Buyer Agreement

Version 2026-10b. Covers membership, confidentiality, and fees. Accepted electronically by checking the box and typing your name on the SellSideTrades buyer signup form.

Plain English summary. Membership is $500 per month for firms, $199 per month for individual buyers, cancel anytime and unlocks asking prices, financials, members only listings, and introductions. Everything you see is confidential and you contact sellers only through SellSideTrades. If you buy a business you found here, you pay nothing more; the seller pays our success fee at closing. Going around us to avoid fees makes you liable for them.

This agreement is between the prospective buyer identified on the signature record, and the firm on whose behalf they act ("Buyer"), and SellSideTrades ("SST"), which acts as intermediary for business owners ("Sellers").

1. Membership

SST grants Buyer access to the SST marketplace for the period Buyer's membership is paid. Membership is billed through Stripe at the rate for Buyer's tier shown at signup (firms, meaning private equity, family offices, strategic acquirers, search funds, and independent sponsors; or individual buyers), renews automatically, and may be canceled at any time, with access continuing to the end of the paid period. Membership fees are not refundable and are not credited against any success fee. SST may suspend or end membership for breach of this agreement.

2. Confidential Information

All information Buyer receives through SST about a Seller or a business, including that it is for sale, its identity, financial statements, tax returns, customer, employee, and vendor information, pricing, and all portal content, is Confidential Information. Buyer will use it solely to evaluate a possible acquisition and will not use it to compete with, solicit, or recruit from the business. Buyer may share it only with partners, employees, lenders, and professional advisors who need it and who are bound by these terms, and Buyer is responsible for their compliance.

3. No direct contact

Buyer will not contact any Seller, or any employee, customer, vendor, landlord, or lender of a Seller's business, except through SST or with SST's written consent. Where SST provides Seller contact details through the portal, Buyer may use them only for the potential acquisition and SST remains the intermediary of record.

4. Fees

Buyer acknowledges that each Seller has agreed to pay SST a success fee on any Transaction with a buyer introduced through SST, and that SST's fee is a material part of each transaction.

SST does not charge Buyer a success fee. The Seller pays SST's fee at closing. Buyer will not condition any offer on a reduction of, or interfere with the payment of, SST's fee.

"Transaction" and "Total Consideration" have the meanings given in the SST Seller Listing Agreement: any purchase of all or a material part of the equity or assets of a business, and everything of value paid in connection with it including cash, notes, equity, earn outs, assumed debt, above market non compete, consulting, or employment payments, and included real estate.

5. Non circumvention

For 24 months after Buyer is introduced to a business through SST (including by viewing its listing), Buyer and its affiliates will not complete a Transaction with that business, its owners, or a related entity other than through SST. If Buyer does so, Buyer will pay SST, on demand, the full success fee the Seller would have owed SST under the SST Seller Listing Agreement, plus any buyer success fee under Section 4, as liquidated damages and not as a penalty, the parties agreeing SST's actual loss would be difficult to measure.

6. Buyer representations

Buyer represents that the information provided at signup is accurate, that the person signing is authorized to bind the Buyer, and that Buyer has or can obtain the funds needed for acquisitions in the range it indicated.

7. No representations by SST

SST passes along information as received from Sellers and does not guarantee its accuracy. Valuation snapshots are estimates, not appraisals. Buyer will conduct its own due diligence and use its own legal, tax, and financial advisors. SST does not give investment advice, hold funds, or arrange financing.

8. Return and destruction

On request, Buyer will return or destroy Confidential Information and confirm in writing.

9. Term and law

Confidentiality obligations last three years from each disclosure; fee and non circumvention obligations last for the periods stated above and survive termination of membership. This agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Texas with venue in Collin County, Texas. The prevailing party in any dispute recovers reasonable attorney fees.

10. Electronic signature

Checking the acceptance box, typing the signer's full legal name, and submitting the form constitutes Buyer's electronic signature under the federal E-SIGN Act and the Texas Uniform Electronic Transactions Act. SST records the date, time, IP address, agreement version, and fee terms in force at signing, and emails Buyer a copy.

Template for attorney review before relying on it.