If you’re a CPA, a bookkeeper, an insurance agent, a commercial banker, or anyone else whose best customer is a company that just opened its doors, here’s the uncomfortable truth about how that customer picks you: they go with whoever shows up first with something useful. Not the best firm. The first honest one. This is how to be that one, in Richmond, without turning into the person everybody blocks.
Every new Virginia business is public the week it forms
When someone starts an LLC or a corporation in Virginia, they file with the State Corporation Commission. That filing is public record the moment it posts: the legal name, the entity type, the principal office address, and the registered agent. There is no list to buy and no data broker in the middle — it’s the state doing exactly what public records are for.
The volume surprises people. In one four-day stretch this September the SCC recorded 1,552 new entities statewide, 278 of them in the Richmond metro — Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield and Hanover. About 150 of those were filed by the owner personally rather than through a lawyer or an agent service, and 145 had no website at all. That’s a room full of people who need a bank account, a bookkeeper, a policy, and a domain name, and mostly haven’t chosen any of them yet.
What the record actually tells you
The filing looks thin, but three fields do the work:
- Registered agent. If it’s a person at the business’s own address, the owner filed it themselves. They open their own mail, they answer their own phone, and they haven’t hired anyone yet. If it’s a law firm or an agent service, an advisor is already in the picture — a colder lead for most of you.
- Principal office address. A home address means no lease yet. For a banker or an insurance agent that’s a business at the very beginning; for a commercial realtor it’s a prospect six months out.
- Entity type and name. A single-member LLC named after a person is a side business or a contractor. A corporation with “Holdings” in the name is real estate or a shell. The name alone often tells you the trade, and the trade tells you the policy or the tax situation they’re about to need.
Notice what’s missing: no phone, no email. The state doesn’t collect them. If a new business already has a website, you can find contact details there; if it doesn’t — and most don’t in week one — you reach them the old way, by mail or a knock. That constraint is a feature. It filters out everyone who only knows how to blast.
The first line is the whole game
New owners get the same three letters from the same three list-buyers within a month, and they can smell a template. What works is one message that proves you looked:
“Congratulations on forming Ashland Tile & Stone last week. Most new contractors in Hanover get their first workers’ comp question from a general contractor before they’ve set anything up — if that happens, here’s what to have ready.” Then something useful, then your name. No “act now,” no pricing, no attachment.
Three rules I’d hold myself to, and that I hold subscribers of my own feed to:
- One contact per business. One letter, one email, or one visit. If they want you, they’ll answer. If they don’t, a second touch just teaches them your name as a nuisance.
- An honest first line. Say why you’re writing and where you got their name — “your filing with the SCC” is a perfectly good answer. People respect it more than a pretend coincidence.
- No blasts. A hundred merged letters is a blast even if each one has a name on it. Twenty that mention the trade, the county, and a real next step will outperform it every month.
A routine that takes an hour a week
Here’s the Monday version I’d run if I were an accountant or an agent in Henrico:
- Pull last week’s formations for the localities you actually serve. Filter to owner-filed and, if you sell anything digital, to no-website.
- Pick twenty. Not all of them — the twenty whose name or type tells you what they’ll need first. A “Mobile Detailing LLC” needs a garage-keepers policy; a “Consulting LLC” needs an S-corp conversation before its first big invoice.
- Write twenty first lines. Real ones. This is the hour.
- Mail them — owner-filed records have a mailable address by definition — or email the ones with a site.
- Log it and stop. Next Monday, new twenty. Don’t chase the old ones; the ones who need you will call back, often weeks later when the first real problem shows up.
Doing the pulling by hand vs. having it done
You can do step one yourself. The SCC’s Clerk’s Information System is free and searchable; you can page through new filings by date, open each record, and copy what you need. Budget about ninety minutes a week for the metro, more if you dedupe against last week and check which ones have a website.
Or you can let a feed do that part. Fresh Filings is a product I built for exactly this: every new Virginia business the week it files, deduped, flagged owner-filed / no-website / mailable, with the SCC record linked on every row, delivered as a Monday digest plus a live table you can filter and export to CSV, Excel, or Avery labels. It’s $49 a month for the Richmond metro and $99 statewide, both published prices, 14-day trial. Subscribers agree to the three rules above — they’re written into the terms as the Fair-Play Rules — and any business can remove itself from the list, honored immediately. The public weekly page shows a real slice of last week so you can judge it before you pay for anything.
Either way, the routine is the point. The feed just gives you the hour back.
Questions people ask
Is it legal to contact a business from the SCC record?
Yes. Virginia business-entity filings are public record, published by the State Corporation Commission for exactly this kind of transparency. What matters is how you contact them: one honest, relevant message, no blasts, and stop if they say stop. Virginia’s anti-spam and telemarketing rules still apply to email and phone.
Does the SCC record include a phone number or email?
No. The state collects the legal name, entity type, principal office address, and the registered agent. Phone and email only exist if the business has already published them on its own website — which is why a new business with no website is usually reached by mail or a visit.
How fast do I need to be?
The useful window is the first two to three weeks after formation. That’s when a new business opens its bank account, picks a bookkeeper, buys its first policy, and sets up email. After that most of those decisions are made.
How much does Fresh Filings cost?
$49 a month for the Richmond metro (Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover) or $99 a month statewide, with a 14-day free trial. Both prices are published on the site; there’s no quote and no contract.
And if your own firm is the one with no website yet — or one that doesn’t bring in the businesses you want — that’s the other half of what I do. Web design and local SEO for Richmond professionals, fixed quotes, plain English.