Does your referral credit survive if the referred company is acquired?

What happens to your referral credit when the company is acquired?

There is no universal answer, and a page like this one should not invent one. What happens to an open introduction after a change of ownership depends on three documents: your signed partner agreement, the published program terms, and the status of the company's application when the transaction closes.

What can be stated safely is how the program is built. Credit goes to the first valid referrer whose introduction leads to a verified company application within the attribution window. A reward becomes payable only after the buyer pays and SourceX receives its fee. A lead, meeting or signed agreement alone does not trigger payment. Those anchors tell you which questions to ask about an acquisition.

This is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Confirm with your own counsel before acting on any term.

Why this question matters to M&A advisors

If you work on sell-side mandates, you see the other side of this daily. An owner you introduced may be mid-process with a banker, and the buyer you are not working for will want to know every contract the target has signed. A data license is such a contract, and it may be exclusive for AI training for an agreed term.

For an advisor, three timing questions come up. Did the owner license before marketing the business or after closing? Did the buyer inherit the license or ask for the data to be left out? And did your introduction produce a verified application before the transaction started? The M&A advisor opportunities page covers where licensing fits in an exit story.

Which stage was the introduction at when the sale happened?

The stage determines which part of the terms matters most. Use this table as a way to organize your questions, not as an answer.

Read down the table and notice that only the last row involves money moving. Everything before it depends on events that may not happen, so do not plan around rewards for a company that has not reached that row.

What language should you look for in your agreement?

Do not guess. Read your signed agreement and the terms for provisions that answer these:

• How attribution is defined, and what counts as a verified company application.
• The length and start of the attribution window.
• Whether the agreement or the terms mention successors, assigns or change of control.
• Whether the reward survives if you stop being a partner, or if the program changes.
• How rewards are treated if the referred company merges into another entity.
• How disputes about credit are raised and resolved.

If a provision is silent, say so in an email and ask SourceX to answer in writing. A written answer is worth more than an assumption, and the guide on proving a referral and resolving a credit dispute shows what evidence to keep.

What if the acquisition happens under an NDA?

Advisors often learn of a sale under confidentiality. Do not use that knowledge to make an introduction or to alert SourceX to a deal you are not free to discuss. The question of what you can do with confidential knowledge is covered in can you refer a company you learned about under an NDA?. Keep the two tracks separate: your advisory work stays confidential, and a SourceX introduction proceeds only on information the owner has authorized you to share.

How does repeat business fit in?

An acquisition can raise a second question: if the acquirer or the company licenses again, is that eligible? The page on whether referral rewards apply to repeat deals addresses that separately. Do not assume that continued credit on the same company follows automatically from a change of ownership, and do not assume it does not.

What about taxes on a reward that arrives later?

If a reward is eventually paid, tax reporting may apply to you. The IRS publishes instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC that explain when a business reports payments to people who are not its employees. The page on whether you receive a 1099 for referral fees explains what to ask. Confirm with your own tax adviser. This is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice.

How the reward works in general

Partners earn 25% of the eligible platform fees SourceX actually collects from the referred company's licensing deals, capped at $100,000 per referred company. The reward is paid only after the buyer pays and SourceX receives its fee; an introduction, meeting or signed agreement alone does not trigger payment, and no reward is guaranteed. The reward is a share of SourceX's fee and is never deducted from what the company receives.

What to do the day you hear a client is being acquired

1. Record the date of your introduction and keep the original message.
2. Check whether a verified company application exists for the company.
3. Tell SourceX about the transaction in writing, without sharing confidential details of the deal.
4. Ask how the terms treat a change of ownership and request the answer in writing.
5. Leave the question of who speaks for the company to the company and SourceX.

If the owner mentions that they are reconsidering, what happens if a referred company owner changes their mind is a useful companion.

Next step

If you have not yet registered, register as a partner and read the signed terms closely, including the sections on attribution and successors. Use the introduction email builder to make a dated, owner-approved introduction, and see how it works for the full process.