Investor brief
Trust is the last unsolved layer of the internet.
Every day, people are asked to judge a stranger from a profile page, a cold message, or an unknown number — with nothing to go on but the story that stranger tells about themselves. Vouch gives them the one thing missing at that moment: what happened to everyone else.
We are not building a review site or a blacklist. We are building the shared memory that makes repeated behaviour visible — and we are building it with evidence, not accusations.
The signal is scattered
A scam that hits a thousand people leaves a thousand isolated bad feelings and no shared record.
The platforms will not do it
LinkedIn cannot host critical commentary about its own users at scale. The incentive is not there.
The moment is specific
People need this in the ten seconds before they reply — not in a report they will never search for.
The scale of the problem
Fraud is not a niche annoyance; it is a mass-market tax paid mostly by people who had no way to check. These are reported losses, which every source agrees undercount reality — most victims never file.
$12.5B
Reported to FTC as fraud losses, 2024
US consumers, all fraud types
Rising
Job-scam reports are among the fastest-growing categories
FTC consumer sentinel trend
$55B+
Business email compromise losses since 2013
FBI IC3, global
Sources: US Federal Trade Commission consumer fraud reporting; FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Figures are reported losses and are cited as orders of magnitude, not as Vouch projections.
Why this compounds
01
A check is a contribution
Looking something up creates the record the next person finds.
02
Sharing is the product
The natural way to warn a friend is to send the link — which recruits them.
03
Repeat behaviour surfaces
One report is noise. The tenth on the same number is a pattern.
04
The graph is the moat
Numbers, profiles and companies connect. That map cannot be copied.
Plan of action and milestones
6 of 12 milestones are already running in production — not mockups. The rest are sequenced so each one is only unlocked by the evidence from the last.
- Phase 1Shipped
Check a LinkedIn link
Paste a profile, company, job, post, course, service or offer link. Vouch recognises what kind of thing it is and opens a check.
✓ Live in production
- Phase 1Shipped
Check a phone number
The same check works for the number that called or texted you, normalised so everyone lands on one shared record.
✓ Live in production
- Phase 1Shipped
Community labels and notes
One-click labels build a shared signal. Private notes stay private — enforced by database rules, not just interface copy.
✓ Live in production
- Phase 1Shipped
Shareable checks
Every check has a link that opens the same record for the next person. This is the growth loop.
✓ Live in production
- Phase 2Shipped
Moderation and trust operations
Report fake or fraudulent entries; admins block bad accounts. Blocks are enforced server-side so they cannot be bypassed.
✓ Live in production
- Phase 2Shipped
Analytics control room
What is being checked, by whom, when and from which region — the raw material for the trust graph.
✓ Live in production
- Phase 3In build
Verified identity
Sign in with LinkedIn so a public report is backed by a real account. Contributor weight replaces raw vote counts.
- Phase 3In build
Evidence attachments
Attach the message, invoice or screenshot. Receipts move a claim from allegation to substantiated pattern.
- Phase 4Next
Browser extension
A one-click check from the page you are already on. User-invoked only, using Chrome's activeTab model — no passive browsing collection, ever. This removes the copy-paste step that costs the most users.
- Phase 4Next
Mobile app
Share-sheet and call-screen integration: check a number straight from the missed call, or a link straight from LinkedIn's app. Mobile is where the scam actually arrives.
- Phase 5Horizon
Pattern detection
Cluster repeat outreach across profiles, numbers and companies to surface coordinated campaigns rather than isolated complaints.
- Phase 5Horizon
Team and vendor diligence
Shared boards for recruiters, procurement and founders vetting counterparties. This is where the revenue is.
How it earns
Consumer checks stay free — they are what builds the graph. Revenue comes from the people who check professionally and need to keep a record.
$0
Anyone checking a link or number
Unlimited checks, labels, community notes, private notes.
$8–12/mo
Recruiters, founders, freelancers
Saved research, watchlists, deeper history, exports.
$29–99/mo
Procurement, agencies, hiring teams
Shared diligence boards, team notes, vendor vetting.
We will not sell browsing data and will not take money to change a rating. Trust is the asset; monetising against it would destroy the thing being bought.
The constraints we hold ourselves to
- No scraping of LinkedIn or private content. Users submit what they choose.
- No passive browsing collection — the extension will be user-invoked only.
- Labels and narratives are community signals, never presented as proven fact.
- Private notes are private by database rule, not by promise.
- Serious claims require receipts before they carry weight.
- Blocked accounts are enforced server-side and audited.
Where this goes
If Vouch works, the question “is this person real?” stops being a gut call. A stranger's history travels with them, built by the people they actually dealt with — and the economics of running the same scam on a thousand people quietly stop working.
See the product