Methodology

Summary

VCBacked aggregates public information about venture-backed startups from primary sources — company announcements, regulatory filings, investor portfolio pages, and the public web — and structures it into a single searchable database. Every funding round in our database has at least one verifiable public source. We do not accept user-submitted profile changes without source verification.

Data sources

Each company profile is built from a combination of the following public sources:

• Company announcements: press releases, official blog posts, and funding announcements published by the company itself.
• Investor portfolio pages: publicly listed portfolio companies on venture-firm websites (e.g. Sequoia, a16z, Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator).
• Regulatory filings: U.S. SEC Form D filings, Companies House (UK), and equivalent registry filings where available.
• Tier-one financial press: reporting from outlets such as TechCrunch, The Information, Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal, used to cross-check funding amounts and round timing.
• Y Combinator public directories: the public YC company list for batch identification.
• Company websites and team pages: for headquarters, founding team, and headcount.

VCBacked does not republish proprietary data from paid databases (e.g. PitchBook, CB Insights). Where multiple public sources disagree, we default to the most recent primary source and note the discrepancy internally.

Verification

Before a new funding round appears on a company profile, it is checked against the following criteria:

1. At least one independent public source must confirm the round.
2. Round type (Seed, Series A, etc.), amount, and lead investor must be consistent across sources.
3. The company website must still be live, or the round must be reported by a tier-one outlet.
4. Founder names are cross-checked against company team pages and LinkedIn profiles.

Rounds that fail any of these checks are flagged for manual review and excluded from public profiles until verified.

Refresh cadence

• Funding rounds: ingested daily from announcements and filings.
• Headcount and headquarters: reviewed at least quarterly.
• Founding team: reviewed at least quarterly, and on every new round.
• Industry and stage classification: updated whenever a new round materially changes a company's profile.

Every company profile shows a visible "last updated" date. Pages that have not been refreshed in over 12 months are flagged in our internal queue for re-verification.

Editorial standards

VCBacked is independently operated. Profiles are not user-generated. All edits to public profiles go through a single editorial pipeline maintained by the VCBacked team. We do not accept payment, equity, or other consideration in exchange for inclusion in the database, ranking position, or favorable presentation.

Corrections policy

If you believe a profile contains an error, contact us at app.vcbacked.co/contact. Founders and investors can request corrections to their own profile data; we require a verifiable public source (or a verified corporate email address) to process changes.

Substantive corrections are typically applied within 5 business days. We log all corrections internally for auditability.

Citing VCBacked

Researchers, journalists, and Wikipedia editors are welcome to cite VCBacked data. Each company and investor profile includes a stable canonical URL that will not change as long as the entity exists in our database.

Suggested citation format:

"[Company Name] — Funding & Investors". VCBacked. Retrieved [date].
https://www.vcbacked.co/company/[slug]

For bulk or programmatic access, see the VCBacked API.

Limitations

• Coverage is strongest for U.S., U.K., and EU-headquartered startups with public funding announcements. Stealth-stage and undisclosed rounds are, by definition, not in the database.
• Some early-stage funding amounts are reported as ranges rather than exact figures when the original source did not disclose specifics.
• Founder contact information is sourced from public professional networks and may lag real-world role changes by 30–60 days.

Contact

Editorial questions, source disputes, and partnership inquiries: app.vcbacked.co/contact.