Article

Thirty staff means records worth pricing

Last updated October 16, 2026

A company with 30 people at a desk has had to write things down. The SOPs, the knowledge base, the CRM and the project files exist because the owner couldn’t be in every room. A buyer pays to license records like these to train AI models. Here is why 30 is the published line, which records count, what the company keeps, and how it works with micro1.

Why thirty is the line

micro1 publishes the companies it looks for: 30 or more employees, and established documentation. Those two go together, and here is our own explanation of why.

At five people, nobody writes anything down. Everyone sits in one room and the process is a conversation. At 15, the first SOP appears, usually after something goes wrong twice. At 30, the company can’t run on conversation any more. There is a knowledge base, because new hires keep asking the same questions. There is a CRM, because three salespeople can’t share one spreadsheet. There is a project tracker, because six projects at once don’t fit in anyone’s head. The company documented its operations because it had to.

That is what a buyer is paying for. Not the size of the company. The fact that at 30 desks, the way the work gets done has been written down, year after year, by the people doing it.

See if your company qualifies at micro1

Which records count

This is our own description of what an operating company of 30 or more usually keeps, not a list from any buyer:

the SOPs: how to onboard a client, how to close the month, how to handle a complaint;
the knowledge base, and the questions it was written to stop;
the CRM: every lead, every deal, every note, the ones won and the ones lost;
the project history: the plan, the tickets, the changes, the delivery, the post-mortem;
the QA records: checklists, test results, the defects found and what was done about them;
the Slack or Teams channels and the shared inboxes where the exceptions got handled.

micro1 publishes the kinds of data it looks for: SOPs, knowledge bases, internal documentation, CRM data, project histories and QA processes. micro1 decides what it licenses.

The SOPs and the knowledge base

An SOP is a decision made once so it doesn’t have to be made again. A company of 40 people has hundreds of them, and most are not labelled as such. The onboarding checklist is an SOP. The template email for a late payment is an SOP. The page that says which three people approve a discount is an SOP.

The knowledge base is the same thing from the other direction. It is the record of every question a new hire asked often enough that someone wrote the answer down. Say a services company of 50 people has a wiki of 800 pages, built over six years. Nobody reads it end to end. Every page exists because of a real problem, and the edit history shows how the answer changed. That is a record of how the company learned.

The CRM

The CRM is the longest continuous record most companies have. It starts before the first SOP and it never stops. Every lead, every call note, every proposal sent, every reason a deal was lost. Ten years of it is a complete account of how the company sold, what it charged, and what the market said no to.

Take a company of 35 with 9,000 contacts and 2,200 closed deals in its CRM, dating back to 2016. The notes on the lost deals say why: price, timing, a competitor, a champion who left. Most owners have never read those notes in bulk.

Project histories and change requests

A project history is the plan and what happened to it. The ticket says what was asked. The comments say what was argued. The change request says what moved, and the date says when. Together they show how a company handled the gap between what it promised and what it could deliver, which is the part no textbook covers.

Say a software company of 60 runs 12 projects a year, each with 200 to 400 tickets. Eight years of that is 20,000 tickets, with the comments. Every one of them records a small decision. A buyer licensing that record is licensing 20,000 decisions, in order, with the reasoning attached.

QA processes

QA is where a company writes down what “good” means. The checklist, the test plan, the defect log, the sign-off. A manufacturing company has it on paper; a software company has it in the tracker; an agency has it in the review thread before a deliverable ships.

The QA record is worth naming because owners forget it counts. It feels like overhead. It is the company’s standard, applied thousands of times, with the failures logged.

The records you didn’t know you kept

Owners count the systems they pay for and forget the rest. Here are four more, as our own description.

The approvals in email. Every discount over 10 percent, every refund, every exception to the SOP went through someone’s inbox with a reason attached. Years of those are a record of where the company bent its own rules, and why.

The Slack thread behind the decision. The SOP says what to do. The thread from the week it was written says what the alternatives were and who argued for them. The thread is the reasoning; the SOP is only the conclusion.

The exception log nobody named. The spreadsheet the operations manager keeps of jobs that went sideways. The shared inbox for complaints. The channel called something like “urgent”. Each is a list of the days the process didn’t fit, kept by the person who had to make it fit.

The old systems. A company that switched CRM in 2021 still has the export from the old one, somewhere. Those years count. Find the file before you fill in the estimate.

Why a buyer wants them

On 9 October 2026, micro1 announced a commitment to spend $1 billion over the next 12 months acquiring and licensing enterprise operational data. micro1 says it uses de-identified company data to train AI models on how real businesses work, with the incomplete information and the exceptions that need judgment.

Here is our own observation. The reason the records of a working company are hard to replace is that nobody can make them to order. Ten years of decisions, with the reasons attached, only exist because the company ran for ten years. You already did that.

