TAM Expansion Master Class

One of the key variables a VC fund evaluates when investing in a startup is its TAM — Total Addressable Market.

A great team can execute flawlessly, but if the market is too small, there is a natural ceiling to how valuable the company can become.

That is why the most exceptional startups don’t simply capture a large TAM. They expand it — through geographic expansion, new offerings, new customer segments, and adjacent markets.

Among Fabrica Ventures’ 50+ portfolio companies, I believe Checkr has been one of the most successful at expanding its TAM.

Checkr’s TAM evolution can be summarized as:

Background checks for tech/gig companies → skills assessment → geographic expansion → SMB expansion → income & employment verification → new customer verticals such as financial institutions and property managers.

Checkr started as a technology platform in 2014 for employment background checks, allowing employers to vet prospective hires through services such as criminal record checks, drug screenings, and education verification. It rapidly won major clients such as Uber and Instacart, which needed to screen large volumes of prospective workers quickly and continuously as their platforms scaled.

In 2018, Checkr acquired Lytmus, a data-driven skills assessment platform that helped companies make faster, more objective technical hiring decisions. This marked Checkr’s first expansion beyond traditional background checks into the broader hiring process.

In 2022, Checkr expanded geographically into Canada through the acquisition of ModoHR and entered the US SMB market by acquiring GoodHire. Together, these moves significantly broadened Checkr’s reach across both geographies and customer segments, giving Checkr broad coverage in the background-check market in the US and Canada.

In 2025, Checkr expanded its offering by acquiring Truework, a platform that provides income and employment verification services. The acquisition took Checkr beyond hiring and into new verticals such as mortgage lending and property management, where verification is critical for transactions such as loans and leases.

And finally, last week Checkr acquired Truv, a leader in consumer-permissioned income, employment, and asset verification. Truv allows consumers to connect directly to payroll providers and financial institutions, enabling real-time verification of income, employment, and assets. With Truv, Checkr’s offering now spans identity, workforce, mortgage, and tenant verification, addressing a combined $45B TAM.

This TAM expansion has translated into scale: Checkr is now an $800M+ revenue company.

Conclusion

From employment background checks to a $45B verification platform. That is TAM expansion.

But most importantly, Checkr achieved it by leveraging the same core competency throughout: trust and verification.