Who buys this CAIN-42 product, and where to find them

The person who feels the pain is not always the person who pays. Know both.

The people you will talk to

Role	What keeps them up at night	Say this to them
Founder / CEO of a software company	A deal or a raise blocked by AI or security questions.	"We give you evidence your buyer can check, at a fixed price."
CTO / Head of Engineering	Agents doing real work without controls.	"Stop the worst-case actions without slowing the team."
Head of Security / CISO	Proving controls exist.	"Every decision signed; checkable offline."
Operations or finance lead	Agents near money.	"A person approves the exact action, once."

A good prospect looks like this

Uses AI agents or AI coding assistants.
Sells to larger companies, or is raising money.
10 to 500 people (big enough to have the problem, small enough to decide quickly).
Has a deadline coming.

Trigger events: when to reach out

People buy when something just happened. Watch for these:

They announced an AI feature or an AI agent product.
They are hiring for AI, security or compliance roles.
They mentioned a security questionnaire, SOC 2 or an enterprise deal.
An AI incident at a similar company was in the news.

Where to find them

LinkedIn: founders and CTOs of software companies that mention AI agents.
Company careers pages (job ads reveal problems).
MCP and AI-agent directories and communities.
Your own network: anyone you know who runs or works at a software company.

Who is not a buyer (save your time)

Companies that do not use AI at all yet.
Very large enterprises with long procurement (pass these to the founder).
Anyone who wants a certificate (we do not certify).

Qualify before you pitch

Five checks. Pursue when at least four are true; otherwise keep in touch and move on.

Check	Pursue when	Ask
Need	They answer yes to at least two sizing questions (page 2).	Does the company use AI agents or AI coding tools today?
Budget	They can approve about $500 without a long purchasing process.	"Who signs off on a purchase of this size?"
Authority	You are talking to, or can reach, one of the roles in the table above.	"Who else would want to see this?"
Timing	One of the trigger events is happening in the next 60 days.	"Is there a date this needs to be solved by?"
Fit	They match most of the good-prospect list.	What do your AI agents or AI tools do today?

Search strings that find prospects

Research a prospect in ten minutes

Website (2 min). What do they sell, and to whom? Do they mention AI agents, automation, an MCP server, a "trust" or "security" page?
Careers page (2 min). Job ads tell you their problems: "AI platform engineer", "security questionnaire", "agent", "LLM", "SOC 2", "GRC".
LinkedIn (3 min). Find the person in the right role (page 3 table). Read their last few posts. Note one thing they said in their own words.
Public engineering traces (2 min). A GitHub organisation, an engineering blog, a status page or a listing in an MCP registry.
Write one sentence (1 min). "I think [company] has [problem] because [evidence]." If you cannot write it, do not contact them yet.

A simple daily routine

Outreach first, every day, before anything else: research and write to a handful of new, well-matched people. Quality beats volume; a personal message that names their real situation is worth twenty templates.
Follow up on messages that are three days old, once. After two follow-ups with no answer, stop.
Log everything in one sheet: date, company, person, role, what they said, offer, price, next step and date.
End of week: count calls booked, proposals sent and payments received. That is the scoreboard.

Next: the sales conversation →

FIRME AI CORPORATION · CAIN-42 is a Byzantine trust fabric. Numbers marked "our own check" were run by us, not by an independent party. Nothing on these pages is a certification.