Lumen 5.4 data validation not working ...

Hi:

Sorry for the terrible title , so basically I am trying to do validation on the request coming in, here, this do not work telling me that class company do not exist, and so I tried: Company, companies,Companies, Companys,companys , but all to no avail ...

 $this->validate($request, [
            'company_id'                            => 'required| exists: company,id',

and here :

[
 'data.*.first_name'               => 'required',
]

it tells me that data.first_name.first_name cannot be empty, but it should detect the * as array index only ... Anyone have any idea ? Thanks