How Yardstik Is Moving Background Screening to Full Workforce Lifecycle Protection

The Minneapolis-based startup is using continuous monitoring, fraud detection and embedded screening to compete in a growing employment-screening market.

Contractors and candidates typically undergo a background check before starting work. But the risks don't end after that initial screening. Months later, a worker's license could expire, they could commit an offense or could have been placed using a fake identity to begin with. Without continuous monitoring and reverifications, the organization may not discover that something has changed until an incident occurs.

Minneapolis-based Yardstik is built around the idea that screening should not stop once a worker clears the hiring process. The company combines conventional background checks with identity and fraud signals, credential verification and continuing monitoring. This approach is intended to give organizations visibility throughout a worker's relationship with them.

This week, Yardstik raised a $30 million Series B round led by Harbert Growth Partners, bringing its total capital raised to $65 million. Great North Ventures, which joined the company's $8 million Series A, participated alongside Rally Ventures, MissionOG, Crosslink Capital and Grotech Ventures. We're proud to participate in this round and continue supporting Andrew Johnson and his team.

Investing in workforce trust technology

We first backed Yardstik because the company saw an opportunity to transform background screening from a one-time transaction into an essential part of how employers manage workforce risk. As Yardstik becomes more deeply embedded in customers' operations, its product becomes harder to replace and its customer relationships grow stronger.

"Once we had built a competitive product for the point of hire, the question became obvious: Why does screening stop the day someone starts? The risk doesn't," Johnson said. "Think of us as a livestream of your workforce. The legacy players provide a snapshot."

The global employment-screening services market is projected to grow from $7.78 billion in 2026 to $13.71 billion by 2034, a 7.3% compound annual growth rate, according to Fortune Business Insights. Workforce mobility, regulatory requirements and concerns about fraud are increasing demand for technology-enabled screening.

Yardstik is capturing that opportunity by moving screening beyond a single check at hire. Its APIs allow screening and monitoring capabilities to be built into the workforce platforms employers already use. Under CEO Andrew Johnson, the company is positioning screening as a continuous layer of workforce infrastructure rather than a one-time hiring transaction.

An evolving workforce of remote and gig workers

Yardstik's momentum reflects wider changes in how companies hire and manage people. The typical occupational fraud scheme lasts 12 months before detection, with 43% of cases uncovered through a tip, according to a 2026 Association of Certified Fraud Examiners report. Gig, hourly and contract platforms onboard large, frequently changing workforces, while remote interactions make identity substitution and fabricated credentials easier. Employers in transportation, healthcare and other safety-sensitive industries also face risks that can arise after someone begins working.

Companies increasingly expect screening to operate within their cloud-based hiring and workforce systems rather than through a separate manual process. Automation, AI and API-based verification are making screening easier to integrate into those systems. Employers are also extending pre-hire checks into recurring post-hire monitoring and favoring integrated platforms over stand-alone products.

"A check on day one really tells you nothing about that person 200 days later," Johnson said. "That gap is the whole company of Yardstik. It's what we're solving now."

Yardstik's niche

Yardstik is differentiating itself in three key ways. First, its monitoring products can continue checking relevant criminal and driving-record data after someone begins working. Second, the company combines background screening with identity verification, credential checks and fraud signals. This is intended to help organizations determine whether applicants are who they claim to be and whether they remain eligible for their roles. And finally, Yardstik offers APIs and white-label integrations that allow applicant-tracking, workforce-management and human-capital platforms to incorporate its services into their own workflows.

"We've invested a lot to show up where people hire," Johnson said. "We've also automated a majority of the work for which legacy providers use offshore talent to manually review data. At the end of the day, our customers have a more accurate, faster product and real-time monitoring of their workforce."

Disrupting entrenched incumbents

With the new funding, the company is now demonstrating that this approach can win customers in a market that includes large established players.

The company says the funding follows 149% year-over-year revenue growth and a 99.4% customer-satisfaction rating. Yardstik's customers include Gopuff, Liveops, Sharetown, Taskrabbit and HUNGRY.

"Yardstik's growth shows employers want a way to manage risk that doesn't stop the day someone's hired," said Brian Carney, general partner at Harbert Growth Partners. "Its 98% account retention rate over the past three years shows that customers continue to see value in the layered protection they provide beyond the background checks at hire."

