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Yardstik's $30 million Series B, led by Harbert Growth Partners, bets that background checks expire the moment a worker is hired - and that employers will pay continuously to keep watching.
Key Takeaways:
- Yardstik closed a $30M Series B led by Harbert Growth Partners, bringing total capital raised to $65M.
- The Minneapolis startup reported 149% year-over-year revenue growth ahead of the round.
- Funds target expanded monitoring in gig, healthcare, and logistics, including credential expiration alerts.
Lead
Yardstik, the Minneapolis-based workforce-verification startup, announced a $30 million Series B on August 27, 2026, led by Harbert Growth Partners. Existing backers Rally Ventures, MissionOG, Crosslink Capital, Grotech Ventures, and Great North Ventures all participated. The round brings total capital raised to $65 million. Valuation was not disclosed.
What Does Yardstik Actually Do?
The company sells what it calls a Human Trust Platform - a single product that bundles pre-hire fraud detection, candidate background screening, credential verification, and ongoing post-hire monitoring. Founded in 2020 by Matt Meents, Yardstik targets the structural gap traditional background-check vendors have long ignored: the fact that a worker's risk profile does not freeze on their first day.
Customers include H&R Block and GoPuff. The platform can flag when a driver's license lapses, when a healthcare worker's certification expires, or when an Office of Inspector General exclusion is added to a gig worker's record - events that a one-time pre-hire check would never catch.
Why Is This Round Happening Now?
Revenue grew 149% year over year heading into the raise, and account retention held at 98% over three years. Those numbers give Harbert Growth Partners a credible story to back. They also raise an implicit question about the prior rounds: if growth was already that sharp, why did Yardstik need another $30 million rather than pressing toward profitability?
The answer is almost certainly product surface area. Motor vehicle report monitoring, OIG exclusion tracking, and automated credential-expiration alerts each require integrations with dozens of state and federal databases. Building and maintaining those pipelines is expensive regardless of revenue trajectory. The capital buys coverage, not survival.
Which Sectors Is Yardstik Targeting?
Gig, healthcare, and logistics are the named priorities. That targeting is deliberate. All three industries share the same liability profile: high worker turnover, regulatory scrutiny of credential status, and employers who are legally exposed if a contractor with a revoked license or excluded status causes harm on the job.
Healthcare is the most lucrative segment. Hospitals and home-care agencies already run OIG exclusion checks periodically, often manually. Automating that process and integrating it with background screening is a compliance workflow most enterprise HR departments would pay to outsource. Logistics carries similar pressure as transportation regulators tighten commercial driver monitoring requirements. Gig platforms add volume, but margins there are thinner.
What Does This Imply About the Background-Check Market?
The traditional background screening industry was built around point-in-time verification: run a check before hire, file the result, move on. Vendors like Sterling Check and First Advantage built large businesses on that model. Yardstik's pitch is that continuous monitoring is the next layer employers will be required - or pressured - to add.
That market logic is sound, but the competitive moat is less obvious. Any established background-check vendor can add a monitoring subscription to their existing platform. Yardstik's advantage lies in its integrated architecture and, for now, its head start building the alert logic. Whether that lead holds as larger players respond is the central question the next few years will answer.
Outlook
Yardstik enters its Series B phase with strong retention metrics, a clear sector focus, and a credible product thesis. The $65 million in total raised suggests investors see a path to meaningful scale in gig and healthcare compliance - two markets where regulatory pressure is more likely to intensify than ease. The company's ability to expand its database integrations and hold its retention rate as it moves upmarket into larger enterprise accounts will determine whether this round is a bridge to profitability or a setup for Series C.
