Here a partner manager means the person on a firm's platform team who runs outside programs (service providers, perks, referral programs such as SourceX's) for every fund the firm manages. Some firms run several vehicles at once; a16z's Growth page, for example, describes one growth team managing capital across five fund vintages. Once a single person serves an older fund that is harvesting, a current fund that is investing and a growth vehicle, "help the portfolio" stops being one queue. Someone has to decide whose companies get the hours.
Founder benefit and the hours constraint, kept apart
Three quantities get blurred in this decision. Separate them before allocating anything.
| Quantity | What it is | Who controls it | Use it to allocate? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founder benefit | A CEO learns, for the cost of one conversation, whether the company's records could be licensed and on what terms, and can say no | The CEO | Yes, as the test of whether the work is worth doing |
| Partner manager hours | Preparation, briefing, recording and status questions | The platform team | Yes: this is the scarce input |
| Relationship-owner goodwill | A deal partner or LP principal asking a CEO they know | That relationship owner | Only with their consent; it is not yours to spend |
| Reward income | the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout, with no cap, payable only after acceptance, handoff and payment | Not forecastable | No: book $0 |
Most of a partner manager's work happens before the introduction. Under the Channel Partner Agreement, SourceX may communicate directly with a referred company, evaluate it, agree terms and coordinate delivery, and the partner need not join every call or negotiation. So hours follow the companies you are preparing, not the ones already in review.
Funding status never establishes fit. A growth-stage company is not ask-ready because it raised a large round, and a seed fund's alumni list is not empty because the current portfolio is young.
The fund service allocation worksheet
Four Illustrative funds share 60 partner manager hours a quarter for data referral work. Every fund gets a floor of 4 hours. The remaining 44 hours are split by ask-ready companies, 4 hours each, a rate taken from the stage model in the next section.
| Line | Fund II (2015 vintage) | Fund III (2019) | Growth I (2021) | Fund IV (2024) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Companies still held | 9 | 24 | 12 | 31 |
| 2. Of those, 50+ full-time employees at peak, confirmed | 6 | 9 | 12 | 0 |
| 3. Of those, years of records the company itself controls | 4 | 6 | 5 | 0 |
| 4. Of those, a relationship owner willing to ask the CEO | 3 | 5 | 3 | 0 |
| 5. Ask-ready companies (line 4) | 3 | 5 | 3 | 0 |
| 6. Founder-service floor, hours per quarter | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| 7. Variable share at 4 hours per ask-ready company | 12 | 20 | 12 | 0 |
| 8. Total hours per quarter | 16 | 24 | 16 | 4 |
| 9. Reward income booked | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
How to fill each line without touching a company's records:
- Line 1 comes from the firm's own portfolio list. Exited companies drop out here; if a former board member still owns a CEO relationship at an exited company, count it in the fund that partner belongs to, or leave it for the wider network map in your next AI data introduction may sit outside the portfolio.
- Line 2 uses confirmed headcount from board materials, not a guess and not a profile count. Contractors are excluded, and for a staffing company only its own full-time employees count, not workers placed with clients; SourceX still considers staffing firms whose own records are strong, so note both numbers.
- Line 3 asks whether the company holds years of operating records it controls. Product data that lives in customers' tenants usually fails here.
- Line 4 is a yes from a named person: the deal partner, an LP principal or a co-investor who agrees to ask the CEO. The CEO is the person who authorizes a licensing discussion; the relationship owner only asks.
- Line 9 stays at $0 for the whole allocation, whatever the funds' companies look like on paper.
Location belongs in line 2's check as well. 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. What stays unknown for every row until SourceX reviews it: whether the records match current demand, whether customer contracts limit their use and what any license would cover.
The stage model behind the 4-hour rate, with income at $0
The rate is a placeholder until your own time log replaces it. It counts partner manager hours per ask-ready company per quarter; the relationship owner's time is logged separately because it is a different budget.
| Stage | Who does the work | Partner manager hours (Illustrative) | Reward income at this stage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fit check at metadata level | Partner manager with the deal partner | 1.0 | $0 |
| Brief the relationship owner and draft their note | Partner manager | 1.0 | $0 |
| The ask to the CEO | Relationship owner | 0 (logged as the owner's time) | $0 |
| Introduction and record: company, domain, method, timestamps | Partner manager | 0.5 | $0 |
| SourceX review, answering questions | SourceX with the company | 1.0 across the quarter | $0 |
| Deal, handoff and payment status | SourceX and the company | 0.5 | $0 |
| Total | 4.0 | $0 |
The last column is not pessimism. Under the program terms a lead, meeting or signed agreement earns nothing payable; a reward needs the Acquisition Partner's final written acceptance of the complete dataset and its completed handoff, cleared payment to SourceX, payment of the company's compensation, finance approval and the partner's tax and payment details. The operator capacity calculator shows how to turn a weekly time log into stage weights; this worksheet takes those weights and decides which fund they are spent on.
