KarmaCheck Chief Executive Officer Eric Ly let the game come to him. A Co-Founder of LinkedIn, Ly may not be able to pinpoint the exact moment everything came to him about the background check company that he would found in 2019, but he remembers well the gradual process that nudged him into the field in which his company is an industry leader.
As he explained in a February interview, “Day one, it’s not going to be perfect. But it's more important to get out there, get exposed to the feedback that customers want to give you.” And so out there he went, collecting the information that ultimately underwrites the entire KarmaCheck operation. That is, admittedly, a challenge for some entrepreneurs, but Ly knew, from experience, that he could handle it.
“What do we need to do to build something successful, to learn something new?” he asked. “If you do that (ask those questions) over and over again, you develop a confidence that you can learn about these new spaces and be successful in them.”
Ly’s confidence was well-placed. KarmaCheck has thrived under his watch, as the company inked a partnership with enterprise healthcare software company symplr in October, just a few months after raising $45 million in a Series B funding round led by Parameter Ventures. But are background checks the right bet?
Absolutely, says Ly. As he tells it, people think they’re “so common, everybody has to go through them, maybe it's even not that fun. But on the other side of how background checks have been done, it's just a fascinating space because you realize there's so much complexity to actually deliver even one background check.” He then adds proudly, “And at the same time, there's also so much opportunity to optimize those processes using technology to get it done faster.”
And that’s really what it’s all about: keeping the background check in the background while keeping companies safe, one faster than the next.
