Archived copy: Middesk Raises $16M from Sequoia to Scale Business Identity and Launch New Agent Product

Table of contents

Stay in the loop

At Middesk, our mission is to enable businesses to access the products and services they need to grow and thrive.

Since starting the company in early 2019, we’ve been excited about making trust between businesses frictionless and scalable. In addition to powering the next generation of B2B products, we believe that improving trust between businesses makes it easier for them to form, grow, and thrive by enabling access to better financial products, credit terms, and partnerships. Today, we're thrilled to announce that Middesk has raised a $16 million Series A, led by Sequoia Capital with participation from existing investors Accel Partners and Y Combinator.

Enabling access with Middesk Identity

Over the last two years, Middesk has built direct access to federal, state, and local governments. We provide complete, trusted government data on every registered business in the United States, allowing our customers to power compliance, fraud, and underwriting decisions. In fact, last year our Identity product powered the decisions to enable more than 200,000 businesses to access financial products like bank accounts and working capital. We verified over 50,000 businesses applying for PPP loans to pay their rent and payroll, with a significant percentage of these businesses being minority-owned small businesses.

Without Middesk, many of these businesses would have been unable to access these products or services for several additional days or weeks due to business onboarding inefficiencies. Instead, we've enabled customers like Brex, Affirm, Mercury, Divvy, and BlueVine to scale their onboarding while reducing risk and reliance on cumbersome customer onboarding requirements.

Looking ahead, Middesk will continue to expand our data services to enable our customers to make well-informed, fast decisions on engaging with their customers. We’re excited to accelerate our mission and enable more than 1,000,000 businesses to access business services like payments, payroll, working capital, and bank accounts in 2021.

Expanding our product suite with Middesk Agent

Today, we're also thrilled to announce Middesk Agent, a new service designed to make it easy for employers, especially those hiring employees in new states, to set up payroll tax accounts.

In less than 5 minutes, Middesk Agent customers can:

• register their business with the Secretary of State
• set up the payroll tax accounts required to pay employees in new states
• automate annual reports, ensuring that all business licenses remain in good standing with the Secretary of State

Before Agent, businesses hiring employees in new states had to work with their attorney or CPA to determine state registration requirements; contract with a Registered Agent to register Secretary of State accounts; navigate and set up accounts with multiple tax agencies; and manage requirements like tracking tax changes and filing annual reports in order to maintain good standing with the state. Soon, through partnerships with payroll providers, an employer will be able to register their business in new states with only a few minutes of work, and we’ll take care of the rest.

Agent simplifies the operational and compliance overhead that comes with managing a remote team and operating your business in multiple states. Removing this friction enables customers to easily onboard remote talent pools and focus on growth opportunities. As we expand the scope of Agent, we're excited to bring transparency and control to the way that businesses engage with partners, suppliers, and the government directly.

Here's to the next chapter

We're grateful to the team, customers, and investors that have supported us along the way - we wouldn't be here without you.

While we're proud of how far we've come in the last couple of years, we’re excited to know that we’re only just getting started. If you’re interested in changing how businesses form, grow, and thrive, we’d love your help.

‍