What follows is a working prototype a platform team can copy into its own form tool: the fields, the answer formats, the answers that end the screen, and two completed examples, one of which is turned away.
What should a portfolio operations director know about screening with no uploads?
That the form decides one thing: whether the relationship owner should ask a CEO for a conversation. It is not a preview of SourceX's review, and it should collect nothing the fund would then have to protect.
Three reasons the upload box stays off the form:
- It turns the fund into a holder of sensitive records. NIST's guide to protecting personally identifiable information tells organizations to minimize the use, collection and retention of such data to what is strictly necessary, noting that the harm a breach can cause shrinks when less is held. The FTC's guide for business is blunter: without a legitimate business need for sensitive personal information, do not keep it, and do not collect it in the first place. A sample ticket export is full of names, emails and complaints.
- It blurs who does what. The partner introduces; the company applies itself at /apply. SourceX's referral site describes its own company assessment as needing no uploads, so a fund has no reason to ask a founder for more at the screening stage than SourceX asks of the company itself.
- It does not improve the decision. A sample cannot show peak headcount, who created the records or whether the CEO is interested. Those are the questions that decide fit.
Start with the entity and whoever controls it
The first three fields fix which company is being screened. Get them wrong and every later answer describes the wrong entity. Write the legal name and the website domain. Then record who controls the company today, because the CEO of the operating company is the person who authorizes a licensing discussion and signs for it, whatever the fund owns. Then record where the operating company is based, which decides whether the language question applies.
The minimal-information intake prototype
Twelve fields in four groups. Each takes under a minute for a founder who knows the business, and none needs a system opened.
| # | Field | Answer format | Why the screen needs it | Never collect instead |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Legal name and website domain | Two short text fields | Identifies one company | Registration documents, org charts |
| 2 | Who controls the company today | Founder-led, fund-majority, part of a group, other | Shows whose CEO authorizes | Cap tables, shareholder agreements |
| 3 | Country where the operating company is based | A choice from the published list, plus "other" | Location test | Staff home addresses |
| 4 | Peak full-time headcount, contractors excluded | Under 50, 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 or more | Size test | Payroll exports, employee lists |
| 5 | Years in operation, and years of records kept | Under 3, 3 to 9, 10 or more, for each | History test | Archive samples |
| 6 | Record families | Tickets, CRM notes, project files, SOPs and manuals, QA records, code reviews, other | What could be in scope | Example records, screenshots |
| 7 | Main systems | Plain names such as "helpdesk" or "CRM", 60 characters at most | Where the records sit | Logins, admin access, exports |
| 8 | Share of those records in English | 90% or more, 50 to 89%, under 50%, unsure | Language test, asked only outside the U.S., Canada and the EU | Translated samples |
| 9 | Who created the records | The company itself, mostly clients, mixed, unsure | Rights test | Client names, client contracts |
| 10 | Known contract limits on reuse | Yes, no, unsure | Rights flag | Contract text |
| 11 | Has the CEO been asked, and the answer | Not yet asked, wants a conversation, declined | CEO test | Board minutes, emails |
| 12 | Relationship owner | Name of the colleague who would ask the CEO | Routing | Contact details of company staff |
Five design rules keep the form from leaking:
- Bands, not exact figures. Exact headcount and revenue invite financial disclosure the screen does not need.
- No attachment field at all. Not optional: absent.
- Short limits on the two text fields. A large box invites a pasted record.
- "Unsure" on every rights question. An honest "unsure" routes a case; a guessed "yes" sends a bad one forward.
- Delete stopped rows on a schedule, and limit who can read the rest. The FTC's guidance is to keep information only as long as a business need lasts and to give each person access only to what their job needs.
The five answers that stop a company early
Each stop rule maps to a published criterion, read from SourceX's who-qualifies page (updated 20 Oct 2026) and the program terms (Version 2026-10-22.2, since replaced by version 2026-11-04).
| Answer | Decision | Basis in the current published criteria |
|---|---|---|
| Field 4: under 50 | Stop the referral screen | The terms require 50 or more full-time employees at peak; who-qualifies notes some smaller specialists can still be considered, a question for SourceX rather than the form |
| Field 3: "other" | Stop | The published location list |
| Field 8: under 90%, for a company outside the U.S., Canada and the EU | Stop | The 70% English rule |
| Field 9: "mostly clients" | Stop for those records | Material that belongs to the company's clients is usually not a fit |
| Field 11: declined | Stop | Introductions made without the decision maker's knowledge are usually not a fit, and the CEO decides |
The location and language rows rest on one sentence, verbatim: 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.
