The British Business Bank’s equity report, published alongside this document, discusses how a lack of reliable data has represented a perennial problem over the years, hampering analysis of trends in equity markets. Typically, there has been some aggregated data available on venture capital investment, some information on investments supported by the EIS, SEIS and VCT tax reliefs, and little else.

To address the lack of data, the British Business Bank and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) commissioned Beauhurst to produce a prototype "equity tracker" that brings together investment from different sources (such as funds, angels, and crowdfunding platforms) into a "whole of market" view of early-stage equity investment.
The Beauhurst dataset is built from the bottom up, so offers a richness of data and a series of detailed breakdowns by stage, sector, location, investor and size of investment. There is the ability to further interrogate the data for a range of bespoke analyses too, as will be demonstrated by a forthcoming case study on equity crowdfunding.

This publication represents the full results of our first attempt at putting together a "whole of the market" equity tracker. Excerpts from the equity tracker are also included in the British Business Bank’s equity report alongside other market data that is publicly available. Together, we think that these provide a much more thorough view of the market than previously available.