Success Fee
Written by Christopher Krassnig - Founder - Kairos Exchange and ZenoX Media.
Published
- Checks in every memo8
- Automatic on day one3 of 8
- Read by handad spend and processor payouts
- Tracked ecom salesEUR 200M+ZenoX ad-management figures, not Kairos deal volume - Kairos hasn't closed a deal yet.
Success Fee is the commission a marketplace or broker earns only when a sale closes. It is a percentage of the final price, paid at closing, never in advance. On Kairos it is 5% in the self-serve lane, with a minimum of EUR 500. In full-service it is 12% on the first EUR 500,000, then 9% above that, with a minimum of EUR 10,000.
Why It Is Charged Only at Close
A fee that arrives whether or not the sale happens does not reward the sale happening. Kairos earns nothing until a deal actually closes: listing a Shopify store is free, and the checks that verify its numbers are free too, so the platform is paid for a result, never for effort alone. The two lanes exist because the work scales with price and complexity. Self-serve suits a smaller, simpler sale a seller can run without help. Full-service suits a larger one where negotiation and process carry more weight, and the rate reflects that difference rather than one flat number applied to every deal size regardless of what it actually needs. The same idea shows up well past store brokerage, under the same name, in real estate, recruiting and M&A advisory generally.
Where the Percentage Stops Applying
A percentage only means something once it clears the floor under it. In self-serve, 5% of EUR 500 is exactly EUR 500 itself, so a sale priced below that point pays the flat minimum, not the rate on the pricing page. Full-service starts at EUR 100,000, where 12% already clears its own EUR 10,000 minimum, so the floor never actually binds there - it only matters in self-serve, and only on the smallest sales. Below that line is not automatically a full-service question either: a small, simple sale often has little to negotiate that self-serve cannot already handle on its own.
Not to Be Confused With
- Listing Fee
- a listing fee is charged whether or not the sale ever closes; a success fee is charged only when it does.
- Retainer
- a retainer is billed upfront and kept regardless of outcome; a success fee is billed only once, at a sale that actually closes.