The films
72 short films on the UK public record
Every limited company in the UK files the same handful of things, and all of it is public. These are the films we made about what that means: what is on the record, what it costs to file late, which trades are growing, and how a morning of filings becomes a short list you can actually write to. Every figure on screen is cited in the frame.
Start here
What the register actually holds, and what V2 does with it every morning.
1:45Back to the recordThe product advert. Five and a half million filings, narrowed to the few hundred that match, then to the ninety-four whose address answers, and a first line written out of what the filing actually says.
1:06It reads the morning, so you can answer itThe V2 launch film. Four stages turn the morning's filings into one card at a time: the company matched, the person found, the address checked, and the first line already written.
1:20Why we built thisThe public record has been open since 1844. Five million companies, filed and free for anybody to read.
1:10How we workFive point seven million UK businesses, and no decent way to find the right ones. That is the whole company. One problem.
1:27What is actually on the UK public recordEvery limited company in the UK has to tell the government what it is doing. Not some of them. All of them.
The public record
How UK company data is filed, what it costs to file late, and how far it can be trusted.
1:23A year on the public recordSeven hundred and seventy-six thousand UK companies in a year: the monthly rhythm, the London asterisk, and the industry mix, straight from the public record.
1:22A leveraged bet on everyone else hiringRecruitment is one of the most cyclical businesses in the country, and one of the easiest to start. Those two facts compound.
1:17Steadier than you thinkConstruction has a reputation for firms going under. The published figures do not really back it up.
1:16Easy to startCleaning is one of the easiest businesses in Britain to start. That one fact explains nearly everything about the market.
1:20Hiding inside an old codeOn 1 April 2026 there were 119,080 public EV chargers in the UK. Every one of them was installed by somebody.
1:13Lists rot at a published rate76,840 UK businesses closed in a single quarter. Closures get read as bad news and then ignored.
1:20Three in fourAt the start of 2025 there were 5. 7 million private sector businesses in the UK. The shape of that number matters far more than the number itself.
1:20One in twentyMost business statistics count firms arriving and leaving. This one counts firms getting bigger, and it is a far better guide to who has money to spend.
1:26They have already been bornThe most predictable number in UK business planning is how many very old people there will be. Because they have already been born.
1:20A schedule, not a shockThere were 585,396 babies born in England and Wales in 2025. That is 1. 6 per cent fewer than the year before.
1:28Two answers, both rightThere are two official answers to how many businesses there are in the UK. They differ by nearly three million. Neither of them is wrong.
1:15Three questions, three answersAsk where British businesses are being created, and most people say London. They are right. It is the least interesting part of the answer.
1:18Three in five are goneOf every hundred UK businesses that opened in 2019, about thirty eight were still trading five years later.
1:26Two numbers, never oneEverybody wants to sell into a growing market. Almost nobody checks whether the one they picked is actually growing.
0:15An audit receiptA receipt printing line by line. Company, number, director, the form each fact came from, the rule that matched it, and the lawful basis, logged.
1:10What changed this quarterThree things changed this quarter, and one thing came out.
1:30Twenty words that get misusedTwenty words that get misused, and what they actually mean. Starting with the one that wastes the most post.
2:00Reading a filing without a law degreeThis is a confirmation statement. Four sides of form, and five things on it worth reading.
1:40How to build a search that keeps workingYou ran the search in March. You ran it again in April, and again in May, and it gave you the same six names each time.
1:40Most of Britain is one personWhen you sit down to write to a business, this is the business you picture. A front desk. A procurement team. A budget that runs on a cycle.
1:27Nine months and a penaltyEvery UK company has to file its accounts nine months after its financial year ends. Miss that date, and the fine is automatic.
1:43Nearly a third of small-business websites fail basic checksNearly a third of UK businesses do not have a website. Not a bad website. No website at all.
1:30Eighty-three thousand doors closedSomebody started this one. Registered it, named it, filed the paperwork. And then, one day, it was gone. Eighty-three thousand of them. In three months.
How the product works
The Feed, enrichment, signals, outreach and the integrations around them.
0:20The 06:00 deliverySix in the morning, and the message is already in the channel. Three companies, matched against your rule, every field citing the filing it came from.
0:15A pipeline assemblingFive steps, drawn as they connect. A company appears on the public record, the rules narrow it, the email drafts itself, and nothing sends until you read it.
1:15Build on the dataOne request. The same filters you would set in the app, as query parameters.
0:55Sending a client our wayYou make the introduction. One email, us copied in, and nothing else about the relationship changes.
1:00What you earn, and whenOne link, generated once. It never expires and there is no dashboard to learn.
