Korra team · · 3 min read
Which clients have data worth licensing? What buyers’ own pages say
Look for years of real work in everyday tools, specialist knowledge, records the business created itself, and one owner who can decide. Buyers say so on their own pages.
Which businesses can license their data? The ones with years of real work recorded in everyday tools, in a field that is hard to copy, with one owner who can decide. You do not have to guess at this. The companies that buy this data publish what they want.
What do buyers say they look for?
Scale AI runs a data partnership programme and lists its criteria. It says 40+ employees is its preferred starting point, though it assesses every case. Beyond size, it looks for four things:
- Established data systems. Years of records in the tools teams already run on.
- Real operational workflows. Day-to-day processes, not demos or synthetic data.
- Domain depth. Specialised expertise that makes the data hard to replicate.
- Stakeholder alignment. A clear owner who can scope the work and approve it.
Handshake AI describes the same kind of asset in one line: if a company captures how good work actually gets done, that data is more valuable than the company thinks.
PYMNTS explained why. Large AI models have already been trained on most of the easily accessible public internet. To handle realistic business tasks they need data that shows how organisations actually communicate, troubleshoot problems and make decisions internally.
- Years of records in everyday tools
- Real day-to-day work, not demos
- Specialist knowledge that is hard to copy
- One owner who can decide
- Records the business created itself
Which systems hold that kind of record?
The ordinary ones. Scale’s page names the tools where it says workflows and decisions already live: Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Chat for conversations; Gmail and Outlook for email; documents and shared drives; Jira, Asana and Notion for tickets and projects; and Salesforce, HubSpot and Zendesk for sales and support records.
A client does not need a data warehouse. A client who has run its sales, support and internal chat in those tools for several years has the raw material.
Which industries do buyers name?
A wide range. Scale’s list includes managed IT services, marketing agencies, insurance brokerage, freight brokerage, field services such as HVAC and plumbing, property management, and staffing. Mercor lists target industries too: legal, healthcare, finance and insurance, professional services, manufacturing, retail, real estate, and logistics.
Read those lists with care. An industry on a buyer’s page does not mean every record in that industry can be licensed. Law firms, accountants and agencies hold files that belong to their clients. Healthcare and payment records carry their own legal limits. The records a business created to run itself are the ones to look at first: its own sales process, its own support history, its own internal operations.
How much is a client’s data worth?
Nobody can say before buyers have seen a description, and you should not promise a number. The programmes publish ranges, which gives a sense of scale. Handshake AI says its partnerships can range from $100K to $4M+ depending on the data shared. Scale shows $10K–$1M+ as an illustrative value per data partnership. Each calls its figures indicative or illustrative, not an offer.
We describe the typical range for a business’s records as $200K to $2M, and we use the same caution: it is a starting point, not an offer.
Which clients do not fit?
Rule these out early and you save everyone time:
- Very small or very new. A few months of records, or a handful of staff.
- Mostly client files. The business holds data, but it belongs to someone else.
- No clear owner. Nobody can say yes, or several people can say no.
- Records that were deleted. Free plans and delete rules can leave less history than the age of the business suggests.
How do you raise it?
Keep it to three sentences, and stop.
- What it isBuyers pay to license a copy of past business records.
- Who is in chargeYou keep your files and approve every offer.
- What it costsListing costs the business nothing.
Do not ask for files, logins or exports. Do not estimate a price. If the owner wants to go further, they describe their records in a listing, and they approve every offer themselves. On Korra a listing costs the business nothing, and the business names the partner who brought it.
The partner kit has the call script, the answers to what owners ask, and two intro emails. The partner page explains how partners work with us.
Questions
- How big does a business need to be?
- There is no fixed line. Scale AI says 40+ employees is its preferred starting point and that it assesses each case. Depth of history and a clear owner matter as much as headcount.
- Do professional services firms fit?
- Sometimes. Their own internal records can fit. The files they hold for clients usually cannot be licensed without each client’s written permission.
- Should you estimate a price for a client?
- No. Published ranges are indicative. The real figure comes from offers on a described set of records, and only the owner decides whether to accept one.
- What if the client’s records are messy?
- Most are. Buyers ask for real day-to-day work, not tidy examples. What matters is that the request, the work and the result can be followed.
Sources
- Data Partnerships — Scale AI
- Data Partnerships — Handshake AI
- Mercor Data: Enterprise Workflow Data for Frontier AI — Mercor
- Dead Airline’s Emails Just Became a $10 Million AI Prize — PYMNTS
Figures are as reported by the publishers above. Discussion threads show what people said; they are not facts or Korra results.
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