How the grade works · the neutrality
The grade isn’t ours to move — and we show you why.
Every match on Kollied rests on one thing: a neutral, improvable grade on connected evidence. Here is exactly how it’s set, why we can’t move it, and what you can do to improve it.
What a grade actually is
A grade is a depth and a trail — never a score.
There is no score out of a hundred here, no stars and no league table. A grade is two things. A depth — one, two or three segments, saying how much of your evidence a stranger can read without phoning you. And a trail — every claim tagged with the class of evidence behind it and a source it resolves back to: register-verified, document-read, self-reported, or connected and live.
A depth is a statement about your evidence, not a verdict on your company. A strong company with nothing connected reads Light — that is an accurate description of what a stranger can currently see, and it is the whole reason moving up is worth doing.
The evidence trail
Your depth is decided by whose evidence it stands on.
Three rungs, three owners of the evidence: the state, you, and your systems. All three are read the same way — every item resolves back to its source, and nothing is taken on your word.
Your company as the public register already describes it. The capability is one click: give us an organisation number, the register is read, and your Light grade computes. Nothing to assemble, nothing to decide — and free.
The data room you already built, read once and resolved to source. Standard is a complete room, not any room — five parts — and the system will not round up: anything short of the full set stays at Light, and you get the missing items back by name.
Registers, accounts, product and pipeline held open with consent, so the read is as current as the business. A Growth OS subscription is what holds the connection open — you are buying the connection, and the depth follows from the class of evidence, exactly as it does on the two free rungs.
The full ladder — including where you are right now and how each move is made — lives on the free-grade page. See where you stand
The mechanism
Three separate things — on purpose.
The standard is set elsewhere
The grading standard is held in a separate company — Virtuous Growth AS. We didn’t write the rules to suit ourselves, and we can’t quietly rewrite them to suit a deal.
The grade is computed on evidence
It is computed neutrally on the evidence you connect — not by a salesperson, not by a relationship, not by us leaning on a number.
The market clears it — and owns none of it
Kollied clears the market but doesn’t compute the grade — and holds no equity in the companies it lists. That separation is why the grade isn’t ours to move.
The last player that owned both the data and the deal died on exactly that conflict. Here it’s structurally impossible.
The refusals
What we will not do, ever.
- No listing fee, ever. We surveyed how the venues in this market make their money before deciding — ask, and we’ll show you the working.
- No success fee, no equity, and no pooling inside the market.
- No favourite jumps the line. There is no paid placement to buy.
- A row-level data wall we can’t cross — enforced in the database, not in a policy.
success_fee: 0
We’re paid on the outcome and the improvement — never the introduction.
Governance
Built in the EU, governed by design.
Your data is EU-resident by architecture — not by a setting you have to find. The grade resolves every score back to its source, so nothing is a black box you’re asked to take on faith. Even the typefaces on this page are served from our own origin: no visitor request leaves for a third party.
The neutrality is enforced in the database, not in a policy page. The market it protects is still empty — we haven’t cleared a deal yet, and we’ll tell you the day we do.