THE ARCHIVE NOBODY OPENS
Fifteen years of email is the deepest record your firm has, and nobody has looked at it since
Mail archives accumulate without anyone deciding to keep them. They contain negotiations, advice, reversals and explanations that were never written down anywhere else, because email was where the work actually happened.
THE PRIVACY QUESTION
Identities out, before anything is shared
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01
Establish what exists
Six questions about the systems in use. Nothing is accessed at this point.
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02
You set the boundary
Mailboxes, periods, or correspondents you will not include stay outside the licence entirely.
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03
Anonymization in preparation
Identifying fields are stripped as part of preparing the data, ahead of any onward sharing.
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04
Paid on completion
Typically $100K to $2M, Net 30 to 60, once the data is approved, shared, and anonymized.
THE TRACK RECORD
The principals take the first call
“Nearly three years at McKinsey, then bought a company outright and scaled it to $50M rather than advising someone else to.”
“AO Swag and Roofer.com, built and run alongside each other, $21M raised across the two.”
THE MAIL QUESTIONS
What firms ask about correspondence
Email is the most sensitive thing we have.
Which is why scope is yours to set and anonymization happens in preparation before anything is shared. Mailboxes and periods you exclude are simply not in the licence.
Can we include some mailboxes and not others?
Yes. The licence covers a defined slice, and that slice can be drawn by mailbox, by date, or by both.
Ours is spread across two migrations.
Common, and rarely fatal. Archived and exported mail still carries the reasoning. Fragmentation reduces continuity rather than voiding the record.
What is an archive like this worth?
Deals typically land between $100K and $2M. Mail often scores well because reasoning density is high, which matters more than volume.
SPEAK WITH A MANAGING PARTNER
The thing nobody has opened in a decade has a bid on it
Six questions and a short conversation. Nothing you tell us leaves Polyshares.
Check your data