First 90 days: selling to new companies at the right moment

A company that incorporated this week has no incumbent suppliers. No accountant to displace, no bank loyalty, no software contracts, no agency on retainer. Everything is still to be decided, and the public record announces the company's existence the same day it happens. Companies House official statistics recorded just over 800,000 incorporations in the year to March 2025, which averages out at well over 10,000 new companies every week. For sellers of first-purchase products, those weeks are the whole game.

Day one on the public record

Incorporation is the rare buying signal that is total, public and immediate. The moment a company is formed, its Companies House record exists: name, incorporation date, registered office, SIC codes describing what it intends to do, and its directors. Before the company has a website, a logo or a phone line, it has a public record entry, which means the earliest possible moment to learn a company exists is available to anyone who watches the record rather than the web.

That inversion matters. Tools that discover companies through their online footprint cannot see a company that has not built one yet. By the time the footprint exists, so does the accountant, usually.

What new companies buy in the first 90 days

The first weeks of a company's life are a queue of first-time purchases, most of them near-mandatory:

• An accountant or bookkeeper, with statutory deadlines already ticking from day one (the calendar is laid out in our filing deadlines guide)
• Business banking, insurance, and often payroll and pensions
• A website and email domain, which is why the poor-website filter and the incorporation-date signal overlap so productively (see how to find companies with no website)
• Software for invoicing, admin and the trade itself
• Services around the office: registered-address providers, telecoms, equipment

None of these are created needs. The incorporation itself created them; the only open question is which supplier arrives first with a credible offer. That is why timing dominates this play, and why our guide to emailing newly incorporated companies treats speed as the core variable.

Week one versus month six

The same company, approached at two moments, is two different prospects. In week one, the director is actively assembling the business: decisions are being made daily, and a relevant introduction is part of the setup process rather than an interruption. By month six, most of those first purchases are made, and every pitch is a displacement pitch: harder, slower, and competing with switching costs rather than with nothing at all.

Few companies can be reached in week one, because most have no website or working email yet, so the realistic window is the first few months. The accountants case is the cleanest example, since the earliest filing obligations reward whoever is already in place, but the same curve applies to agencies selling websites and to almost every first-purchase product.

The speed workflow

Being reliably early is a systems property, not a hustle property. The working setup:

1. An agent watching the incorporation signal. Trades (SIC codes) plus area, with registered in the last 12 months as the reason. The agent reads the public record every morning and never sends you a company you have already been given, so the Feed stays fresh without you running anything.
2. A way to reach a named person. A company only weeks old is thin on contactable detail by nature, so your agent holds it back until it can be reached: a website, a business email the company published or owns, and the director's name when the public record has it. A lead that cannot be completed is never delivered and never charged.
3. The Feed to remove the delay. The gap between "the agent found it" and "you got around to writing" is where the advantage leaks. In the Feed each new match arrives with the first email already written from the dated reason. Approve it and it goes from your own mailbox, two short follow-ups are ready if there is no answer (day 4 and day 9 by default), and a reply stops everything to that company.

With that running, each introduction goes the day the company can be reached and takes a few minutes of your morning. If you would rather it went out without you, Autopilot is one switch on the Feed, and it is off by default. Approve each email or send automatically weighs the two.

The agent works every morning by nature, so how fast you answer it is the only variable left. Even a Monday review of the week's new cards still lands well inside the window.

Writing to a brand-new company

The first-90-days message has its own etiquette:

• Congratulate briefly, then be useful. The director knows the company is new; a whole paragraph about it wastes the scarcest inbox in your market.
• Assume nothing is set up. "If you have not sorted X yet" respects the situation; "switch to us" misreads it.
• One offer, sized for a first purchase. New companies buy starters, not enterprise packages.
• Expect thin mailboxes. New domains bounce more, which is why every address is checked before a lead reaches you, why a lead whose first email bounces is credited back, and why your mailbox starts slowly to protect your reputation.

The compliance position

Incorporation does not change the rules, it satisfies them. These are limited companies, corporate subscribers under PECR, so B2B email without prior consent is permitted, provided you identify yourself and carry a working opt-out. The named director you write to is personal data processed under legitimate interest, covered properly in what legitimate interest actually requires. And the data trail behind the approach, every field traced to the company's own filings, is what makes the whole play defensible: see why filing-traced data beats scraped profiles. As ever, this is practical guidance, not legal advice.

This week's cohort is forming now

Thousands of UK companies will incorporate this week, and each one's first 90 days start immediately. Start free with 25 free leads, describe your niche in the two-minute setup chat, and be in the inbox as soon as the next ones can be reached. For one trade worked through from start to finish, see how to get work from builders, and for the opening sentence itself, first lines written from a company’s own filings.

To see where new companies are being set up, read new companies by UK city in 2026.