Is Your Company Deleting the Data AI Companies Would Pay For?
Is your company deleting the data AI would pay for?
Somewhere in your company, a setting that nobody remembers choosing is deleting data that AI companies would pay for, and it does it quietly, on a schedule.
Let me start with one of those settings, because most owners have never looked at it.
The video
Full script
Somewhere in your company, a setting that nobody remembers choosing is deleting data that AI companies would pay for, and it does it quietly, on a schedule.
Let me start with one of those settings, because most owners have never looked at it.
If your team saves its meetings in Microsoft Teams, each meeting recording is deleted 120 days after the meeting by default, unless someone in IT changed the setting.
So the sales call from last spring, the training session for new staff or the client review that settled a dispute may already be gone.
That is only one deadline, and there are more like it, so before we look at them, let me tell you who I am.
I'm Jimmy. I have worked in data at Fortune 500 companies, as a data analyst, a data engineer and a software engineer, and I am trained in data science. I am also a Canadian military veteran, where I specialized in data analysis and reporting.
Are you selling your data? We are your broker and technical advisor. We get you the best price, and we guide your team through the technical side, so your data stays private.
Are you buying data for an AI lab? We find the right data for you and see it through to delivery, so you can focus on advancing AI research.
Now, let us look at the deadlines that most owners never see, because each one starts with an ordinary step.
When someone leaves and IT deletes the account, Google Workspace keeps the data for 20 days, and Microsoft 365 keeps the mailbox for 30 days, and after that, it is gone for good.
If you cancel a help desk like Zendesk, it starts deleting your data 90 days later, and a Teams recording, as we saw, lasts 120 days.
None of these is a bad rule, but each one can quietly erase years of data that shows how your company really works.
Let us start with the most common way data disappears, which is when someone leaves the company.
Say Grace ran your largest accounts for 9 years, and when she retires, IT deletes her account so you stop paying for her license.
30 days later, 9 years of her email is gone, including how she handled every renewal, every complaint and every price change, which is the kind of work an AI company wants to learn from.
Your IT team can keep a mailbox like hers, for example as a shared mailbox, instead of deleting it.
A quieter way is a rule that somebody set years ago and then forgot about.
Many companies set chat or email to delete itself after 1 or 2 years, often to save space or to lower risk, and then nobody looks at the setting again.
That rule may be the right call for your company, so do not change it on your own, but you should know it is there and what it has already deleted.
Then there is the switch to new software, which every growing company goes through sooner or later.
Picture a company that ran its help desk on one tool from 2016 to 2022, then moved to a new one and canceled the old account.
90 days after it canceled, the old tool started deleting 6 years of tickets, so the new help desk now holds only the last 3 years, and the story of how the team solved problems is cut in half.
The fix is simple, which is to export everything, open the export and check it before you cancel anything.
Why does a long, unbroken history matter so much to an AI company?
Because AI companies want to see the same kind of work done again and again over many years, while the products, the customers and the team changed.
8 years in one place shows that, while 3 years, a gap and a new tool show only a piece of the story, so the same company can draw a smaller offer.
What can you do about it this week? It starts with 3 questions for your IT team.
First, which of our tools delete data on a schedule, and when? Second, what happens to a mailbox and its files when someone leaves? And third, did we keep a full export of every tool we switched off?
Before you pause or change any deletion rule, ask your lawyer first, because some rules are there for legal reasons, and some data must be kept or deleted by law.
Once you know what you still have, the next step is turning it into a license, and that is my job, as your broker and technical advisor.
As your broker, I bring your data to several AI companies and AI labs so they compete for it, and I work through the terms with you, and you make the final call.
As your technical advisor, I guide your team through the export, and we de-identify your data before any AI company sees it, and because it is a license, not a sale, you keep your data and keep using it.
Nothing moves until your team signs off, and you pay me nothing, because the AI company pays my fee, and only after the license is signed.
So, what are your tools deleting this month, and how much of it could an AI company still use? The sooner you ask, the more of your data you keep.
If you run a company with 30 or more people, the data you already have could become a new revenue stream. You can find out if yours qualifies, for free, at AITrainingDataBroker.com.
If you have further questions, leave them in the comments, and I will answer them in the next video.
Thank you for watching, and I will see you next time.