How a UK funding accelerator sends founders into investor conversations with numbers they can stand behind.
The challenge
A cohort is never one type of company. Pre-revenue and revenue-generating, deep tech and services, all needing a credible number to raise against. When a founder pitches a valuation they cannot defend, an investor pulls one thread and the number unravels, and that reflects on the program that prepared them.
How Equidam helped
Equidam has been part of Focused For Business’s investment-readiness sprint for over four years. Every founder builds a valuation on five methods weighted to their stage, with live market benchmarks and the assumptions on show, so every valuation in the cohort lands in the same shape. In spring 2026 Equidam and Focused For Business pressure-tested the valuations of four startups from the cohort line by line, the way an investor would. Most of the numbers came down, none of the founders experienced it as a loss, and each finished able to defend their own valuation. That assumptions review is now part of how each cohort starts.
In their words
“Our founders find the structured approach to valuation really useful. They go into investor conversations knowing not just their number, but why it is their number.”
Hatty Fawcett, Founder, Focused For Business
| Client | Focused For Business |
| Industry | Funding accelerator |
| Location | United Kingdom |
| Result | A defensible valuation for every founder in the cohort. Over £42 million raised across the program |
| Lead individual | Hatty Fawcett, Founder |
For programs like Focused For Business
If you run an accelerator or a funding program, the hard part is getting every company in the cohort to a credible valuation without doing it all by hand, and Equidam is built for that. To talk about it, contact the Equidam team.
About Equidam. Since 2013, Equidam’s valuation technology has been used in more than 90 countries by startups, investors and service providers, with over 160,000 companies valued. Equidam combines five valuation methods with live market benchmarks to produce transparent, defensible valuations for early-stage companies.