The fifth question belongs to SourceX's review. The first four can usually be answered at metadata level by the company itself, through whoever holds the CEO relationship, without anyone seeing a record.
What a headcount number measures, and where it came from
The program counts one specific thing: full-time employees at the company's peak, contractors excluded. A growth chart usually counts something else, such as everyone associated with the company today. Before a number goes into a brief, write down its source, its date and what it includes.
| Source | What it counts | Date it describes | How to use it in a brief |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual report of a public company | The number of employees, plus human capital disclosure where material | The fiscal year end | Primary and dated, but the total may mix full-time, part-time and contingent workers |
| WARN notice | A covered employer announcing a plant closing or mass layoff | The date of the notice | A dated sign the employer was large before contracting, and a dated event |
| The company's own statement | Whatever the CEO or CFO tells you, ideally read from payroll history | The date of the conversation | The only source that settles full-time headcount at peak |
| Third-party estimates | Profiles listing the employer, often with contractors and former staff | Unclear | A reason to ask, never an entry in the five-question table |
| Funding announcements | Usually nothing about headcount | The round date | Ignore for fit: funding plays no part in SourceX's checks |
Public filings help less than they seem to. The SEC's 2020 amendments to Regulation S-K, adopted on August 26 of that year, added human capital resources as a disclosure topic to the extent material to understanding the business. In 2023 the SEC's Investor Advisory Committee noted that those amendments supplemented a pre-existing requirement to disclose the number of employees, and recommended that headcount be broken down into full-time, part-time and contingent workers. Until a filing gives that split, a reported total is not a full-time count. Most companies a venture network knows are private and publish nothing at all, which is why the guide to finding a private company's employee count ends with a question to the company.
A WARN notice is the rare public record that points backward. The Department of Labor says the WARN Act generally covers employers with 100 or more employees, not counting part-time employees, and requires 60 calendar days' written notice of a plant closing or mass layoff. A company that filed one was probably large before it shrank, and the filing date marks a period in which systems may be retired and records put at risk.
Organic growth points to records; acquired growth points to owners
Two companies can add the same number of people and raise opposite questions.
Growth by hiring creates new teams, and new teams create new kinds of records: a support desk, an implementation group, a quality function, each with its own system. The research question is when each record type began. A team hired eighteen months ago has eighteen months of records, and SourceX's screening profile asks for several years in operation, so the newest growth often adds the least history.
Growth by acquisition adds people who arrive with records created under a different owner. The research questions change:
- Which entity holds which records. Each acquired company may still run its own systems.
- Whether the rights came across. What a purchase agreement assigned, and what customer contracts at the acquired business allow, surface only in counsel's reading and SourceX's rights review. Treat them as unknown until then.
- Who decides. Once a company is acquired, the acquirer's CEO decides for it, not the former board or founder.
- One group, one floor. Acquired entities fold into the parent instead of opening new ones: the parent and its subsidiaries are one company for the reward, so the USD 50,000 floor applies once, to the group's first qualifying transaction, however many entities license; there is no cap on the group's rewards.
- Earlier contact. If the parent or a sister company already had an application or relationship with SourceX, or another partner introduced one of them, whether that affects credit for your introduction is not settled in the published terms. SourceX decides it in duplicate review; do not promise an outcome.
A staffing business inside a group adds its own wrinkle: placed workers on assignment at clients do not count toward the 50, only the firm's own full-time employees do, as the staffing headcount question explains. Describe both numbers and introduce the firm anyway when its records are strong.
Contraction is the case growth screens miss. The screen reads the peak, and SourceX's referral site says operating, acquired or wound down companies can all qualify, though not every company does. A company that peaked years ago may hold the longest history in your network.
The headcount-change referral research brief
One brief per company, one page, written before anyone contacts the company.
| Field | What to write | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Entity | The legal entity that employs the people and holds the records | Not the brand or the fund's holding vehicle |
| Signal | What changed, by how much, from which source, on what date | One source per number |
| Pattern | Hiring, acquisition, contractor surge, seasonal swing or contraction after a peak | Pick one primary pattern |
| Records it suggests | Which teams grew, so which record types may now exist | A hypothesis, marked as one |
| History | The year each record type starts | From the company, or "unknown" |
| Ownership | Which entity holds which records; any acquired archive | Unassigned or unclear is a flag, not a fail |
| Five questions | Known, unknown or fails, each with its source | Fit with current needs always reads "SourceX review" |
| Relationship owner | Who can ask the CEO and be heard | Named, with their agreement |
| Dated event | A system migration, integration, closure or retention change, with its date | Only events with a date count |
| Research hours | Time spent so far, against a cap you set | Stop at the cap |
Two growth patterns and a shrinking counterweight (Illustrative)
Illustrative. Three invented companies with invented figures, as the platform research lead would record them after one call with each CEO.
