Get your data ready to license
Eight steps to take before you talk to any buyer. They protect your customers, your people and the price.
- Confirm who owns the data and who can sign. Which legal entity owns each system: the company, a parent, an estate, an assignee? Do you need board, investor or lender approval?
- List your systems and date ranges. Code with its history, tickets, support conversations, internal docs and SOPs, CRM. Note the years each one covers and roughly how much is there.
- Read your customer contracts and NDAs. Some limit how you can use data in your systems, or forbid licensing it. Anything restricted gets excluded or needs written consent.
- Check platform terms. Data exported through a platform's API may come with rules about how it can be used. Slack's API terms are one example.
- Read your privacy notices and employee policies. What you told people about how their data would be used still applies after you shut down.
- Set aside what never goes. Private messages, HR and payroll records, health information, biometric data, government ID numbers, financial-account and card data, passwords and keys, privileged legal communications, and anything about children.
- Plan de-identification at the source. A qualified vendor removes names, emails, IDs and other identifiers before anything leaves your systems, tests a sample for re-identification, and signs a certificate.
- Write down any offers you've had. Buyer, date, amount and expiry. A written offer sets the bar a competitive process has to beat.
Before you wind down, check with your lawyer whether you're required to delete anything, and keep what you're allowed to keep. Data is often destroyed at shutdown, and it can't be licensed once it's gone. This checklist isn't legal advice.