The problem
Screening is fast but blind.
Databases match names against lists. They miss indirect ownership, control through proxies, and local-language sources.
Investigation is deep but manual.
Analyst teams charge £15–20k per report and take 4–5 weeks, so only the biggest deals get it.
Regulators have moved past the list.
Enforcement now targets control and proxies, not just listed names: OFAC fined VC firm GVA Capital $216m in 2025.
The gap is widest in opaque jurisdictions.
Closed registries, local-language records, sources that take regional expertise to read. FATF rates only 9% of assessed countries as effective on beneficial ownership transparency.
What we do
Investigate the companies and people behind your next decision.
You give us a name. We return a clear, sourced report on who you’re dealing with, scoped to the decision in front of you: an acquisition, a hire, an onboarding.
- Corporate registries
- Beneficial ownership
- Sanctions and watchlists
- Court filings
- Adverse media
- Political exposure
- Regulatory enforcement
- Counterparty networks
| Measure | Traditional firms | Szylla |
|---|---|---|
| Turnaround | 4–5 weeks | Same day |
| Cost per subject | £15–20k | £2k |
| After delivery | Goes out of date | Monitored |
02
How we do it
Experts’ brains. Szylla’s hands.
Every investigation follows a methodology written by specialists who work that country every day, and runs at machine speed.
Know where to look.
Country methodologies from regional experts: which registries matter, what a finding means locally, which patterns to chase.
Read in the original.
Local registries, court records and media in the subject’s own language.
Trace every finding.
Each finding links to its source, timestamped and retained.
Separate fact from allegation.
Every claim is cross-checked. Verified facts are kept apart from allegations, and false positives are filtered out.
03
Different decisions. Same question.
Who are we really dealing with?
| Before you… | Who brings us in | What we uncover |
|---|---|---|
| Onboard a supplier | Corporate compliance teams | Supplier owned by a sanctioned party through intermediaries |
| Acquire or invest | PE and VC funds, family offices, corporate development | Target whose key distributor is linked to Iran |
| Enter a partnership or JV | Law firms, corporate development | Partner with hidden ties to local officials |
| Onboard a client | Banks, fintechs, wealth managers | Client with PEP connections in their home country |
| Hire or appoint | Executive search firms, boards | Executive with a fabricated CV |
| Take on an investor | Funds and founders raising capital | Investor fronting for a sanctioned party |
| Underwrite a policy | Insurers | Insured whose owners face fraud allegations in local-language press |
04
Traction
3 LOIs signed in the last month.
~£72k (~$94k) in total: an investment firm, a law firm and a venture capital fund.
05
Market
$10.4B global market.
$2.8B in the US and UK alone.
Deep investigations on companies and people, at $2,600 per report plus $1,000 a year for monitoring.
| Buyer | Accounts | Reports per year | Market per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Banks | 4,388: 4,238 FDIC-insured banks in the US [1] + 150 UK-incorporated banks [2] | 263,280 | $685M |
| Law firms | 400 top firms: Am Law 200, the 200 highest-grossing US firms [3], + UK 200 [4]. Plus 5,369 other UK firms in AML scope [5] | 50,845 | $132M |
| Venture capital firms | 2,984 US VC firms [6] | 179,040 | $466M |
| Family offices | 3,180 single family offices in North America [7] | 190,800 | $496M |
| Corporates | 3,000 largest US listed companies, Russell 3000 [8], + 8,335 UK companies with 250+ employees [9] | 221,675 | $576M |
| Monitoring | Half of all subjects checked | — | $453M |
| Total, US + UK | 27,656 accounts | 905,640 | $2.8B |
| Global | US + UK = 27% of global M&A deals [10][11][12] | $10.4B |
Assumptions
Reports per account: 5 a month per bank, top-400 law firm, VC firm, family office and US listed company. 5 a year per other UK law firm and UK company.
Pricing: $2,600 (£2,000) per report. Monitoring at $1,000 per subject per year, on half of the subjects checked.
Global figure: the US + UK market divided by the US + UK share of global M&A deal count. That share: ~12,000 US deals (5,982 announced in H1 2025) plus ~1,800 UK deals (395 in Q1 2025; 216, 138, 147 in Apr–Jun; 190, 131, 135 in Jul–Sep), out of 50,810 deals worldwide in 2025.
