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Checkr Acquires Inflection
Checkr Acquires Inflection

On April 12, 2022, Checkr announced the acquisition of B2B online background screener Inflection for approximately $400mm according to the WSJ. Architect Partners served as the exclusive financial advisor to Inflection.

Inflection is the leader in online background checks focused on the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market segment. Their highly automated platform provides fast, accurate, and cost-effective solutions with the top customer satisfaction ratings in the industry. Inflection’s core offering is GoodHire, which mainly provides pre-employment background checks to over 100,000 SMB companies. GoodHire supports over 100 screening services (drug tests, education & employment verification, etc.), delivered through their easy-to-use online platform or via API, and services a broad range of verticals including construction, healthcare, retail, and technology.

Inflection was founded in 2006 as a consumer-focused background check provider that shifted focus to the SMB market segment with the launch of GoodHire in 2013. The company is currently led by CEO Mike Grossman, COO Max Wesman, and CFO Jared Waterman. Since its inception, the company has raised $30 million from Sutter Hill Ventures (Gregory Sands) and Matrix Partners (Josh Hannah). The company has not raised outside capital since 2010.

Inflection has the leading market share in the SMB segment for pre-employment background screening. Larger, legacy background check providers that focus more on large enterprise customers include First Advantage (NASDAQ: FA), Sterling Check (NASDAQ: STER), and HireRight (NYSE: HRT).

Checkr is a background check provider founded to service the rapid background check needs of large gig economy businesses such as Uber, Lyft, and Instacart. Their platform now also offers solutions to SMB and enterprise customers across several verticals including healthcare, technology, retail, and more.

Founded in 2014, Checkr is headquartered in San Francisco, California. It is led by CEO Daniel Yanisse and has over 500 employees, serving over 15,000 enterprise customers. Over the last 8 years, Checkr has raised $560mm in equity funding through 6 rounds, with their latest series E round valuing them at $4.6B. Major investors in the company include Durable Capital Partners, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Coatue Management, T. Rowe Price (Corey Shull), Accel (Richard Wong), GV (Jules Maltz), Khosla Ventures, and several others.

Historically, Checkr has made two acquisitions, both focused around delivering higher quality data to clients and increasing process efficiencies. They acquired Lymus in October 2018 and ModoHR Technologies in February 2022, both deals had prices undisclosed.

Background checks have become an increasingly common part of the hiring process for the majority of firms across the United States. With legacy providers such as HireRight, Sterling Check, and First Advantage seemingly focused more on large enterprise sales than on offering modern, automated online services, there is significant room for innovation and increased efficiency in the market. Checkr successfully reduced friction for demanding, high-volume gig economy employers via their automated API solution and has been moving downmarket into enterprise and mid-sized clients, while Inflection reduced friction for the SMB market segment through automation and a user-friendly UI and has been moving up market into the enterprise segment.

Through this acquisition, Checkr will significantly expand their fast-growing SMB business segment. Inflection brings Checkr tens of thousands of new SMB customers and some very strong data science capabilities based around collecting and cleansing people data. This makes Checkr the new leader in the SMB segment, and positions them to be able to offer a highly automated background screening offering to all market segments

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