Expand, pause or stop, one fund at a time
Recount lines 2 to 5 every six weeks. Two cycles, roughly twelve weeks, are close to one 90-day attribution window, which is long enough to see whether asks turned into applications.
| Decision | Trigger at the recount | What moves |
|---|---|---|
| Expand a fund's share | Ask-ready companies remain after this cycle's asks, at least one CEO asked for the conversation, and founders who spoke with SourceX say it was worth their time | Hours released by paused or stopped funds |
| Hold | Asks are out and answers are pending | Nothing |
| Pause | Relationship owners declined to ask in two consecutive cycles, or the fund ran more than a quarter over its line | Variable share back to the pool; the floor stays |
| Stop the variable share | No ask-ready companies, two cycles with no CEO who wanted the conversation, or a founder says the ask strained the relationship | Floor only, with a named trigger for revisiting |
| Stop the program | Two quarters in which no CEO in any fund wanted a conversation | Close open threads politely and keep the method on file |
Two funds where the worksheet says stop (Illustrative)
Fund IV, the seed fund. Thirty-one companies, none with 50 full-time employees at peak. Its variable share is zero from the first recount, and its 4 floor hours go to answering founders who ask about the program, with no outreach. The revisit trigger is concrete: a company reporting 50 full-time employees at a quarterly board update. A warm relationship with a founder does not cure the size test.
Growth I, the late-stage fund. All twelve companies pass the size test, so on day one it looked like the best fund. After two cycles: three asks, no CEO who wanted the conversation, and one board member reporting that the ask felt off-mandate. The answers shared a thread, and it was rights, not size: each CEO said the records that matter most are product data held in customers' environments, which SourceX's screening guidance treats as usually not a fit. Line 3 had been filled too generously. The variable share stops. Its 12 hours move to Fund III, where two ask-ready companies are still waiting for their relationship owner's ask. Size was never readiness.
Where a fund-by-fund split goes wrong
- Demand moves. SourceX's requirements vary with its current data needs and relevance is checked in review, so a company that is ask-ready on paper can still be declined, and one declined today may fit a different program later.
- Stale counts. Lines 2 to 4 are only as good as the board materials behind them. A headcount from two years ago inflates line 2.
- Goodwill is unmeasured. The worksheet budgets the partner manager's hours, not the relationship owner's standing with a CEO. No data on how founders or LPs react to these asks has been published; log the reactions you see.
- Conflicts. If the management company would receive rewards for introducing its own portfolio companies, your compliance team decides how that is disclosed to LPs. The guide to vendor rebates and portfolio company disclosure covers the analogous question.
- Cost accounting. This page allocates attention, not expenses. If your fund documents charge platform costs to particular funds, they govern that question.
Methods note. The worksheet uses counts from a firm's own portfolio records, the published fit criteria (program terms and the who-qualifies page, checked 2026-10-26) and the agreement's description of who does what after an introduction. The stage hours, fund counts and the 4-hour rate are Illustrative placeholders. Not measured: demand for any company's records, record quality, payouts or LP views. Figures from a real multi-fund pilot are not yet published. To produce your own, log minutes per company per stage each week, count stage transitions (asked, CEO yes, introduced, applied), and ask each founder one question after their first SourceX call: was this worth your time? The platform team time question sets the overall budget that this page then divides.
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 the worksheet shows at least one fund with an ask-ready company and a willing relationship owner, decide which party will sign the partner agreement and register the platform team, run that company against who qualifies and read the payment conditions in the program terms; the overview for venture platform teams and other guides cover the rest of the program.
Dividing platform hours between funds is referral work. Looking at SourceX as a company you might invest in is a separate question, and the SourceX investor overview is where investor materials can be requested.
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.