1:40Your first hourNothing here yet. One search and this fills up, so start too broad on purpose. It is easier to cut than to guess.
1:45Five teams, five very different usesFive teams, all using the same public record, and none of their mornings look alike.
3:00A morning, start to finishEight o’clock on a Monday. Seven companies are waiting, and nobody ran a search to get them. The rule ran itself at six.
1:50Six emails, taken apartSix emails you can copy today. Here is the first, and the one line in it that does all the work.
0:50The record, on the page you are already onYou are on a company's website. It will tell you what they make. It will not tell you who runs it, when it was set up, or when its accounts are due.
1:02Into the system you already useA lead is only useful if it ends up somewhere you actually work. Not sitting in another tab you have to remember to check.
1:23Build it once, it runs every morningA flow is just a list of instructions that runs on its own. You set it up once, and then it does the same job every morning without you.
1:26An email worth replying toMost cold emails get deleted because they could have been sent to anybody. Here are two emails about the same company, written on the same day.
1:47The moment something changesEvery UK company has to tell Companies House when something about it changes. A new company. A new director. A new address.
1:17From a company name to a personThis is a company record from Companies House. A name, a number, an address. It tells you the business exists. It does not tell you who to email.
By what you do
The same morning, told for one job at a time.
1:30Before they choose a supplierA new retailer picks its suppliers in week one, and rarely revisits it.
1:20The radius you can actually serveSelling nationally when you serve one region wastes everybody’s time, starting with yours.
1:30Before they pick an incumbentMonth one, a company chooses its support provider. After that you are asking them to switch.
1:25On site before the tenderOnce it is out to tender with six names on it, you are competing on price alone.
1:30Quoted in the month they startedA new company buys its first cover once, and usually from whoever asked first.
1:50Every field knows where it came fromNobody trusts a CRM field they cannot trace, so they build their own spreadsheet instead.
1:25Forty firms, not four thousandYou do not need volume. You need the right forty, and reading four thousand rows is not research.
1:30Before the job advert existsBy the time a role is posted, nine agencies have seen it, and the conversation is about fee.
1:35The brief that fills overnightThree briefs, all due this week, and most of the time goes on assembling rather than finding.
1:40One list, six reps, no argumentsNobody is being difficult. The list is, because the same company is sitting in three places.
1:35A segment that refills itselfA bought list is out of date before it arrives, and every campaign starts with the same repair job.
1:30An open brief, sitting in publicEvery good brief arrives by accident, and the rest of the week is chasing.
1:45A patch you can actually driveA county is not a territory. It is a shape, and most of it is four hours away.
1:30You are the sales teamThere is no sales team. There is you, and a day that filled up before nine.
1:40The first year is the whole relationshipA practice does not lose clients. It just never finds the next one, because the finding always happens after everything else.
By who you sell to
One sector per film, with the real register counts behind it.
1:30Before the riding seasonThree thousand six hundred motorcycle dealers and workshops, and seven in ten lead with the code.
1:30Repairers and the restFour thousand eight hundred companies file the computer repair code, but only a third of them put it first.
1:30Trusts, not buildingsSix thousand eight hundred companies file the primary education code.
1:30The week they go limitedNine thousand plastering companies, and three quarters of them lead with the code, which is high for construction.
1:30Fleet, then renewalTen thousand car and van hire companies, and two in five carry the code behind their main trade.
1:30One group, many companiesTwelve thousand companies file the elderly residential care code, and half of them list it second.
1:30The first contractThirteen thousand specialist cleaning companies, and nearly half of them file it as a secondary trade.
1:30Before the first springTwenty-three thousand landscapers, and unusually for this country, most of them are nowhere near London.
1:30The structure, not the guessTwenty-four thousand companies file the social housing code, but only a third of them lead with it.
1:30Before the season startsTwenty-seven thousand event caterers, and a third of them carry the code behind something else.
1:30The first sixty daysTwenty-nine thousand recruitment agencies in the UK, and a fifth of them file it as a second trade.
1:30Before the first car landsThirty-five thousand used car dealers, and nine in ten of them say so in their first SIC code.
1:30Before the first loadSixty-four thousand road freight companies in the UK, and most of them are one driver and one truck.
1:30In the fortnight they are choosingFour thousand two hundred driving schools in the UK, and most of them are one instructor who went out on their own.
Where the data comes from
Everything in these films is read from the UK public record: the companies on it, what they file, and when. The same record is what a Leadistry agent reads every morning, and our data sources page lists each one. The music is licensed under Creative Commons and credited on the credits page.
If you would rather read than watch, the blog covers the same ground in writing, and explore carries every film and every trade code in one place.