A platform lead who knows the program well will be tempted to answer everything. That is the failure this backlog exists to prevent. The founder does not need a fast answer from the wrong person; they need to know quickly who can give the right one.
The founder's question deserves the right answerer, not the nearest one
Two things are scarce here. The founder's benefit is a correct answer from someone accountable for it. The platform's constraint is hours, and those hours can shrink without warning. OpenView, for example, said it would focus its resources on the existing portfolio, with senior partners supporting companies through its Expansion Platform, after a restructuring that reduced staffing levels across teams. A routing system designed for a full platform team has to keep working with half of one.
Guessing is worse than slowness. SourceX applies the criteria of each specific program and checks relevance to its current data needs during review, so a platform lead who tells a CEO "you'd qualify" or names a price has promised something nobody at SourceX promised. SourceX's screening page says never to list companies as eligible, and its process page says pricing stays indicative until a Dataset Deal Confirmation is signed.
The backlog makes three promises to founders and keeps them in writing:
- Every question is logged within one business day, in the founder's words.
- The founder hears who will answer, and by when, within two business days.
- Every answer either quotes a published source or says plainly that nobody can answer yet.
The question-routing backlog template
One row per question, kept in whatever tracker the platform already uses.
| Field | What to write | Example (Illustrative) |
|---|---|---|
| Question, as asked | The founder's words, with confidential details removed | "If we license our tickets, can we still train our own support bot on them?" |
| Company and stage | Generic label and referral stage | 140-person IT services firm, first CEO conversation |
| Category | One of the nine routes below | Ownership and use of the data |
| Answer owner | A named person, or "nobody yet" | SourceX, sent by the platform lead |
| Told the founder | What was said, on which date | "SourceX will answer; I'll send it by the 14th" |
| Published source | Link and version, if any | sourcex.si/how-it-works, checked 26 Oct 2026 |
| Due date | Your own service level | Ten business days from routing |
| Status | Open, routed, answered or closed as unanswerable | Routed |
| Minutes logged | Platform time spent on this row | 25 |
The example question is a good test case. SourceX's process page says licenses are exclusive for AI training and that the company agrees not to license the selected data to anyone else for that purpose. Whether that touches a company's own internal use is a question about a specific agreement, so the platform routes it instead of interpreting it.
The nine routes:
| Category | Who answers | What the platform may say now |
|---|---|---|
| Program terms: reward, Minimum Transaction, attribution, partner agreement | The platform, from the published terms | Quote the terms and the version (2026-11-04) with a link |
| Size, history and location | The CEO supplies the facts; the platform quotes the criteria | The published criteria, never "you qualify" |
| Fit with current demand and price | SourceX, in review | Nobody can say before review, and pricing stays indicative until a Dataset Deal Confirmation is signed |
| Process and timing | The platform from SourceX's process page; SourceX for specifics | Inventory assessment initially up to 30 days after the Master signature, acceptance review up to 30 days, payment due within 60 calendar days of a valid invoice after Closing |
| Ownership and use of the data | SourceX, with the company's counsel | The company keeps ownership of its original data; under the signed agreement SourceX owns the de-identified dataset; licenses are exclusive for AI training, with the term set in each deal |
| Customer contracts, privacy and consent | The company's counsel, and SourceX's rights review | Material that belongs to clients is usually not a fit |
| Tax and accounting | The company's own adviser | Nothing beyond pointing to the adviser |
| Credit and duplicates | SourceX, in duplicate review | One partner is credited per company, and companies SourceX already knows are reviewed as duplicates |
| The fund's own interest | Head of platform, with fund counsel | Who registered as the partner, and that any reward is paid by SourceX and never deducted from the company's payout |
For the size and location route, quote the published rule as written: 50 or more full-time employees at peak, contractors excluded, and a location the program covers. Companies in the U.S., Canada and the EU qualify, as do companies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Latin America, the UAE and Saudi Arabia when at least 70% of the data is in English. A CEO who wants a quick, non-binding read can try the company fit checker. For the price route, the live script on answering "what is my data worth?" has words that name no figure, and contract questions can be pointed at the guide to customer contract data use restrictions while counsel does the reading.