What the company keeps

Under micro1’s published terms, companies retain ownership of their underlying data. The company keeps operating. The CRM is still your CRM; the wiki is still your wiki; nothing in the published terms moves ownership to the buyer. micro1 describes a data licensing arrangement, and the company is the one that holds the records before and after.

Worth two minutes to see your range? The estimate asks five questions, one of them how many people sit at a desk.

How it works with micro1

These are micro1’s published steps:

Get started. A short assessment to find the right partnership for the company.
Evaluation. micro1’s team reviews the submission and decides whether the company is a fit.
Discovery. If there is a potential fit, micro1 asks for more information and schedules a call to discuss the data and the privacy requirements.
Partnership. If approved, micro1 finalises the agreement and the data requirements, and the partnership begins.

On privacy, micro1 publishes these terms. Personal information is removed where relevant. Some datasets are rewritten synthetically, which keeps the workflow and reduces the direct ties to the original records. The approved scope, the anonymisation and redaction rules and the internal approvals are defined together before any participation. Access is limited to a small number of authorised staff, and each company’s data runs through its own isolated pipeline. The company can review representative samples before the prepared data is used. Data is kept for agreed periods and deleted on request or at the end of the engagement.

On money, micro1’s partner programme lists company compensation from $100,000 to $2,000,000 and above. micro1 prices each company. A published range is not an offer, and our estimate isn’t one either.

What this means for a company with thirty desks

The records differ by the kind of company, so here are three, as our own description and not a list from any buyer.

A software or services company of 30 to 100 keeps its record in the tracker, the wiki and the chat. The engineering channels hold the design debates and the incident threads. The tracker holds every ticket and estimate. The statements of work and the change requests hold the reasons each project moved. The support inbox and the knowledge base hold the questions customers ask and the answers the team settled on.

An accounting or professional practice of 30 to 60 keeps its record in the engagement files and the review notes. The checklists for each kind of job. The review comments between a junior and a partner. The templates, and the edits to them after a client pushed back. The CRM of proposals sent and fees agreed.

A logistics or operations company of 40 to 150 keeps its record in the SOPs and the exception log. The dispatch procedures. The daily reports. The incident reports when a shipment went wrong, and the change to the procedure that followed. The vendor correspondence. The QA checklists at each handoff.

In each case, the question is the same: for how many years, and how completely, was the work written down? The estimate asks that in five questions.

What is never included

micro1 says the approved scope, the anonymisation and redaction rules and the internal approvals are defined before any participation, with clear boundaries on what is shared and what is never included. micro1’s partner guidance lists what is never included: attorney-client privileged records, health information, payment-card and financial-account details, Social Security numbers, minors’ data, biometric data, and classified or export-controlled material. Ask micro1 before you apply if any of your records sit near those lines.

From our side, two more things, as our own advice. Anything a client owns under contract is the client’s, and it stays out. And the personal details of staff and customers are what the de-identification step exists to remove; you don’t scrub them yourself, and you don’t need to.

Closing or closed? That is a different page

This page is for a company that is still trading. If the company has closed, or is winding down over the next few months, the records are the same kinds but the line is different. micro1’s partner programme covers companies that have closed with 50 or more staff at their peak. Read the page for closed companies instead.

Where we fit

We, TrustPast, explain the process and give you a range with our estimate. Five questions, two minutes. The estimate is ours, not an offer. You apply to micro1 yourself, through the button below. micro1 pays us a referral fee. You pay us nothing. We never see your files.

Before you apply

Four things to settle first, as our own advice:

Count the people. micro1’s published line is 30 or more employees. Our estimate asks a different question, how many people work at a desk now and at peak, so have both numbers ready.
List the systems. The CRM, the tracker, the wiki, the chat, the shared drive. For each, how many years it goes back. That list is most of the application.
Find the client contracts. Anything a client owns under contract stays out, and only the contracts say which is which. Have counsel read them before the discovery call.
Don’t tidy up. The messy threads are the record. The de-identification step handles the names. Leave the rest as it is.

Then answer the five questions. If the range is worth your time, apply.

Alex, TrustPast

Questions and answers

Do we need at least 30 employees?

micro1’s public pages describe companies with 30 or more employees and established documentation. micro1 decides at application. Our estimate asks how many people sit at a desk, so you can see the range before you apply.

Do we have to stop using our own records?

No. Under micro1’s published terms, companies retain ownership of their underlying data. The company keeps operating with the same systems.

Do customer names and staff details go to micro1?

micro1 says personal information is removed where relevant, some datasets are rewritten synthetically, and the anonymisation and redaction rules are agreed before participation.

What does it cost us?

Nothing. micro1 pays us a referral fee. You pay us nothing, and you apply to micro1 yourself.

How much does micro1 pay?

micro1’s partner programme lists company compensation from $100,000 to $2,000,000 and above. micro1 prices each company. Our estimate is a range, not an offer.