortable with being misunderstood, especially in the early days. When you’re building something that doesn’t have an obvious comparison, that doesn’t mimic a familiar category, you get asked a lot of questions that don’t quite fit. Are you a data provider? A workflow tool? An onboarding platform? The answer is both simpler and more complicated. We’re building the layer that connects all of those things. We’re building infrastructure, and its all connected in a single platform.

I’ve had investors tell me they don’t understand why we haven’t narrowed our focus to one piece of the problem, which is ironic because we are alone in being a KYB platform, which is proven at enterprise but still ships new features weekly. And I’ve had partners who’ve said they assumed we were just another point solution (like a workflow builder) until they saw the whole thing working together.

That’s the trade-off. When you choose to build infrastructure, you’re asking people to buy into a system that only reveals its value in motion- I have always said that Detected is going to shine brightest with millions of businesses and individuals being onboarded and checked per day - how we get there is front of mind for me right now.

Is it harder to fund? Sometimes. Is it harder to sell in the early days? Absolutely. But if you believe, as we do in this KYB-specific example, that the next generation of KYB platform needs infrastructure that can adapt to changing regulations, complex ownership models, and real-time verification demands, then you don’t chase the easy path. You build the hard one.

That’s what we’re doing. We didn’t set out to create a feature. We set out to enable a new standard. One that brings all of the micro-innovations into one place. One that can flex across industries and jurisdictions. One that lets everything from 300-person scale-ups to 10,000+ person enterprises stop worrying about what’s happening behind the scenes, and instead focus on their business.

We’ll keep doing the hard work, and we’ll keep working with those who are doing the same (keep an eye out for our Partner Spotlight Series)- whether they’re focused on one pixel of the problem or the whole screen. Because infrastructure is what makes everything else possible.

I don’t really care if people refer to us as the Shopify for KYB, what I care about is that we have hundreds of customers who see enormous value in what we have built.