Questions arrive at every referral stage, and none of them pays
Illustrative. One quarter, 10 companies in flight, 34 questions; generic stages and invented counts.
| Stage | Typical questions | Questions | Usually answered by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Screening, before anyone asks the CEO | "Are we big enough?" "Do our offices abroad count?" | 8 | The platform, from published criteria |
| First CEO conversation | "What is it worth?" "Do we lose ownership?" "What does the fund get?" | 11 | Split across SourceX, the platform and fund counsel |
| Application and qualification | "What does the assessment ask?" "Did someone already introduce us?" | 6 | SourceX |
| Master and Confirmation | "Can our counsel mark up the agreement?" "How long is the exclusivity?" | 5 | SourceX, with the company's counsel |
| Delivery, acceptance and payment | "When are we paid?" "What if the data is declined?" | 4 | The published process, then SourceX |
Routed by category, the same 34 questions split 12 answered now, 9 to SourceX, 7 to the company's counsel or adviser, and 6 that nobody can answer yet, such as "will this close?" The time log for the quarter:
| Route | Questions | Minutes each | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answered now from published facts | 12 | 10 | 2.0 |
| Routed to SourceX: write up, send, chase once, relay | 9 | 25 | 3.75 |
| Routed to counsel or adviser: tell the founder who decides, log it | 7 | 15 | 1.75 |
| Nobody can answer yet: say so, set a revisit date | 6 | 10 | 1.0 |
| Weekly backlog review, 15 minutes for 12 weeks | Not applicable | 15 | 3.0 |
| Total | 34 | Varies | 11.5 |
The revenue line is $0 in this base case. Any referral reward on a company's first qualifying transaction would be the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout, with no cap, and nothing is payable until that company has been paid and every other condition in the terms is met, which no quarter of question-handling can bring forward. Answering questions well may make a CEO more comfortable applying; it earns nothing on its own, and the backlog should be judged as founder service.
Expand, pause or stop the backlog
| Reading at the quarter's end | Expand | Pause | Stop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founders told who will answer within two business days | Every question | One or two misses | Repeated misses |
| SourceX-routed questions closed within ten business days | 75% or more | 50% to 75% | Under 50% |
| Questions open more than 30 days | None | One to three | More than three |
| Wrong or invented answers given to a founder | None | One, corrected in writing the same week | A repeat, or any figure given as a price |
SourceX does not publish response times for partner questions, so the ten-day setting is yours to measure, not a promise anyone made. The Illustrative base case told every founder who would answer within two business days, closed 8 of its 9 SourceX questions inside ten business days, left one open past 30 days (the internal-use question above) and logged no wrong answers: one reading in the pause band, three in expand. The sensible call is to keep the backlog at its current scope and chase the open item before adding companies.
When the backlog says stop (Illustrative)
Six weeks into a pilot, a platform team has 41 questions from 7 companies. Twenty-three were routed to SourceX or to company counsel, and 15 have been open for more than 30 days because nobody owns the routing. At a portfolio dinner, a partner told one CEO that records like theirs "probably fetch high six figures."
Three stop readings trip at once. The team freezes new asks, sends the CEO a written correction (nobody can price records before SourceX reviews them, and pricing stays indicative until a Dataset Deal Confirmation is signed), assigns every open row a named owner or closes it as unanswerable, and restarts only when each of the nine routes has an owner. If routed rows are going stale because referrals themselves have gone quiet, the stage rules in when to stop following up on an inactive referral apply.
Where this backlog can fail
- Stale answers. Program terms change by version. Record the version beside every published-fact answer and re-read the terms before each quarterly review.
- Confidential detail in the log. SourceX's screening page warns that what a fund learned through board materials or information rights usually stays confidential. Log the question and metadata, never record contents.
- Unsettled questions dressed up as settled. The published terms do not address parents, subsidiaries or affiliates; the one settled point is that the USD 50,000 floor applies once per referred company, and the terms say nothing about how a corporate group is counted. Whether a parent's earlier contact with SourceX, or another partner's introduction of a sister company, affects credit is decided by SourceX in duplicate review; the backlog logs it and states no rule.
- Silence. Founders stop asking when routed questions vanish. A closed-as-unanswerable row still gets a sentence back to the founder.
- Small samples. A quarter of 34 questions cannot prove anything about response times. Watch the trend across quarters.
Method note. The template, routes, time estimates and bands are this page's own framework, applied to Illustrative counts. Program facts come from the SourceX terms (Version 2026-11-04, re-read on 4 November 2026), the who-qualifies page and SourceX's process page, and the capacity example from OpenView's announcement, all first checked on 26 October 2026. Not measured: real founder question volumes, SourceX response times or any referral outcome. Whether the referral track deserves platform hours at all is weighed in how to compare data referrals with other platform benefits; the fund-side overview is on the page for venture platform teams, and related guides are in the guides library.
Next step
Refer a company. No cap on rewards. Default reward on a company's first qualifying transaction: the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout, with no cap; further qualifying transactions first agreed within 12 months of the first Closing pay 15%. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, including the USD 100,000 Minimum Transaction, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.
Once every route in the backlog has a named owner, register for a partner link, check each company against who qualifies and keep the program terms open as the source for every published-fact answer.
Routing founder questions is referral work; deciding whether SourceX is a company worth investing in is a separate question, and readers asking it can request investor materials through the SourceX investor overview.
This article is for information only and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy securities. Any offering by SourceX is made only to verified accredited investors through its offering documents.