Two completed forms (Illustrative)
Illustrative: two invented portfolio companies, filled in from what a founder knows. The fund saw no record from either.
| Field | Company A (Illustrative) | Company B (Illustrative) |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Entity | 130-person field-service contractor, its own domain | 70-person medical billing company, its own domain |
| 2. Control | Fund-majority | Founder-led |
| 3. Based in | United States | United States |
| 4. Peak full-time headcount | 100 to 249 | 50 to 99 |
| 5. Operation and records | 10 or more, and 10 or more | 10 or more, and 3 to 9 |
| 6. Record families | Tickets, project files, QA records | Claims files, SOPs |
| 7. Main systems | Field-service platform, helpdesk | Practice management systems at client sites, internal wiki |
| 8. English share | Not asked (United States) | Not asked (United States) |
| 9. Who created the records | The company itself | Mostly clients |
| 10. Contract limits | No | Yes |
| 11. CEO | Wants a conversation | Not yet asked |
| 12. Relationship owner | Operating partner on the board | Platform lead |
| Decision | Introduce, once the CEO's interest is confirmed in writing | Stop: the volume sits in client-owned claims, and the company's own SOPs alone are too thin to raise |
Company B is the rejected example. Its largest body of records is claims it processes for provider clients. On the founder's own answers those belong to the clients, sit in the clients' systems and carry patient information. The form reached that decision without anyone seeing a claim. The only company-created material is a set of internal SOPs, not enough to justify asking a CEO for time. The row closes with its reason, and the fund holds nothing it now has to guard.
Company A goes forward, and the form says why: the company created its own records over more than a decade, it passes the size test, and its CEO wants to talk. Fund control changes nothing about who authorizes; the operating partner asks the CEO, and the CEO decides.
Questions the form leaves to SourceX
The form stops where a partner's knowledge stops. Four questions belong to SourceX's review and the company's own team, and the form should not pretend to answer them:
- Mandate. Whether the records match one of SourceX's current data needs. SourceX checks relevance during review, and its requirements differ by size, history, geography, language and data category.
- Exact language share. Field 8 is a band. When a company outside the U.S., Canada and the EU sits near 90%, the company counts its records system by system itself.
- History depth. Field 5 says how long records go back, not whether a migration left gaps. That comes up in conversation with the company.
- Rights. Field 10 flags a contract limit; it does not read the contract. The company's counsel and SourceX's rights review do.
For record types where even describing them feels risky, such as recordings or images, the guide to assessing multimodal records without uploading raw assets shows how far metadata goes. And when a founder worries the records are too sensitive to discuss at all, whether company data is too sensitive to license is the page to send.
What happens to an "unsure"
"Unsure" is a routing answer, not a failure. The relationship owner asks the founder one more metadata question: who created most of these records, roughly what share is in English, does any customer agreement mention reuse. If the answer is still unsure, the case is described to SourceX at metadata level, with the uncertain field named, before anyone promotes the company. Never settle an "unsure" by asking for a sample. Only a partner who has signed the SourceX Channel Partner Agreement submits introductions, and the CEO hears about licensing from the relationship owner first.
Where a no-upload form falls short
- Self-reported answers. A founder can misjudge peak full-time headcount, especially where contractors were common. The bands catch most errors; the conversation catches the rest.
- Bands blur edges. "50 to 99" hides a company that peaked at exactly 50. Edge cases need the exact figure, asked in conversation and not stored.
- Text fields leak. Founders paste customer names into "main systems". Cap the length and review entries before they spread.
- No demand signal. A perfect form says nothing about whether SourceX's current programs need these records.
- The form is data too. Twelve answers about many companies is confidential portfolio information. Restrict access and delete stopped rows.
Method and limits. Each field maps to one published criterion on SourceX's who-qualifies page (updated 20 Oct 2026) and in the program terms (Version 2026-10-22.2, since replaced by version 2026-11-04), and the collection rules follow NIST SP 800-122 and the FTC's guide, all read on 26 Oct 2026. The prototype has not been tested with founders: completion time, stop rates and error rates are not measured, and SourceX has not published acceptance rates. The portfolio company screening workbook is where a platform team keeps the resulting rows, and the portfolio operations review screen shows when to send the form. For a single company, the company fit checker gives a preliminary read.
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.
When a completed form clears all five stop rules and the CEO wants the conversation, get a partner link, compare the form's answers with who qualifies once more and go through the program terms; the overview for venture platform teams covers the rest of the portfolio workflow.
If your interest in SourceX is as a prospective investor rather than as a screener, investor materials are available on request through the SourceX investor overview, and that conversation is kept apart from any referral.
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.