Briggs AnalyticsDo AI companies buy data from small businesses?
In this article
Which buyers take small companiesWhat they want from a small businessWhat they payA worked exampleHow to tell if you fitWhich buyers take small companies
Of the six types of buyer that license US company records, two publish headline figures for companies of 100 people and up. The other four take smaller companies as a matter of course. One is built for small and mid-size operators and does the scrubbing and write-ups itself. One buys code with history at any company size. One specializes in companies that are shutting down, from one person up. And the fastest-paying marketplace takes most sizes and pays within seven days of review. Every type, side by side.
What they want from a small business
The same thing they want from a large one: how real work got done, over years, with outcomes. A plumbing company's quotes that became jobs that became invoices. An agency's briefs that became drafts that became reports. A three-person software company's commits and the bug reports that led to each one. What matters is that the work was recorded in a system and that the system still holds the history.
What they pay
The published floor across the market is $10,000. The small-operator buyer publishes offer bands by industry, with mortgage and lending at the top; the shut-down specialists publish $10,000 to $300,000. On our model, built from those figures, a 10-person company with eight to fifteen years of records sits between $10,000 and about $100,000 depending on industry and systems. Every industry at ten people.
See what your company's records could get.
Ten questions, under five minutes, built from the buyers' own published ranges.
Get my estimate →A worked example
A six-person HVAC company, fourteen years old, running a field service platform since 2015 and QuickBooks since the start. Roughly 11,000 service calls with diagnosis notes, parts and invoices, linked to the dispatch history. On the published figures that is a strong small-company record: two connected systems, long history, clean ownership. The small-operator buyer and the marketplace both fit; the enterprise buyers would not, and that is fine.
How to tell if you fit
Three questions. Are there three or more years of records? Are they in a system, not in a drawer? Do you own them, meaning no customer contract forbids secondary use and any contractors signed over their work? Three yeses and you fit at least one buyer. The two-minute check tells you which.
In short
- Four of the six buyer types take companies under 30 people. The published floor is $10,000.
- Buyers pay for years of recorded work in a system, not headcount.
- A 10-person company with eight to fifteen years of records sits between $10,000 and about $100,000 on the published figures.
- Three yeses (three years, in a system, you own it) and you fit at least one buyer.
Questions owners ask.
We are a two-person company.
If there are years of records in a system, you still get checked. The shut-down specialists and the code buyers take the smallest companies; the published floor is $10,000.
Does the buyer want to talk to my customers?
Never. Customer identity is removed before anyone sees a record.
Is this worth my time at $10,000?
The owner's time is a two-minute check, a short call and an export walkthrough. Most owners decide it is.
