Verification Methodology and Source Notice
In short
- Verification starts only after the founder consents, submits their details and confirms the versioned consent set. We do not perform identity checks.
- We match people using name variants together with date of birth and country of residence, not name alone.
- Every line shows one of four labels — Verified, Flagged, Unavailable or Pending — plus the source and date.
- Where a source is down or does not cover a subject, we say so rather than reporting a clear result.
1. How a verification runs
- Investor sets up the record. An investor creates a company record, optionally uploading a pitch deck or business plan, and names the founders.
- Claim extraction. Where a deck is uploaded, automated processing extracts the factual claims it contains — roles, dates, education, traction, intellectual property — so they can be checked. See the AI and Automated Processing Notice.
- Founder invitation and consent. Each founder receives an email and must give explicit consent before anything about them is checked.
- Founder intake. The founder completes a short form with personal, company and professional details and references. No identity-document number, image, selfie, biometric data or residential address is requested.
- Consent. The founder confirms a versioned consent set (currently version 2026-09-20) covering accuracy, sensitive-record screening, public professional and company research, international and automated processing, data handling and rights. Continuing to the form is not consent; verification begins only after the final submission records the complete consent set.
- Automated checks. The checks below run in parallel against their sources.
- Evidence Ledger. Results are assembled into the ledger, exportable as a PDF and shareable by link.
- Founder review. The founder can see the report and add comments or corrections, which are recorded alongside the affected lines.
2. What we check
Background and financial risk
Sanctions lists, global watchlists, politically-exposed-person registers, adverse media, criminal-record databases where lawfully available, and bankruptcy and insolvency registers.
Company and role
Company registry (KYB) checks — company identity and name match, registry identifiers, legal status, registered address, registered agent and officers — and a Professional History Deep Dive that searches UK Companies House, GLEIF, and national registers available in Canada, Ireland, Spain and Australia for directorships and officer roles under the founder's name and its variants across plausible jurisdictions. Coverage varies by country; a company record alone is not proof of an officer role, and a missing record is not evidence of absence. Also: corporate existence and standing, officer and director confirmation, other active directorships, company-level sanctions and watchlist screening, and company insolvency.
Named founder claims
Claims the founder states in their own materials — achievements, awards, certifications and credentials, funding and investment, previous exits, and customer or market claims — are extracted with AI and checked one by one against public sources. Each claim is recorded with one outcome: confirmed, partly confirmed, contradicted, not found in public sources, or not independently verifiable, together with the sources actually retrieved. "Not found" means nothing published was located; it is not evidence a claim is false. Claims that are private by nature, and statements of opinion or ambition, are not treated as verifiable.
Regulatory
Securities and regulatory enforcement records, and public filings such as capital-raising notices.
Intellectual property and publications
Patents and applications, assignment and chain-of-title records, trademarks, prior-art screening against the technology described in the deck, and academic publications.
Public activity
Press and news coverage, and social profiles matched to the founder.
References
References and testimonials supplied by the founder or added by the investor, contacted and recorded with their responses.
3. How we match a person to a record
Name alone produces false matches. A record is attributed to a founder only when the name matches — including common variants, shortened forms, middle-name omissions and transliterations — and at least one strong corroborating attribute agrees, normally date of birth or country of residence, and nothing in the record contradicts what we know.
- A profile that matches on a name variant but contradicts the known date of birth or country is rejected, not reported.
- Common names raise the corroboration required, not lower it.
- Where we cannot reach the required confidence, the line is reported as unmatched rather than attributed.
The design bias is deliberate: we would rather leave a line unmatched than attach the wrong person to a founder.
4. How results are classified
Results appear under two headings — Checked and Not checked — with four labels:
| Label | When it is used |
|---|---|
| Verified | A source supported the claim, or screening returned no adverse record, on the date shown. |
| Flagged | A source contradicts a claim, or returned a record that warrants review. |
| Unavailable | The source could not be reached, or the subject is outside its coverage. |
| Pending | The check is still running, or is waiting on the founder. |
A source outage is always Unavailable or Pending, never a clear result. An outage is not evidence of absence.
5. Sources
Sources are shown per line and are drawn from official registers and filing systems, national and supranational sanctions and watchlist publishers, insolvency and court registers, intellectual-property offices and patent databases, academic indexes, and public news and web content. Where a line links to a public record, the link is included so you can inspect the underlying source yourself.
Names of the technology suppliers we use to reach these sources are treated as internal. Categories of supplier are listed on the Sub-processors page.
We do not generate data; we retrieve it from independent third-party providers and public sources. No guarantee of completeness or accuracy is given; use is at your discretion.
6. Timing and refresh
Every result is a point-in-time snapshot. Records change, and a report should be refreshed before it is relied upon for a decision taken materially later. A record can be re-assessed at any time, for example ahead of a follow-on investment.
7. Known limits
- Coverage of criminal, insolvency and court records varies by country, and in several jurisdictions is not lawfully available at all. Where a country prohibits a private party from running a category of check, we do not run it and the line is reported as Unavailable.
- Company registers publish companies, not always officer names. A company record alone is not evidence that a founder held a role there, and absence from a register is not evidence of absence.
- Registers can lag reality by weeks or months.
- Documents supplied by a founder are checked for consistency, not authenticated as originals unless the line says so.
- Prior-art screening indicates overlap for further review; it is not a freedom-to-operate or patentability opinion.
8. Access logging and link expiry
Every view of a report — by the subscriber, through a shared link, by the founder, or as a PDF — is recorded in an access log the account owner can inspect. Shared links expire after 30 days unless extended and can be revoked at any time; founder invitation links expire after 30 days and can be re-sent.
9. Corrections
Anyone who believes a record has been misattributed or misreported can use the Accuracy, Correction and Dispute Policy.