- Company P grew by hiring, from 40 full-time employees in 2019 to 240 in 2025, mostly support and implementation staff.
- Company Q grew from 180 to 640 full-time employees between 2023 and 2025 by buying four regional businesses, one of them a staffing unit.
- Company R peaked at 310 full-time employees in 2019, filed a WARN notice in 2024, employs 95 today and plans to retire its old project system next June.
| Question | P, growth by hiring | Q, growth by acquisition | R, shrinking since its peak |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-time headcount at peak, contractors excluded | 240 in 2025, confirmed by the CFO | 640 across the group, the staffing unit's placed workers excluded | 310 in 2019, confirmed from payroll history |
| Years of the company's own records | Support tickets since 2019; implementation files since 2021 | 6 to 15 years in each acquired business, in four systems | Project archives since 2006 |
| Rights | Tickets and project files are the company's; product data sits in customers' tenants | Depends on what each purchase agreement assigned; unknown | Client deliverables may belong to clients; internal QA and project notes are the firm's |
| Who authorizes | The founder-CEO | The group CEO, for every entity | The CEO |
| Fit with current needs | SourceX review | SourceX review | SourceX review |
| What the headcount signal told you | Where new record types began | Where ownership needs checking | Nothing; a growth screen would have skipped it |
Read across the rows and the ranking changes. R answers four of four knowable questions, has the deepest history and a dated event: the system retirement next June puts a date on its archive. P answers four, with a rights caveat that SourceX's screening already anticipates: material belonging to the company's clients is usually not a fit. Q grew fastest and is the hardest to brief, because three of its answers depend on documents nobody has read yet. Q is not a worse company; it is a longer research job.
Does the growth reveal operating history worth a conversation?
Four tests separate growth that matters from growth that only looks good on a chart.
- Did the new people work in systems the company owns? Teams that work inside clients' systems create records that usually belong to the clients.
- Are they employees? A contractor surge adds people the screen does not count.
- Did the growth split the history? A migration during rapid growth can leave years in an old system and months in a new one. That is also a dated event: real timing, unlike a quarter-end.
- Is the history older than the growth? The valuable part of a fast-growing company's records is often what existed before the growth started.
SourceX's own fit signals point the same way. Its company site lists ten, including volume, historical depth, uniqueness and clear ownership, and says company size alone does not determine value; value depends on actual Acquisition Partner demand and due diligence.
Rank briefs with ownership and capacity in the ranking
Sort completed briefs on keys you can observe, in this order:
- Knowable questions answered from a primary source. Four of four beats three of four.
- Ownership simple. One entity, no unassigned acquired archives.
- Relationship owner confirmed. Someone has agreed to ask the CEO.
- A dated event. A migration, integration or closure with a date.
- Research hours under the cap. A brief that has used its hours without settling peak headcount is parked, not pushed.
Capacity belongs in the ranking because a research lead's week is finite. Set the cap from your own time logs; no benchmark has been published. The peak headcount decision tree gives the company's controller a way to settle the first question without sharing a file. Companies outside the portfolio often hold the longest histories, a pattern explored in how much operating history sits outside venture portfolios; growth equity operating teams and readers of data offers after an acquisition announcement face the acquired-growth questions most often.
Where the headcount signal misleads
- Totals are not full-time counts. The SEC's advisory committee asked for a full-time, part-time and contingent split precisely because totals can blend them.
- Acquisitions add people, not rights. The rights question for acquired records is open until counsel and SourceX's review close it.
- Recent growth means short history. The fastest-growing team usually has the fewest years of records.
- Size does not set value. SourceX says value depends on Acquisition Partner demand and due diligence; a bigger company is not a more valuable dataset.
- Growth screens skip mature companies. Ranking a network by growth pushes companies like R to the bottom, where they may fit best.
- Market growth is a separate question. Whether demand for AI training data is rising is analysis that belongs on sourcex.si; this brief stays on whether to ask one CEO for a conversation.
Methods note. The brief and its five questions come from SourceX's published fit criteria and attribution terms, checked on 2026-10-26, and from the SEC and Department of Labor sources above for what public headcount records contain. It has not been tested on a real cohort, SourceX has published no conversion data, and Companies P, Q and R are invented. It measures what can be known before an introduction; record quality, rights and demand are assessed only in SourceX's review.
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 brief shows four questions answered, a clear owner of the records and a CEO ready to talk, open a partner registration, line the company up with the published eligibility criteria and read the terms of the referral program; whoever submits signs the SourceX Channel Partner Agreement first.
Research for referrals and research on SourceX as a company are different jobs; readers doing the second 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.