RailwayVerified, estimated, reported, from website: how to read startup metrics
Every number on ExitFounder carries a provenance label. Here is what each one means, where the data comes from, and how much weight to give it.
Startup directories are full of numbers with no origin: "10K users", "$5K MRR", "50K visits". ExitFounder shows a label next to every metric and every text block. This is the key.
The four labels
Verified. The value came from a system the founder connected and we read directly: revenue from Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, Paddle or another provider's API; traffic from Google Analytics or Search Console; domain ownership from a DNS record; founder identity from a linked account. Verified numbers are recalculated from raw provider data — we do not take the provider's dashboard summary at face value, because different providers define MRR differently.
Estimated. A third-party model. Traffic estimates are Similarweb-style; Domain Rating is by Ahrefs; PageSpeed is Lighthouse. Useful for comparison, never for diligence. Estimates for sites under ~5K monthly visits are noisy — treat "~805 visits" as "small", not as 805.
Reported. The founder typed it and nothing checked it. Team size, founded year, a pricing summary written by the owner. Reported is honest as long as it is labeled; it becomes a problem only when it is dressed up as verified.
From website. Extracted from the company's official website by our pipeline: tagline, description, features, pricing tiers, who it is for, tech stack mentions. It is grounded in the site (we store the crawled snapshot) but it is still a model's reading. When the founder claims the profile and edits a field, that field flips to Reported; when they connect a provider, the metric flips to Verified.
Precedence
When two sources disagree, the profile shows the stronger one and keeps the rest in history: owner > connected provider > official website > other sources > AI. You can see every source and when it was last read in the "Data sources & history" block at the bottom of each profile, and the full field-level history is in the API as provenance.
What to trust for what
| Decision | Enough | Not enough |
|---|---|---|
| "Is this product real?" | website-extracted profile + official site link | — |
| "Is it growing?" | Verified traffic or revenue history | Estimated visits |
| "Should I buy it?" | Verified revenue + verified domain + verified founder | Anything reported |
| "Who is behind it?" | Founder verified | A name on the about page |
Why we do it this way
Directories that mix real and claimed numbers train readers to ignore all of them. Labeling costs us nothing and makes the verified ones worth something — which is the only reason a founder would bother connecting Stripe. It also makes the data usable by AI assistants: our .md pages and MCP tools return provenance with every value so an assistant can say "~1.6K visits (estimated)" instead of stating it as fact.
If a number on a profile looks wrong, the fastest fix is the founder claiming it; the second fastest is the "Something off?" link in the sources block, which goes straight to review.