Every board knows, intuitively, that some shareholders are more engaged than others. Some investors reply promptly to updates. Others have not opened an email in 18 months. Some would back the next round without a second thought. Others are quietly disappointed and looking for an exit.
What boards have never had is a way to quantify this — to produce a single, comparable metric that tracks shareholder sentiment over time and allows the company to act on it before it becomes a problem. That is what the Investor Sentiment Index™ (ISI™) provides.
What the ISI™ Measures
The ISI™ is a 0-to-100 score that aggregates three dimensions of shareholder relationship health:
- Confidence — how positively shareholders view the company's direction, management, and prospects.
- Satisfaction — how satisfied investors are with the communication, transparency, and quality of information they receive.
- Reinvestment likelihood — the probability, based on expressed and behavioural signals, that shareholders would participate in a follow-on funding round.
These dimensions are weighted and combined into a single score updated quarterly — or more frequently for clients on the CrowdComms Pre-Raise programme who are approaching a fundraising event.
How It Is Calculated
The ISI™ is generated through a combination of structured data collection and AI-powered analysis. CrestCore conducts shareholder calls and surveys using structured question frameworks designed to elicit sentiment signals across the three dimensions. The responses are then processed through FinBERT — a financial-domain natural language processing model — which classifies sentiment at the response level.
Engagement data from investor updates (open rates, click-through rates, response rates) is also incorporated into the model as a behavioural signal layer, weighting the active and passive dimensions of shareholder engagement.
The result is a score that reflects both what shareholders say and how they behave — a more complete picture than either data source alone could provide.
What the Score Means
- 70–100: Strong sentiment. Shareholders are engaged, confident, and represent a high-probability reinvestment pool for follow-on rounds.
- 50–69: Moderate sentiment. Communication is working but there are identifiable concerns. Targeted outreach can address them before they compound.
- Below 50: At-risk sentiment. There are active dissatisfaction signals. Immediate structured engagement is recommended to understand and address concerns.
Why It Matters Before a Follow-On Round
The ISI™ is particularly valuable in the six months before a company returns to market for a follow-on round. Companies that launch a follow-on campaign without understanding the sentiment state of their existing shareholder base are making their most important fundraising decision blind.
Research into Seedrs-funded companies shows that approximately 43% undertake follow-on rounds. Among those, the companies with the highest ISI™ scores — generated through the CrowdComms Pre-Raise programme — demonstrate materially higher conversion rates from their existing investor community.
The ISI™ is not a vanity metric. It is a commercial intelligence tool that tells you, before you launch your next round, how many of your existing investors are likely to back you again.
See how the ISI™ is used in practice
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