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A section 363 sale is a court-approved sale of a bankrupt company's assets under 11 U.S.C. 363, usually after notice, an auction and a hearing, and often free and clear of liens. Business records can be estate assets sold or licensed this way, but personally identifiable information protected by a privacy policy triggers extra conditions.

A success fee is compensation an adviser earns only when an agreed outcome happens, such as a business sale closing or a financing being funded, and is usually a percentage of transaction value. Advisers often pair it with a retainer. A SourceX partner reward works the same way: it exists only once a licensing deal closes and SourceX collects its fee.

A system of record is the software that holds the authoritative, official version of a type of business data, such as the ERP for financials, the CRM for accounts or the HRIS for employees. Their timestamped, outcome-linked histories make them central to what a company's records are worth to AI buyers.

A tail period is a clause in a sell-side engagement letter or listing agreement that entitles the advisor to its success fee if the client closes a covered deal within a set time after the engagement ends, usually with a buyer the advisor introduced or contacted. It stops a client from ending the mandate and closing the same deal directly.

A trade secret is business information that has economic value because it is not generally known and that its owner takes reasonable steps to keep secret. Licensing records does not automatically destroy that status when the company scopes carefully, carves out crown jewels and licenses only under a signed agreement with confidentiality terms.

A transition services agreement (TSA) is a short-term contract under which the seller of a business or division keeps providing services such as IT, payroll, finance or hosting to the buyer after closing, until the buyer can run them itself. The TSA exit, when shared systems are cut over or retired, is the deadline for deciding who keeps which records.

There is no reliable single typical finder's fee percentage. Finder's fees are private contracts, and the rate depends on whether the introduction involves securities, the sale of a company or a commercial contract, plus deal size and how much work the finder does. Most published ranges are unsourced, so judge a fee by its base, trigger and cap.

A value creation plan (VCP) is the document a private equity sponsor and a portfolio company's management agree on to grow equity value during the hold: a short list of initiatives, each with an owner, budget, KPIs, dated milestones and a target contribution that rolls up into an EBITDA bridge from entry to exit.

A virtual data room (VDR) is a secure online repository where a seller shares confidential documents with vetted buyers and their advisors during M&A due diligence. It controls who sees what. A data license is different: SourceX delivers agreed operational records only after an executed agreement and the company's authorization.

A warm introduction is a connection between two people made by someone both trust, after the person being approached has agreed to it. Unlike cold outreach, it arrives with context and borrowed credibility. In a data-licensing referral, it means the owner has already said yes to hearing about SourceX and the introducer passes on only basic fit information.

Adjusted EBITDA is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, restated to remove items that will not continue under a new owner, such as excess owner pay, one-off legal costs or one-time gains. Buyers apply their valuation multiple to it. A one-time data license payment is non-recurring income, so it is deducted from normalized earnings, not added back.

Agent trajectory data is a recorded sequence of steps, tool calls and outcomes for a task, used to train and evaluate AI agents. Business histories such as resolved tickets, deal records and approval chains often resemble trajectories because they log goals, actions and results as work happens.

Agentic AI is software that pursues a goal across several steps, using tools and adjusting as it goes, rather than answering one prompt. Training and testing such agents needs records of real work, like tickets, approvals and outcomes, which established companies hold and SourceX helps them license.

AI-ready data is data that is findable, accessible, documented, permissioned and in a usable format for a specific AI purpose. Readiness for a company's own copilots and search tools differs from readiness to license records to AI buyers, which also turns on history, rights and exportability. A company can work toward both at once.

An add-on acquisition is the purchase of a smaller company by a private equity-backed platform, which folds the acquired business into its own operations to add customers, services or geography. Add-ons are also called bolt-ons. Integration usually moves the add-on onto the platform's CRM, helpdesk and ERP, so its archived history should be checked before old systems are shut down.

