b2b data Company Start Date

Limited Companies

For Limited companies the Incorporation Date is derived from Companies House.

Note: this is the date that the company was incorporated at Companies House. It may not have been trading since this date because Directors can register a business at Companies House and then not start actively trading until a later date.

Likewise a company may have been trading for a number of years, and decide to change their company name. In this case they will get a new incorporation date reflective of the company name change.

 

Non-Limited Companies

For non-Limited companies, the Year Started on the b2b data universe is captured via the data source’s call centres.

When making contact with the business, it’s the business that confirms the date they were established. So this date has nothing to do with Companies House, and is reliant on what was said during the call.

If the call centre is unable to make contact with the business, the “established date” becomes the date the business first appeared on the file. This means they are usually a new business, having not appeared on file previously.

 

New Branches

New branches of national chains (Tesco, Barclays, Starbucks etc) are regarded as new ‘companies’ also. i.e., they are new premises. These can usually be excluded by having a high branch count however.

 

Start-up Companies

It should be noted that start-up companies (i.e., having been established / incorporated within the last few months) are generally very small businesses. The vast majority are sole traders seeking to expand. Many operate from home. So the concept that there are lots of start-up businesses with huge cash injections is unrealistic.