Just caught wind of something interesting happening in the fintech verification space. Duna, a business identity startup founded by two former Stripe engineers, just closed a €30 million Series A led by CapitalG. What caught my attention isn't just the funding size—it's how this perfectly illustrates the Stripe alumni phenomenon that keeps reshaping the industry.

Duco Van Lanschot and David Schreiber built Duna to solve a real pain point: onboarding business customers at scale is a nightmare for fintechs. KYB (Know Your Business) checks are tedious, costly, and kill conversion rates. Duna helps companies like Plaid streamline this process, which apparently resonated enough with CapitalG's Alex Nichols that they led the round. What's wild is that even though Stripe itself isn't a client, the company's leadership immediately saw the value—you can tell by looking at the investor cap table.

The investor list reads like a who's who of fintech: Michael Coogan (Stripe's COO), David Singleton (former CTO), and Claire Hughes Johnson (ex-COO) all backed it. Even more telling, executives from Adyen—Stripe's main competitor—invested too. That's the kind of cross-industry validation that suggests Duna is onto something real.

What makes Duna different from competitors like Jumio and Veriff is their commitment to generating proprietary data instead of relying on aggregated sources that are often incomplete. Nichols described it as a rare opportunity to rebuild a foundational system, similar to what Visa did decades ago. The bigger vision though is creating a global business identity network—basically a digital passport for companies where verified identity data can be reused across platforms. Imagine onboarding with one service and instantly having that verification recognized by banks, other fintechs, or investment platforms.

Here's where it gets interesting: Duna isn't trying to boil the ocean right away. Van Lanschot's strategy is targeting what he calls "patches of networks"—tight clusters of interconnected companies like manufacturers with shared customers or investment firms with overlapping LPs. In these smaller circles, the network effects kick in faster, even before reaching critical mass globally.

Even in smaller markets like the Netherlands, the potential is significant. Those four largest banks employ 14,000 compliance staff, half focused on business clients. AI automation can already help reduce costs and boost efficiency before the full network effects materialize. Scale this approach globally and you're looking at a massive efficiency unlock across fintech and banking infrastructure.

If Duna pulls this off, we could be looking at one-click business onboarding becoming standard—similar to Amazon's checkout or Stripe Link. The Stripe alumni network keeps delivering interesting bets on infrastructure problems. Worth keeping an eye on how this develops.