Finance doesn't come with a playbook in a high-growth company. You build it as you go. Lindsey Bailey, Head of Finance at Middesk, has done exactly that; from standing up the function from scratch to making finance a strategic partner at the center of the business. In our latest Meet Middesk feature, she shares what that journey actually looks like: building in ambiguity, shifting from foundation to strategy, and knowing when the numbers aren't enough. A few things that stuck with us: - Context is as important as the numbers - Finance means constant context switching - Great teams make each other better Link in the comments ↓
Middesk
Software Development
San Francisco, California 7,867 followers
Middesk is business identity intelligence: decision-ready insights on every business from onboarding through monitoring.
About us
Businesses can’t move at the speed of the modern economy without knowing who they’re working with. Today, business identity data is slow, fragmented, and treated as a one-time check, creating friction for good businesses and blind spots for fraud. Middesk provides business identity intelligence that enables companies to grow faster and make confident decisions about the businesses they work with. We deliver intelligence through infrastructure, APIs, and a modular toolkit that integrates directly into onboarding, risk, compliance, and operations workflows, not as a standalone dashboard. Middesk supports any company that works with other businesses, especially where revenue velocity and risk management matter. We have over 500 customers across many industries including: Banking & fintech Lending & payments Marketplaces & embedded finance Payroll & compliance platforms We help our customers verify and onboard over 5M businesses annually, and our customers see 30% higher auto-approval rates, 60–70% less manual review, and faster onboarding without increased risk. Follow Middesk for insights on: How better business identity intelligence will help you grow Fraud and risk patterns in B2B ecosystems How fintechs, banks, and marketplaces scale safely What’s changing in KYB, AML, compliance, and onboarding
- Website
-
http://www.middesk.com
External link for Middesk
- Industry
- Software Development
- Company size
- 51-200 employees
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California
- Type
- Privately Held
- Founded
- 2019
- Specialties
- Business identity intelligence, Business identity verification, KYB, Business verification, Entity verification, Fraud detection, Fraud prevention, Risk intelligence, Business fraud, KYB compliance, AML, Regulatory compliance, Business compliance, Fintech infrastructure, Banking technology, Payments onboarding, Marketplace trust and safety, API-first infrastructure, Developer tools, and Identity Verification Software
Locations
-
Primary
Get directions
85 2nd St
Suite 710
San Francisco, California 94105, US
-
Get directions
1239 Broadway
12
New York, NY 10001, US
Employees at Middesk
Updates
-
Another Fintech Meetup in the books! The team shared the new era of business identity intelligence. Behind every great yes is Middesk. #fintechmeetup #fintechmeetup2026
-
-
-
-
-
+6
-
-
Middesk is heading to Safeguard. May 3-6 in Colorado Springs, joining 500+ fraud, identity, and compliance leaders who are rethinking how AI changes the work they do every day. If you're attending, come find us. Middesk will be running workshops on business identity intelligence, meditating in the mornings, hosting a dinner, and showing demos across Monday and Tuesday. Plenty of ways to connect with Kyle Mack, Adam Long, Yan Zeng, Jackie Wylie, & Kevin Johnson. See you at The Broadmoor. https://lnkd.in/gzbgUVKy
-
Behind every great yes is the new Middesk.
The next phase of Middesk
-
Who is the American small business now? Forbes is asking that question today, and Middesk's data has the answer. Middesk's Ken Chew and Jackie Wylie are at the center of the piece, and the insights we found are striking. Personal TIN usage among businesses has grown 8x on Middesk's platform since 2023. More than a third of business applicants now arrive without state registration. The verification infrastructure most platforms rely on was built for a business type that's becoming increasingly rare. As Jackie put it: "A sole proprietor who formed in Delaware through LegalZoom looks identical in the data to a shelf company being prepped for fraud. If your verification layer can't tell the difference, you're not managing risk, you're just turning away good customers." Middesk's data is the backbone of the piece. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/gRa7DX2H
-
Numeral set out to make business onboarding feel the way it should: fast, intuitive, and low friction. With Middesk, they reduce common sources of friction like legal name typos, missing EINs, and DBA mismatches before they ever become an issue. Instead of manual entry and guesswork, users can simply type a name, select the right match, and move forward with confidence. Middesk Prefill brings that experience to life by automatically populating key business details from authoritative sources and streamlining the entire flow. The result is smoother onboarding, stronger data quality, and a compliance process that just works. https://lnkd.in/gkTSrpru
-
-
Shelf companies are completely legal. That's what makes them dangerous. A business formed years ago, sitting dormant, then suddenly reactivated with new ownership and a clean history. To most onboarding checks, it looks fine. To fraudsters, it's a blueprint. In our next BEV Break, Drew Singer (Head of Product, Middesk) and Seth Sattler (Head of Compliance, Oscilar) are breaking down how shelf companies are used in modern fraud schemes — and what signals actually catch them. What you'll walk away with: How fraudsters exploit reactivated businesses The post-onboarding signals that surface shelf company abuse How to build event-driven fraud reviews without adding friction March 19 at 1:00–1:30 PM ET / 11:00–11:30 AM PT Register: https://lnkd.in/ddAhnRkW
-
The Middesk Index Q4 2025 shows a familiar year-end pattern — with a twist. Business formation cooled seasonally, declining from 1.41M in Q3 to 1.29M in Q4. But credit activity didn’t slow in the same way, and borrowing grew increasingly concentrated among established companies. The latest Middesk Index breaks down what’s happening across U.S. business formation, secured lending, and emerging risk signals. Read the full report: https://lnkd.in/gKdzkqAg
-
Eight months after you approved that commercial account, three things changed. The registered mailing agent changed. A beneficial owner was added to a watchlist. The entity filed a UCC lien in a state you don't actively monitor. Your system still shows it as approved and in good standing. The risk didn't appear at onboarding. It accumulated after. Quarterly re-verification doesn't catch that — it just creates the feeling of oversight without the substance. We wrote about what ongoing monitoring actually requires. Full breakdown here → https://lnkd.in/eBPvnaW6