An offer in your inbox
Someone offered to buy your company's old data. Here is how to read it.
Owners of architecture practices, law firms, accountancies, contractors and agencies are being emailed that a buyer will pay well for their old internal records, to train AI. Some emails come from buyers. Most come from referrers, who are paid by the buyer when you sign. This page is what is behind those emails, from the buyers' own pages.
Who sends them, and who pays them
A buyer that wants companies' records pays people to find them. The fee is set by the buyer, paid when you sign or when the buyer accepts your data, and it is the same whether you take the buyer's first figure or a better one. micro1 has raised the most it pays a referrer 2 times in four months: buyers are competing for companies like yours.
Some programmes go further. Grepped's referral terms forbid the referrer from helping you sell your data any other way, and a broker whose site went up this month pays referrers a tenth of your payment while naming no buyer at all.
Several buyers pay whoever introduces a holder. In a sale we run we decline that money, tell you beside each offer what that buyer pays introducers where it publishes it or tells us, and ask it to put that amount into your price instead. If you choose instead to apply to one buyer through its own referral programme, that buyer pays us its published payout as well as our fee, and you see the amount in writing before you choose.
- Pays whoever brings you5% of what DataVendor receives on a referred vendor's deals within 180 days, 7.5% for supply named up front and accepted in writing, up to 10% for rare supply, out of its own share.Track recordSome outside evidence
- Pays whoever brings you10% of what it pays the owner, up to $100,000, plus 2% of the fees of referrers a referrer brings in. Its terms forbid a referrer from helping the owner sell or license the data any other way, for 12 months after they end.Track recordIts own claims only
- Pays whoever brings you"You can earn $10K for each successful referral that becomes a Handshake AI data partner and completes its data transfer" (FAQ on its data-partnerships page, read 17 Oct 2026).Track recordConfirmed by others
- Pays whoever brings you10% of the value of the data deal, up to $100,000 per deal, for deals signed within 12 months of the introduction, paid within 30 days of closing.Track recordIts own claims only
- Pays whoever brings you5% of the deal, up to $100,000, paid after the company's first delivery (shown in its referral app; the public page names no amount).Track recordConfirmed by others
- Pays whoever brings youUp to $50,000 per referred company (up to $25,000 at the programme's launch in June 2026), 7.5% of the licence price where no amount is posted, and a referral field of $75,000 on its posting for shut-down companies; a partner who recruits another partner earns 20% of that partner's payout on top.Track recordConfirmed by others
- Pays whoever brings youThe greater of $50,000 or 6% of the licence fees paid to the company for an introducer's first five qualified US referrals, 6% outside the US, paid after the transaction completes. Mode reviews existing claims before assigning credit; the binding agreement is not published.Track recordSome outside evidence
- Pays whoever brings youNot stated on its sell-company-data page (read 16 Oct 2026); up to $20,000 per company introduced, by email to its CEO, as reported earlier, is unconfirmed.Track recordConfirmed by others
- Pays whoever brings you6% of the price it pays the company, paid on top of that price, to brokers registered in its portal, as its co-founder states publicly. A company whose name or email is already in its system cannot be submitted again, so the first record keeps the credit.Track recordSome outside evidence
- Pays whoever brings youUp to $50,000, paid only if Scale signs a partnership agreement.Track recordConfirmed by others
- Pays whoever brings you"Varies by partnership".Track recordSome outside evidence
- Pays whoever brings youUp to $1,000 for a referred shutdown; nothing published for data sales.Track recordNot assessed
- Pays whoever brings youUp to $50,000 when a data partnership is signed, under a written referral agreement; the amount depends on the size of the partnership.Track recordIts own claims only
- Pays whoever brings youUp to $10,000 per referral.Track recordConfirmed by others
- Pays whoever brings you10% of a referred creator's earnings, up to $25.Track recordConfirmed by others
What the figure in the email rests on
The figure usually comes from a buyer's calculator: a few questions about your headcount, your years and your software, then a range. One broker publishes three calculators, and its own site code describes them. Put one 25-person professional-services firm with 8 years of records through each:
On its quote form, made “deliberately optimistic” on 14 October, in its code's words.
