Fintech One•On•One Kyle Mack, CEO of Middesk, on creating a modern business identity platform
Small business data is very different to consumer data. When a person is born, they don't need to go and open a bank account, obtain a line of credit or apply for some kind of permit. But a business may be three days old and want all those things. This creates a data challenge. This new business has little to no digital footprint and so the available data may be negligible. Which makes it hard and risky for banks and fintechs to work with them. Enter Middesk.
My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One is Kyle Mack, the CEO and Co-Founder of Middesk. They are focused on business identity data and have spent a great deal of time and effort making it easier for banks and fintech to verify any business, including those that might only be a few days old. How they are able to do that makes for a very interesting discussion.
In this podcast you will learn:
- The idea that led to the founding of Middesk.
- Why solving for business identity is so difficult.
- Middesk's three core product offerings.
- How they moved from fintechs to banks, to the mega-banks.
- The shockingly low percentage of new business bank accounts that are approved automatically at banks.
- The details of the report they send to their customers for each business.
- How they work with the business data they receive from state and local governments.
- The huge challenges of obtaining and working with this data.
- How they interact with those companies helping to create new business entities.
- Why they created their Address Risk Insights Tool and why it is important.
- How one address in Wyoming has 375,000 businesses "operating" there.
- How Middesk is working with lenders today.
- The scale they are at today.
- Why the incumbents have not created an offering like Middesk.
- Kyle's vision for the future of Middesk.
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