Effective November 1, 2026 · A letter from our founders
Public companies have always had an advantage most private businesses never get: information. A public company CEO can see how peers perform, where the industry is trending, and which drivers create value or destroy it. That visibility lets them spot risks early, plan with confidence, and prove their strength to lenders and investors, who reward it with better terms and cheaper capital. The owner of a $30 million manufacturer, the founder raising a first round, the investor pricing a lower middle market deal have mostly had to guess.
We started FairMarketValue to change that. Private companies make up roughly half of the U.S. economy, yet the people who build and back them make some of their biggest decisions with the least information. They deserve the clarity public markets take for granted: what a business is worth, how it performs against true peers, where its industry is heading, and what drives its value. A business that can show it is healthier or more stable than its peers can negotiate from strength.
Transparency does something bigger, too. It builds trust, and trust creates liquidity. When buyers, sellers, lenders and investors can all see fair value clearly, prices are discovered faster, capital moves more freely, and deals get done on better terms. Bringing that price discovery to the private markets will transform how private companies are bought, sold, financed and valued. That is the future we are building, and every company in our community helps build it.
That mission only works if the companies and advisors who trust us with their financials can rely on us completely. Financial statements, tax returns and general ledgers are among the most sensitive information a business has. We don't take for granted that you share them with us, and we built FMV around one principle that will never change:
We never sell, share or disclose company-identifiable data.
The rest of this page explains, in plain language, how data comes to FMV, how we use it, the commitments we make, and how we protect it. Where we go further than this letter, our Privacy Policy, Terms of Use and Trust Center set out the details.
Brandon Mills and Ray Landgraf, Founding Partners
Data reaches FMV in three ways, and always with permission:
We use that data for five purposes, and only these:
| Use | What it means | Is a company identifiable? |
|---|---|---|
| Credentialed engagement work | Business valuations, gift and estate work, ASC 805, ASC 820 and other engagements you hire us to perform | Only to you, the engagement team and anyone you direct us to deliver to |
| Delivering data you direct us to share | We act as a secure conduit: when you authorize a lender or partner to receive your data through our Unified Accounting API, we send only what you permission | Only to the recipient you authorize |
| Standardizing financials | Normalizing and mapping statements and ledgers so financial analysis is accurate and comparable | No. This runs inside FMV's systems |
| Benchmarking and aggregate insights | Peer benchmarks, multiples and market statistics built from anonymized, aggregated data | Never. Only summary statistics are shown |
| Improving our technology | Building and refining FMV's workflows, rules, quality checks and own private models, including machine learning, so our analysis and deliverables are stronger, faster and more accurate | Never. Data never trains a public or third-party AI model |
When you direct us to share your data, we often need the complete ledger to do the work. A lender may ask for a single ratio or schedule, but calculating it accurately means normalizing the full financials first. We perform the analysis inside FMV and deliver only the output you authorized.
Every company that contributes to FMV will make the picture sharper for everyone else. FMV's network today draws on 1.24 million annual financial statements from more than 450,000 private companies, alongside dozens of public data sources. No single business could build that view alone. Together, the community can, and every contribution helps move the private markets closer to the transparency, trust and liquidity public markets enjoy.
As customer contributions are added, benchmarking will work on a give-to-get basis: companies that use FMV's benchmarking will contribute their anonymized data to the network that powers it. In return, participants will get what public companies have always had:
[One or two sentences on the business and the decision it faced, e.g. a $[X]M [industry] company preparing for [a sale / a refinancing / a growth investment].]
[What FMV's benchmarks showed, e.g. gross margin of [X]% versus a peer median of [Y]% across [N] comparable companies, with the confidence interval our data scientists report.]
[What the company did with it and the result, e.g. [action taken], leading to [measurable outcome].]
FMV SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 audits are underway and in progress. Reports will be available through our Trust Center once issued.
Hosted on AWS
SOC 2 Type II, audit in progress
ISO 27001, audit in progress
AES-256 encryption
GDPR
CPRA
IRS| Control | How FMV handles it |
|---|---|
| Encryption | AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit |
| Hosting | Enterprise-grade, SOC 2–certified cloud infrastructure, including Amazon Web Services, in U.S.-only regions |
| Access | Least privilege; engagement team only, support access by documented approval; MFA and SSO required for all FMV personnel |
| Logging and audit | Changes and administrative access are logged and auditable; logs retained for [X] |
| AI providers | AI runs inside FMV's own AWS environment under zero data retention; customer data is never used to train third-party models |
| Engagement documents | Stored in a secure data room with access controls |
| Testing | Independent penetration testing is performed annually and industry standard vulnerability scanning is applied |
| People | Background checks for all employees with data access; security and privacy training at hire and annually |
| Vendors | Sub-processors reviewed for security before onboarding and listed in our [Sub-processor List] |
| Business continuity | [Daily] backups; continuity and disaster recovery plans tested [annually] |
| Incident response | Affected customers notified within [X hours/days] of confirming an incident that affects their data |
No. FairMarketValue (FMV) never sells, shares or discloses company-identifiable data. When data reaches a lender, advisor or partner, it is because the client directed FMV to send it, and FMV sends only what the client authorized.
Client data never trains a public or third-party AI model. FMV's AI runs inside its own AWS environment under zero data retention. FMV uses data to build and refine its own workflows, quality checks and private models, and people review all AI-assisted work.
FMV's SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 audits are underway, and reports will be available through the FMV Trust Center once issued. Data is encrypted with AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit, on U.S.-only cloud infrastructure.
A client can revoke an accounting connection at any time, and FMV stops receiving new data from it immediately. Data synced before disconnecting and engagement workpapers are retained as professional standards require, in line with our [Data Retention Policy]. Anonymized, aggregated data cannot be traced back to a company and remains part of aggregate datasets.