1. We profile your company
Our proprietary AI reads your website and positioning to identify your sector and sub-sector, business model, target customer and geography. Your raise amount sets your likely stage unless you tell us otherwise. Where the evidence is thin, we ask you rather than guess, and we never invent traction, revenue or valuation figures.
2. We score every investor against your raise
The Fit Score is a weighted sum of eight factors, scaled to 100. These are the weights in use today:
| Stage fit | Does the investor back companies at your stage? An exact match scores fully; an adjacent stage scores partially; anything further away is excluded. | 25% |
| Sector fit | Your primary sector against the investor's stated and observed focus. Generalist funds score partially. Sectors an investor excludes are removed. | 20% |
| Cheque compatibility | Whether a typical cheque from this investor is a sensible share of your raise. We prefer observed cheque sizes from real deals over stated ranges. | 15% |
| Geography | Whether the investor backs UK companies, and how strongly. UK and London-focused investors score highest; global funds with UK activity score partially. | 10% |
| Recent activity | How recently and how often the investor has done deals, with older activity decaying over time. Investors who've confirmed they're actively deploying score in full. | 10% |
| Relevant portfolio | How many companies like yours the investor already backs. Relevant experience makes a first conversation easier. | 10% |
| Contactability | Whether we hold a verified route to the right decision-maker. | 5% |
| Data freshness | How recently we verified the record. Stale data counts for less. | 5% |
Investors below a minimum score of 55 are left out. Every match comes with a written rationale built from the same evidence, so you can see why it's there.
3. Hard exclusions
- Incompatible stage, cheque size or geography
- Sectors the investor explicitly excludes
- Closed funds, and investors who've told us they're not deploying
- People who have left a firm, and anyone who has asked to be removed
- Duplicate funds and duplicate people
4. Fit Score and confidence are separate
Fit measures how well an investor matches your raise. Confidence measures how complete and recently verified our record is. A high fit with lower confidence is still worth a look; we show both so you can prioritise sensibly.
5. Where the data comes from, and how it stays fresh
Investor records combine public professional sources, firms' own websites and portfolio pages, Companies House filings, press coverage, licensed B2B data providers, and what investors tell us directly in our portal. Every fact stores its source category, collection date and last verification date. Records people are actively looking at are re-verified more often, and email bounces, role changes and corrections trigger automatic updates.
Anyone can correct or remove their data at any time through our data request form. Removals take effect immediately and stay in force even if the same details reappear in another source. See our Trust Centre for more.
6. Limitations
A Fit Score is a prioritisation tool. It can't tell you whether an investor will invest, and nothing on InvestorUniverse is investment advice. Activity data lags reality, so an investor marked "activity unclear" may simply be quiet in public.
How the desk calculates step-ups, percentiles and trends
Step-up is a round's indicative post-money valuation divided by the previous round's for the same company, when both are shown. Percentile compares a round's valuation with other rounds at the same stage and sector in the last 12 months, and only appears when there are at least five. Trends compare the latest period with the one before it of equal length. Rounds above £500m are held for manual review before they appear. Rounds filed in several tranches are listed on each round's page as related filings, so add them up for the full round.
7. How we track funding rounds
Most rounds reach us through Companies House. When a UK company issues new shares it has to file form SH01, which lists the number of shares, the price paid for each and the total shares in issue afterwards. We read these filings as they're published. The amount raised is the new shares multiplied by the price paid. The estimated valuation is that price multiplied by every share in issue after the round.
We only report priced rounds of £150k or more where shares were sold at a meaningful premium to their nominal value, which filters out founder and employee share issues. We skip holding companies and fund vehicles. Valuations are estimates: they leave out unissued options, convertible notes and SAFEs, and a round closed in tranches can appear as more than one filing. Investors aren't named on the SH01, so we add them when they're announced or confirmed by the company. Innovate UK grants come from UKRI's Gateway to Research. Every round links to its source.