“A deliberately generous range a referrer can show an owner,” in its code's words.
Same firm, same company: the top of one is 9.1 times the bottom of another. Its code also records a real bid of $50K, for a small team with three years of email, chat, code, calls and documents. Its quote now shows that same company $65K to $155K.
Across every buyer that publishes one, the middle offer for one company's records is $316K per company. The middle of what companies were actually paid, where the sale was disclosed, is $28.3K per company. Every disclosed sale is on the deal ledger. A calculator is the first number that brings you to a form; only a buyer who has seen your records makes an offer.
What the buyers' own pages say
Step-by-step guides to referral campaigns now circulate widely, and they repeat terms that the buyers' own pages do not carry. Read on the buyers' pages on 16 October 2026:
- micro1 asks for 30 or more employees, mostly English records, the United States first. Its own page. A separate track takes companies that have shut down, with 50 or more employees at their peak and Teams or Slack history.
- micro1's published licence is non-exclusive and perpetual, with the right to license it on. Its master terms. A signed order form can change that, so ask for it before you agree to anything exclusive.
- Polyshares' pages disagree with each other: its answers describe a bounded, non-exclusive licence, while its data-handling page says exclusive by default and its four published licences are perpetual and exclusive. Its terms on the buyer board.
- A banner's funding figure is not always a round. Kled's announcement was a seed round; the larger figure on its site is a running total.
Five questions before you answer
- Who is the buyer, by name?
- A referrer or broker who will not name the buyer before you share anything cannot tell you whose terms you would sign. Every buyer that publishes its rules is on the buyer board, with what it pays introducers.
- Exclusive or not, and for how long?
- An exclusive licence stops you selling the same records to anyone else, so it should cost the buyer several times a non-exclusive one. Some buyers' own pages disagree with their contracts on this, so read the licence itself.
- Who removes the personal data, and what is left out?
- Buyers' contracts make you promise the records hold no health, payment-card, children's, biometric or export-controlled data. Know who strips names and client material, and before which step.
- When are you paid, and what can stop it?
- Several buyers pay only after they accept the data, with a window to reject it, and some can claw a payment back if the description proves wrong.
- Is the person writing to you paid by the buyer?
- Most are. Their fee does not change with your price, and some programmes forbid them from helping you sell anywhere else.
If the offer is in writing, the offer check reads it against what other buyers publish, term by term.
What is already on offer from your industry
Your records will sit beside every other company's on offer. Brokers' catalogues hold 165 companies' records today, and what each industry's lots hold most often tells you what buyers will compare yours with. Every lot, read daily.
- Most often holdsconversations, documents and knowledge, code with its history
- Most often holdsconversations, documents and knowledge, customer records
- Most often holdsdocuments and knowledge, engineering and design files, conversations
- Most often holdsconversations, documents and knowledge, code with its history
- Most often holdsconversations, documents and knowledge, finance records
- Most often holdsconversations, documents and knowledge, orders and inventory
- Most often holdsconversations, orders and inventory, documents and knowledge
- Most often holdsconversations, customer records, documents and knowledge
- Most often holdsconversations, customer records, tickets and projects
- Most often holdsconversations, documents and knowledge, code with its history
- Most often holdsdocuments and knowledge, conversations, code with its history
- Most often holdsconversations, documents and knowledge, tickets and projects
If you want competing offers
Answering the email yourself is a real option, and sometimes the right one. What going direct costs, and when it is better.
Value it first, on your own computer
Your browser reads your own exports and sends us only counts. You see a range, what each buyer's calculator would show you, and which buyers' rules you meet.
Every buyer that fits, without your name
If you ask us to sell, every buyer whose rules fit gets a description that does not name you, and learns who you are only after its written undertaking. Leave out any buyer you like. Buyers you already talk to stay yours, with no fee.
Choose the offer
Only the holder pays us, a fee fixed in the mandate, and only if a sale closes. In a sale we run no buyer pays us, so our fee depends on what you are paid, not on which buyer pays it. A buyer pays us only if you choose to apply to it through its own referral programme, and you see that amount before you choose.