How to introduce a company's records to AI data buyers

micro1, Mode and Maryah pay the person who introduces a company that goes on to license its records to them. Advisors, accountants and, after a closure, liquidators and trustees are often the first to know which companies have years of email, team chat, CRM, support tickets and written procedures. The company signs its own license and is paid for it directly.

The owner or officeholder has to agree first

An introduction names a company and a contact person, so get their OK first. For a running company that is the owner or a director. For a company in liquidation, administration or bankruptcy, it is usually the officeholder, because control of the company’s assets has passed to them. Our guide on companies in administration covers who can sign.

The introduction itself is a name and a contact. The buyer then talks to the company, checks its records and its right to license them, and makes any offer to the company.

Join a program before you make the introduction

micro1 says referrals “must be submitted through the official referral process” to count, and Mode and Maryah track introductions through your own partner account. Each program shows its terms when you join.

• micro1 wants “established companies with 30+ full-time employees”. Data “should be primarily in English”, and demand is highest in the US, the UK and Canada, though other regions “may still be considered”. A second micro1 program takes companies that have closed.
• Mode takes companies and nonprofits based in the US, Canada, the UK or Australia. It accepts referrals of companies with 50 or more people in most industries, 15 or more in accounting, medicine and finance, and 10 or more in law.
• Maryah writes its partner program for “M&A advisers, accountants, private equity firms and trusted business advisers”. It suggests starting with businesses of more than 30 people, over three years old, with English-language records, and adds that “fit depends on the data, not just company size”. It publishes no country limit.

We may earn a fee when you join through these links. How we get paid

Small and non-English companies have fewer routes

micro1 and Maryah both start at 30 people with records in English, and Mode takes four countries. Maryah decides case by case, so for a small company, or one whose records are mostly in another language, ask Maryah first.

The owner can also apply alone. Grepped publishes no size, age or country limit and gives the owner a private estimate from its business page. It has no program for introducers.

Gather six facts before the first call

• Headcount today, or at its peak for a closed company.
• How many years back the email, chat and CRM go.
• Which tools the company used: Slack or Teams, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, a CRM, a support desk, project tools, shared docs.
• Roughly what share of the records is in English.
• Whether the accounts are still live, and who has the admin logins. Some buyers export only from live systems.
• Whether anything belongs to clients or sits under an NDA, and where customer personal data is kept.

The owner can answer most of these in our fit check, which shows who would take the records. Its result, and our records summary, turn the answers into a short text the owner can send you or paste into a company’s form. The company data estimator runs micro1’s, Telegraph’s and Grepped’s own estimators side by side.