How figures work
Every figure on Ponicorn carries three things: the date it was true, where it was read from, and one of two labels. Unknown is a valid value. No figure is invented.
The two labels
- ✓ Verified
- Someone stands behind the figure: the founder claimed the profile from an address at their own domain or submitted it themselves, Ponicorn read the number from the founder's connected payment account, or a third party read it from a public payment dashboard the founder published. Milestones a founder posts carry this label.
- Unverified
- Nobody has confirmed it yet: the founder said it in public (a post, an interview, a screenshot), or it was estimated or inferred from something else. It is still linked to where it was read, with the date, and an estimate is never shown as a confirmed fact.
How a number earns its place
A figure is only recorded with the page it was read from, and every record stores its own confidence. Research is machine-checked before a person reviews it: a source that does not actually contain the number it is cited for never reaches a profile. Nothing is published automatically, and a figure from last year is not shown as if it were current. Where a business has gone quiet, the date says so.
Connected figures
A founder can give Ponicorn a restricted Stripe key that reads subscriptions and nothing else. Ponicorn sums the active ones into a monthly figure and appends it to the history as a dated ✓ Verified · connected row, with Ponicorn named as the reader. The key is stored encrypted with a secret that never leaves the server and is never shown again. It is used for one request: listing subscriptions and their prices. Secret keys are refused, and a key that could also read customers or charges is flagged. The founder can revoke it in Stripe at any time; the last published figure keeps its date.
What a founder can change
A founder who claims their profile keeps the description, tagline, logo and links current, posts milestones that join the metric history as new dated rows, and can dispute any figure. Nobody, founder or otherwise, edits or removes a sourced figure; a disputed one is corrected or annotated by a person. A founder can ask for the whole listing to come down, and that is honoured.