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How to access private companies financials

This may not be the typical start-up question, but I do need to know the answer to help with my start up. I work at a start-up that provides auxiliary or contractual software/technical development forces. I would like to draft up a sales pitch to a private company that I believe would benefit from the proposed technology offering.

However to have a good sales pitch I need hard evidence that this company will benefit by showing how other companies implementing similar technology have increased their bottom line. Problem is that most of the companies whose financials I need are private. Although it is not hard to find company financials for public companies, I hit a road block when it come to finding that information for private companies. My question is: is there a way to get this information online or otherwise, or is this information a tightly held secret by that thus far private company and its shareholders. (btw if this helps at all, the company I would like to make the offering to is actually a franchise and not a single whole entity)

Answer 503

Generally speaking (at least for North America) private companies have no legal requirement to make any of their financial data public. Thus pretty much all private corporations will keep their financial private unless they have some benefit - like privately sharing with a possible investor.

So unfortunately the answer to your question is that there is no way to get that information from some public record. However you may be able to get the data you need by privately talking to corporations. It’ll be a lot more work and you may do a bunch of work and get nothing. If you can offer them some benefit/inducement - whether current monetary or a future discount on services or just sharing your analysis - or even just sell it as research, you may find some companies that are willing to share that data.


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