About Jottings

I was skeptical too.

I'm Chris Riley, founder of Jottings. I've spent roughly 20 years building and operating businesses.

Chris Riley

Founder, Jottings AI

So when I first started hearing that AI companies were paying businesses for their data, my reaction was probably pretty similar to yours:

Seriously? Companies are paying for this? What's the catch?

I wasn't looking to become a data broker. I wasn't sitting around thinking about training datasets. I was running businesses.

I've built businesses, bought businesses, sold businesses, hired people, made payroll, lived inside spreadsheets, and accumulated the same ridiculous collection of emails, documents, SOPs, invoices, and forgotten folders that every long-running business creates. Today I also build and operate AI software.

Then an AI data company approached me about licensing data from one of my businesses.

So I went through the whole process myself, as the seller.

I didn't build Jottings because I read an article about AI training data. I built it because I actually did the deal.

I went through the process of figuring out what we had, what was valuable, what we had the right to license, what couldn't be included, how to prepare it, how to move an enormous amount of data, how to work through diligence, and ultimately how to get a transaction closed.

$173,163

licensing payment

For how my business operates every day. Records it had already created simply by doing its work.

No customer list.
No selling the company.
The underlying business records remained ours.

See what your business data could be worth

Why Jottings

We've been the seller in this deal. That's why we work differently.

By now you've probably seen the pitches. Sell your company data to AI. Upload your files here. Earn up to some big number. Most of them leave the hard part to you. We licensed our own company's operational history first, so we know what the hard part is. Then we do it for you.

Been there
Most offers
A pitch from the buying side of the table.
Jottings
We went through it as the seller, for our own business. We know where it gets hard.
The buyers
Most offers
Vague demand and an "up to" number, with no buyer behind it.
Jottings
We talk to the buyers directly. We know who is actually buying, what they pay for, and which offers are noise.
The work
Most offers
An upload portal and a checklist. You sort, scrub, and label it yourself.
Jottings
We do the homework: inventory, legal and privacy checks, missing SOPs, packaging. You give us access and answers.
The close
Most offers
It ends once your files are in. The contract and diligence are yours to figure out.
Jottings
We stay through diligence, the contract, the transfer, and the payment.
Whose side
Most offers
A flat price set by the buyer. Take it or leave it.
Jottings
We work for you, not the buyer. We get paid when you get paid.

We don't give you homework. We do the homework, and we stay until you're paid.

The valuable part was already there.

None of it was new. It was just exhaust from running the business:

A proposal.
A completed job.
An estimate.
A decision in an email.
An SOP.
A spreadsheet someone has updated every Friday for nine years.

Together, those ordinary things describe something extremely valuable:

how a real business actually works.

That's when the opportunity became obvious to me. So did the problem.

This market wasn't built for normal business owners.

The AI data world is young, technical, fragmented, and moving ridiculously fast.

The people buying data speak in terms like trajectories, modalities, annotations, evaluations, provenance, and model training.

Meanwhile, the business owner they're talking to is thinking:

I have QuickBooks, Gmail, Dropbox, a CRM, 12 years of files, and a company to run. What exactly do you want from me?

That's the disconnect. And we're seeing it over and over again. Business owners ask us:

Do you want access to my CRM?
Do I have to organize everything first?
How do I know what is valuable?
Are you buying my customer information?
Do I need to know how much data I have?
Who would even buy this?
How am I supposed to package 10 years of business history?
Is this actually real?

Those are reasonable questions. I had many of the same ones.

The answers you get depend on who you ask. Some of the demand you'll hear about is real. A lot of it isn't.

We talk to the buyers directly. We know who is actually buying, what they pay for, and which offers are noise. That's the first thing we tell you.

That's why we built Jottings.

Jottings sits between the business owner and the AI data market. You don't need to learn how this industry works, and you don't get a homework assignment.

We do the homework.

01
Find it.
The systems, workflows, decisions, and outcomes that matter.
02
Prepare it.
Inventory, organize, and package the useful parts.
03
Protect it.
Legal and privacy checks. Personal details, passwords, and restricted info get flagged.
04
Position it.
The materials buyers need to evaluate it.
05
Find the right buyer.
AI data companies with a reason to care about your business.
06
Run the deal to the end.
Buyer talks, diligence, the contract, the transfer, and the payment.

Your part is short: give us access and context, approve what is included, and sign.
You retain ownership of your underlying data.
For qualified licensing engagements, there is no large upfront consulting bill.

We get paid when you do. So we stay until you're paid.

Not every company will have something worth licensing.

A business with six months of history and a mostly empty inbox probably isn't sitting on a major AI data asset. A company with 12 years of workflows, thousands of completed jobs, real human judgment, and measurable outcomes might be a very different story.

That's why Jottings starts with an assessment rather than a sales pitch.

If your business history isn't ready yet, we built free tools to help you document processes and turn knowledge that lives in people's heads into something your business can use today.

See the free tools

You already did the hard part.

You built the business.
You hired the people.
You completed the jobs.
You solved the problems.
You made the decisions.

You created years of business history without ever knowing someone might eventually value it as training data.

You shouldn't also have to become an AI-data expert to figure out what to do with it.

I did it once for my own business. Now we do it for yours.

Chris Riley

Founder, Jottings AI

Business owner first. AI-data nerd by accident.

See what your business data could be worth