Can your company license its records? A 10-point self-check

Size and history

• 1. Are you a limited company or LLP? You need the authority to license the company's records, and a clear signatory.
• 2. Do you have 20–30 or more staff? Handshake AI asks for 20+ full-time staff and micro1 for 30+. Smaller firms can still fit if their records are unusual.
• 3. Do you hold 3 or more years of records? Handshake asks for 3+ years in operation. Depth of history often matters more than headcount.

Systems

• 4. Do your records live in modern systems? Email, Slack or Teams, a ticketing tool, a CRM, Git repositories and shared documents are what buyers ask for.
• 5. Are they mostly in English? micro1 says it is primarily looking for companies that operate and document in English.
• 6. Does the company own the accounts? Workspaces set up on staff members' personal accounts, or inside a client's systems, are not yours to license.

Rights and contracts

• 7. Do your contracts allow it? Read your customer contracts for confidentiality clauses. Data you handle on a client's behalf, as their processor, is under their control, not yours to license.
• 8. Is your data mainly sensitive? Health records, children's data, criminal records and HR files stay out of any licence. If those make up most of what you hold (for example in care or legal services), you're probably not a fit. See personal data to keep out of a licence.

Readiness

• 9. Can you de-identify before anything leaves? Names, emails and IDs should be replaced consistently inside your own systems, then tested.
• 10. Do the owners agree, and are you ready to tell staff and customers? Transparency comes before any new use of personal data. We cover that in a separate guide.

If you answered yes to most of these, our free estimate takes about five minutes and asks for no files. If you're unsure about a particular data type, try can I sell this?