Sources
- [1] FDIC, Quarterly Banking Profile Q2 2026
- [2] PRA data, July 2025
- [3] The American Lawyer, Am Law 200
- [4] The Lawyer, UK 200
- [5] SRA, AML Annual Report 2024-25 (5,569 firms in AML scope, minus the UK 200)
- [6] NVCA 2026 Yearbook
- [7] Deloitte, Defining the Family Office Landscape 2024
- [8] FTSE Russell, Russell 3000 Index
- [9] UK Department for Business and Trade, Business population estimates 2025
- [10] Simpson Thacher, Lexology Panoramic: M&A USA
- [11] ONS, Mergers and acquisitions involving UK companies, 2025: Jan–Mar · Apr–Jun · Jul–Sep
- [12] PitchBook, 2025 Annual Global M&A Report
06
Unit economics
98% margin per report.
A report costs us less than $60 to produce: software, not analyst hours.
| Product | Price | Our cost | Gross margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deep report | $2,600 (£2,000) | ≤ $60: compute $25, paid data $30, infrastructure $5 | 98% |
| Monitoring, per subject per year | $1,000 | ≤ $60: 4 quarterly re-screens × $15 | 94% |
| Startup check | $65 (£50) | ~$10 | 85% |
Annual packages, prepaid
| Package | Includes | Annual value | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 12 reports + 6 monitored subjects | $37,200 | $36,100 (97%) |
| Growth | 36 reports + 20 monitored subjects | $113,600 | $110,200 (97%) |
Fixed investment, year one
| Security certification: SOC 2 Type I, ISO 27001 readiness | $50k |
| Paid registries, archives, court and corporate data, APIs | $60k / yr |
| Regional methodologies: 12 regions × $2,600, written by regional experts | $31k |
| Platform, hosting and security tooling | $30k / yr |
| Total | ~$171k |
07
ARR 2027
$2.2M ARR by December 2027.
$2.4M annualised revenue including startup usage. Even at 60% of planned sales: $1.3M ARR.
Feb–Apr 2027 · Accelerator launch
Startups: £50 checks and occasional full reports. First business accounts: UK funds and law firms.
May–Dec 2027 · Platform for every sector
Deep investigations on any company or person for corporates, fintechs and law-firm intake. Monitoring in every package.
| End of | Business accounts | Contracted ARR | Active startups | Startup usage, annualised | Total run-rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 2027 | 5 | $186k | 25 | $37k | $223k |
| Jun 2027 | 17 (1 Growth) | $709k | 60 | $89k | $798k |
| Sep 2027 | 32 (2 Growth) | $1.34M | 90 | $133k | $1.48M |
| Dec 2027 | 50 (5 Growth) | $2.24M | 110 | $163k | $2.41M |
Contracted ARR: annual prepaid packages (Standard $37,200, Growth $113,600), monitoring included.
Sales pace: new business accounts per month are 1–2 in Feb–Apr, 3–4 in May–Sep and 5 in Oct–Dec, plus 4 Growth accounts in H2.
Startups: 1.5 checks a month at $65; each month 1% of startups also buy a full report.
Cash vs revenue: packages are prepaid, so $2.0M is collected in 2027 while $0.9M is recognised as revenue.
08
Founders
We know both sides of the problem
Investigative work in opaque jurisdictions on one side, and the machine learning that makes it fast on the other.
Maria Sabelkis
CEO & Co-founder
- Four years conducting business investigations in high-risk and opaque jurisdictions
- Control Risks, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Citi
- Led large-scale projects worth roughly USD 25bn combined
- Cambridge Trust scholar; MPhil in Development Studies (Development Economics), University of Cambridge
Julia Vitiugova
CTO & Co-founder
- MPhil in Mathematics and Physics, University of Cambridge
- 6+ years of AI academic research, including a research collaboration with Google DeepMind
- 2+ years building ML systems and data infrastructure from scratch for startups across the US, France, Switzerland and the UAE
- Google Gemini Lead Ambassador
Where we have worked and studied
