– ESTONIA, Tallinn – Veriff, the online identity verification startup, raises a $7.7M series A round. The company uses the investment to further develop its SaaS product and expand to the US market, while making the world’s most advanced ID verification available for SMEs.
The $7,7M investment round led by Mosaic Ventures was joined by Taavet Hinrikus, Ashton Kutcher, Paul Buchheit, Elad Gil, Y-Combinator, SV Angel, ACE Ventures, LIFT99, Superangel and took place right after graduating Y Combinator’s W18 batch. Simon Levene of Mosaic Ventures and Taavet Hinrikus will both join the board of Veriff. In total, Veriff has raised $8.4M in investment from 25 institutional and private investors including the most successful startup founders in Estonia – now called Estonian Mafia and Andrew Prozes (former CEO of LexisNexis).
The founder of Veriff, 23-year-old Kaarel Kotkas is keen to highlight that raising the Series A investment is a huge step towards expansion. “Literally, we are the Stripe for identity, allowing any website and mobile device to verify drivers’ license, passport or government issued ID. Identity verification services were accessible only to large corporations due to high integration costs. Our mission is to build bridges of trust within global online communities. A business can integrate our service in minutes with reasonable cost. The compatibility with the needs of SMEs is our competitive advantage, which we need to exploit,” he said.
Simon Levene, co-founder and partner of Mosaic Ventures, said: “Online identification verification impacts three key components of company’s growth: compliance, scalability and conversion. It is amazing, then, that identification is still a problem to be solved in 2018. The stakes have recently increased too, as KYC is becoming an increasingly important pain point due to privacy regulation, online banking and the explosion of crypto offerings, with the latter facing looming SEC regulation. With this in mind, we are delighted to invest in Veriff, and its exceptional founder Kaarel Kotkas.”
Gustaf Alstromer, partner of Y-Combinator, said: ”People are already using the Internet to sign up for banks, financial products or any other products where knowing their real identity is critical. In all of those cases, you need to verify your real identity online. Veriff has built the fastest, easiest and most developer-friendly identity verification product that I have seen. Kaarel and Janer are two incredible founders who were part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2018 batch, they impressed us with their vision of where the world of identity verification is going and have proved flawless execution towards that vision.”
About Veriff
Online identity verification startup Veriff was founded in 2015 by then 20-year-old Kaarel Kotkas. Veriff’s product was launched in June 2016, when two companies Inbank and Hansapost integrated Veriff to decrease the amount of bad loans by empowering their KYC procedures. Veriff is a graduate of Y- Combinator 2018 winter class. Today, Veriff has over 40 paying customers around the globe including financial enterprises, marketplaces, sharing economy companies and e-commerce sites. The company has its development and customer service team based in Tallinn, Estonia. Sales and marketing operations are to be moved to the United States.
About Kaarel Kotkas
Kaarel Kotkas is the founder and CEO of Veriff. He is a tech savvy serial entrepreneur, who has already started two companies before settling his focus on Veriff. Nordic Business Report has listed Kaarel Kotkas among 25 most outstanding young entrepreneurs of Northern Europe.
About Mosaic Ventures
Mosaic Ventures is a Silicon Valley-style venture capital firm based in London, focused on Series A. The company is investing a $140 million fund in founding teams that are fundamentally reshaping big markets. The partners of Mosaic Ventures have 25+ years of experience investing on both sides of the Atlantic having invested across 10 countries in over 70 companies that together have created over $400 billion of value.
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