An AI data intermediary is a company that connects organizations holding proprietary data with AI developers and manages the licensing process: sourcing, rights review, contracting, delivery and payment. Unlike a broker that resells collected data, the data owner keeps ownership and licenses its records.

An AI data partner is an entity that provides data for artificial intelligence development. SourceX is the enterprise data transaction layer that enables companies to license their operational data to AI labs, fostering responsible data exchange.

An AI lab is an organization that researches, builds and trains AI models; a frontier lab trains the most capable general-purpose ones. Labs, model developers and evaluation partners are the data buyers who review licensed business records, while SourceX handles licensing and does not train models.

An assignment for the benefit of creditors (ABC) is a state-law alternative to bankruptcy in which an insolvent company transfers its assets to an assignee it selects, who sells them and pays creditors. The assignee also takes control of the company's email, CRM, code and document archives, which can be preserved and, for qualifying companies, licensed for creditors.

An attest client is a client for whom a CPA's firm performs an audit or review of financial statements, an examination of prospective financial information or certain compilations. The label matters because the AICPA Code bars commissions for recommending a product or service to such a client and restricts contingent fees, so screen your list before any paid introduction.

An attribution window is the period during which an introduction can still earn its referrer credit. It is a contract term, not a browser cookie. At SourceX, credit goes to the first valid referrer whose introduction leads to a verified company application within the window set in the terms.

An authorized signatory is a person who has been given the power to sign documents that bind an organization, such as contracts, bank instructions or filings. The authority comes from the company's governing documents, board or member resolutions and the officer's role, so the right signer depends on the type of entity and the transaction.

An earnout is a purchase-price mechanism where part of the price is paid later, only if the acquired business hits agreed targets such as revenue or EBITDA over a set period. It bridges valuation gaps but invites disputes. If a company may license its data, agree in writing whether that income counts.

An EBITDA bridge, or EBITDA walk, is a chart or table that moves from one EBITDA figure to another by listing each driver as a step. A one-time data-licensing payment from a company working with SourceX is normally shown as its own non-recurring line, not blended into run-rate EBITDA.

An EOS implementer is a coach who teaches a leadership team to run on the Entrepreneurial Operating System, typically through recurring sessions. An implementer can appropriately mention data licensing as an option an owner may want to look into, with the owner's permission, and never shares client details.

An equity cure right is a credit agreement clause that lets a borrower's equity holders contribute cash after a missed financial covenant, counted as EBITDA or debt reduction so the test can be recalculated. Cures are capped in number and amount, so portfolio CFOs usually check the calculation, waivers and other cash sources first.

An ERP implementation partner is a firm that configures, migrates data into and supports a client's ERP system such as NetSuite or Dynamics. The system map it builds during the project shows how deep a client's records run, which makes the migration a natural moment to raise records licensing with the owner.

An ESOP company is a business owned in whole or in part through an employee stock ownership plan, a trust that holds shares for employees. Authority is usually split between the board, management and the plan trustee for certain matters, so a licensing conversation needs a clearly authorized sponsor.

An excess cash flow sweep is a credit-agreement clause that requires a borrower to prepay term debt with a set share of the cash it generated in a fiscal year. A one-time receipt, such as a data license payment, can raise that figure or fall under a separate prepayment clause, so the CFO should read the definitions first.

An exclusive license is a grant in which the owner promises that only the licensee may use the licensed rights within a defined scope, such as a field of use, territory and term. The owner keeps title, and whether it may still use the material itself depends on the contract wording, which is where sole and exclusive licenses differ.

An executive-led buyout is an acquisition in which an experienced operator finds the target, leads the deal and runs the company, while outside investors supply most of the capital. It differs from a management buyout or a search fund. These executives often know eligible companies they could introduce to SourceX.

An incumbency certificate is a short document, signed by a company officer such as the corporate secretary, that confirms who currently holds named offices and often shows their specimen signatures, so a counterparty can verify who may sign. It evidences authority rather than creating it, and is usually paired with a resolution approving the specific transaction.