From candidate screening to broader trust infrastructure

Yardstik's immediate opportunity is candidate screening, but its near-term challenge is to prove that customers will expand from point-of-hire checks into workforce monitoring and fraud prevention, turning screening from a discrete transaction into infrastructure used throughout the worker lifecycle.

The company plans to use the new funding to accelerate its fraud-prevention and monitoring capabilities, including motor-vehicle reports, OIG exclusion monitoring and automated alerts when a worker's license, insurance or certification expires. It's also pursuing larger employers and industries where a lapse in credentials or a change in a worker's record can create significant risk. Integrations with applicant-tracking and HR platforms will help it bring those capabilities into the systems employers already use.

"The next phase is to continue pushing out new products and move faster on our vision and product roadmap," Johnson said. "It's also about doubling down on the go-to-market strategy that's working - scaling it, moving upmarket and moving into new industries."

If Yardstik can establish that model in employment, the same underlying capabilities could eventually support marketplaces, rentals, lending and other transactions in which businesses need continuing confidence in someone's identity, credentials or eligibility. The broader opportunity is not simply to conduct more background checks, but to build an ongoing trust layer for interactions that depend on knowing who is on the other side.

A Midwestern model for disciplined growth

Johnson has spent much of his career helping young technology companies find product-market fit and scale. Before joining Yardstik as chief operating officer in 2022 and becoming CEO in 2024, he spent more than five years at Branch, another Great North Ventures portfolio company. He joined Branch before it had a product or was generating significant revenue. He helped build its go-to-market organization, eventually serving as chief revenue officer.

That experience taught him to resist scaling a sales organization before addressing the meaningful customer problem.

"You have to find product-market fit as fast as possible," he said. "Before you even start scaling your go-to-market team, you've got to nail that and have conviction in what you're trying to solve for customers. If you skip that step, you're just going to burn money on go-to-market and churn customers."

Johnson brought that approach to Yardstik. When he joined the company, it had little revenue and roughly 40 employees. Today, it employs about 65 people, even as annual revenue has reached eight figures and the company has recorded triple-digit growth. Johnson said automation and AI have helped Yardstik's engineering and go-to-market teams accomplish more without expanding headcount at the same rate as revenue.

"We're right on the cusp of profitability while growing over three digits a year," Johnson said. "That's the nature of a Midwest startup versus a Bay Area startup that grows at all costs and worries about profitability and efficiency second."

For Great North Ventures, Yardstik demonstrates the value of backing experienced operators who can transfer knowledge across Minnesota's technology ecosystem. Johnson's time at Branch gave him experience building a company from its earliest stage, moving it upmarket and developing the teams needed to serve large customers. At Yardstik, he's applied those lessons to a different industry while retaining the same focus on product-market fit and capital-efficient growth.

Incubated in Minnesota

Minnesota's close-knit technology network supported Yardstik's path to scale and Johnson's journey as an operator and builder. Johnson pointed out that many leading tech firms have roots in Minnesota, including Compellent, Code42, Jamf and Arctic Wolf. The community is also small enough that its readers can offer ongoing mentorship and advice.

"There are numerous events where people get together to share stories," Johnson said. "We have a handful of people who get coffee every quarter just to pick each other's brains. It's not hard to network and get in front of other leaders."

The local workforce contributes to that model as well.

"Minnesotans by nature are very loyal," Johnson said. "You treat them right and give them purpose, they stick around. We try to make sure we're treating our team well and giving them opportunities to grow, and it's been a winning recipe for us."

Johnson described the broader philosophy in equally direct terms.

"It's efficient growth - it's not growth at all costs," he said. "Companies in Minnesota, in particular, start out building a real business out of the gate. You see that in the DNA here."

That's why Great North is proud to continue supporting Johnson and the Yardstik team. Yardstik is a leading example of the technology-infrastructure businesses we invest in: companies that modernize essential industry workflows, become more valuable as customers use them over time and pursue ecosystem opportunities without losing sight of sustainable economics.

By turning background screening into an ongoing layer of workforce-risk infrastructure, Yardstik is building the kind of durable, sector-specific software company that can grow from Minnesota and compete nationally.