Truework Secures $12M Series A to Compete with Equifax
Truework Secures $12 Million Series A To Compete With Equifax
Ethan Winchell COO, Ryan Sandler CEO, and Victor Kabdebon CTO (from left) Truework
In the wake of Equifax’s data breach, companies are stepping up to be the next leader in the secure consumer verification business. One such contender, Truework, announced Series A funding of $12 million led by Sequoia Capital on Tuesday, raising its total funding to $14.9 million, including a $2.9 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures.


Launched in 2018, the San Francisco-based startup, which mostly helps banks, employers, and landlords verify consumer income and personal data, is setting its sights on breaking up Equifax’s grip on financial verification with a focus on consumer consent. In July of 2017 Equifax learned that the personal information of 147 million people had been exposed, then waited until September of that year to disclose. Earlier this month, Equifax said it will pay at least $650 million to settle claims stemming from the breach.

“Equifax makes almost $1 billion in revenue a year by selling income and employment data to verifiers at banks and often without consumer permission,” Truework CEO Ryan Sandler told Forbes. “Moving to a model that makes it faster and more secure to verify private information has seen incredibly large adoption in the one year since we’ve launched.” 


By giving explicit and clear control to consumers, Sandler says, Truework can satisfy what he sees as the growing demand for an alternative to Equifax. The company works with over 3,000 financial institutions, which hold verified income data on more than $2 billion of home loans. Other major clients include Oscar Health and InVision. 

“There’s a preexisting need for millions of Americans to validate their income, and verify other pieces of their identity, the question is how to best do that in a way that serves the interest of everybody involved including the consumer,” says Keith Rabois, the Khosla Ventures partner who led Truework’s seed funding and also serves on Truework’s board. “Arguably the incumbents don’t protect the consumer and don’t care about the consumer at all, and haven’t served paying customers very well either.”



Rabois is behind seed funding of multiple startups now valued at more than $1 billion, including Airbnb, Lyft and YouTube. A former vice president at both PayPal and LinkedIn who also served as Square’s chief operating officer, Rabois sees an opportunity for Truework in the way old-guard verifiers, like Equifax, have handled consumer privacy. Positioning itself as a solution for the age of heightened consumer privacy could better establish the startup, he says.

“For a startup, being on the right side of history, being able to ride the wave of change is a formula that’s worked for decades,” Rabois continued. “Looking forward to the increased attention to privacy by both consumers and regulators certainly can do nothing but propel Truework.”