An independent sponsor is a dealmaker or small team that finds and acquires private companies without a committed fund, raising equity deal by deal from family offices and other capital partners once a target is under letter of intent. Lean sponsors favor value levers that need no capex or new hires, such as licensing records a company already holds.

An intellectual property receiver is a fiduciary appointed by a court to take control of a party's intellectual property, such as patents, trademarks, domain names, software and data, to preserve its value or turn it into money for creditors or a judgment holder. The appointment order sets the receiver's powers, including whether assets can be sold or licensed.

An LPAC, or limited partner advisory committee, is a small group of a fund's investors named under the limited partnership agreement, which the general partner consults on conflicts of interest, affiliated transactions, valuation questions and certain waivers. It advises, and consents where the LPA requires, but does not manage the fund or approve ordinary portfolio decisions.

An out-of-court workout is a private agreement in which a struggling company and its lenders or other creditors restructure debt, by extending maturities, waiving covenants or exchanging debt for equity, without filing for bankruptcy. With no court involved, the board and the lenders' consent rights decide whether the company can sign new contracts such as a data license.

Application decommissioning is the planned retirement of a software application, including shutting down servers and licenses and deciding what happens to its data. For MSPs, one extra step matters: inventory the system's record history and check licensing potential before export and shutdown, because deleted archives cannot be recovered or licensed later.

Chain of title for training data is the documented trail showing who created a dataset, who owns it now and what permissions allow it to be licensed. AI buyers use it to confirm a company can grant the rights it offers, which is why ownership is the first screening question.

Client accounting services (CAS) is a CPA firm's recurring outsourced accounting practice: bookkeeping, monthly close, payroll and bill pay, financial reporting and, at higher tiers, controller and CFO-level advisory work. Because CAS teams work inside clients' systems every month, they can spot companies with deep operational records, once ethics and independence rules are checked.

Commercial due diligence tests whether a target's market position, customer base and revenue are as strong as the seller claims. It relies on customer interviews, market work and records such as CRM, support and win-loss histories, the same operational data AI developers seek when they license real work data.

Compute-to-data is a delivery model where a buyer runs approved computations inside a controlled environment instead of receiving a copy of the data. It offers owners more control but less buyer flexibility. In SourceX deals, the delivery method is agreed in the contract before anything moves.

Confirmatory due diligence is the buyer's final verification phase after a signed letter of intent, where source documents and system records are checked against the assumptions behind the price. Advisors should surface any data license or records gap before it starts, because late discoveries trigger retrades, earn-outs and wider escrows.

Dark data is information a business collects, processes and stores in the normal course of work but never uses again for analysis, decisions or revenue. Typical examples are closed support tickets, former employees' email, old project folders, chat history and archived systems. Some of it can be licensed for AI training when the company holds the rights.

Data curation for AI is the work of selecting, cleaning, structuring, documenting and quality-checking data so it suits training or evaluation. Buyers and intermediaries do most of it. The company's part is limited to the data inventory and an authorized export.

Data exhaust is the trail of records a business generates as a side effect of its work, such as tickets, message threads, edits and approvals. It is valuable to AI buyers when it shows steps, decisions and outcomes together, and weak when it is bare events with no context or unclear rights.

Deal registration is a channel-program process in which a reseller, MSP or implementation partner submits a specific sales opportunity to a vendor, which approves it and protects that partner's claim, often with better pricing, for a set period. Referral programs work differently: in SourceX's program, credit follows a verified company application within the attribution window.

Entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA) is the path to becoming a CEO by buying and running an existing, profitable company instead of starting one. The buyer, often a searcher backed by investors or self-funded, takes over operations. Once the business is stable, its years of operating records can become an asset worth reviewing.

Exit planning is the multi-year process of preparing a business and its owner for an eventual departure: setting personal and financial goals, raising the value and transferability of the company, choosing the exit route and assembling the advisers to carry it out. One option most plans omit is licensing operational records, which produces proceeds without selling the business.