Discovery happens in ordinary fund work: an operations review that lists systems due for retirement, a data room left over from a financing, a board deck that mentions a decade of claim files on an old server. The pull is to keep going, to open the archive and see whether it is any good, ask for a sample, guess at a value. Every one of those steps is licensing work, and none of it belongs to the fund.
Two jobs, and who owns each
Discovery answers four questions: does an archive exist, what is it (record type, years, system, rough size), who holds each copy, and who decides for the company. Licensing answers everything after: whether the company may license the records, which ones, on what terms, how they are prepared and delivered, and who is paid.
SourceX's own process shows where the second job starts. Its first step asks the company a few questions and takes no files; SourceX later proposes an indicative range from the company's inventory; the company approves the scope and terms and signs before any data moves; and the company keeps ownership of its original data. None of those steps needs, or has room for, the fund. The fund's job is the introduction, which is a different thing from data delivery.
Copies, holders and the CEO who decides
Archives turn up as copies, and a copy is the weakest possible claim to anything. Section 202 of the U.S. Copyright Act puts it in one line: "Ownership of a copyright, or of any of the exclusive rights under a copyright, is distinct from ownership of any material object in which the work is embodied." Handing over a copy, even the first one ever made, does not by itself pass any rights in the work. Copyright is also only one layer. Customer contracts, confidentiality terms and privacy law decide what a company may license too, which is why SourceX screens for material the company owns or can license without breaching client confidentiality, employee privacy or third-party contracts.
| Where the archive turned up | Who holds the copy | Who decides | What the holder should do |
|---|---|---|---|
| The fund's data room from a financing | The fund or its data-room vendor | The company's CEO | Leave it alone; it was shared for the financing |
| A managed service provider's backups | The provider | The company's CEO | Act only on the company's instructions |
| A drive a former executive kept | That person | The company's CEO, once the company takes control of it again | Return it to the company |
| The live system | The company's IT team or software vendor | The company's CEO | Keep running it as usual |
| An acquirer's systems after a sale | The acquirer's group | The acquirer's CEO | Treat it as the group's archive |
The data owner and custodian comparison covers the same split inside a company. The fund adds a third role that companies rarely think about: a holder of copies with no authority at all.
The discovery-versus-licensing responsibility map
Ten steps from first sign to payment, with five parties. Read your own column from the top: it is busy for five steps, submits once at step 6 and then goes quiet.
| Step | You | Copy holder | Company CEO | Company counsel | SourceX |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Notice a sign that an archive exists | Does | None | None | None | None |
| 2. Describe it: record type, years, system, rough size | Asks, through the relationship owner | Answers if the CEO agrees | Answers | None | None |
| 3. Name who holds each copy | Asks | Answers if the CEO agrees | Answers | None | None |
| 4. Name who decides for the company | Confirms, with a date | None | Is that person | Advises if a court or another controller is involved | None |
| 5. Get a yes to a conversation | Asks, through the relationship owner | None | Decides | Advises if asked | None |
| 6. Submit the introduction; the company applies | Submits | None | Applies | None | Checks its own records for earlier contact, then fit |
| 7. Rights review: contracts, confidentiality, personal data | None | Answers questions about storage | Supplies the facts | Advises | Reviews |
| 8. Scope, price and signature | None | None | Approves and signs | Advises | Proposes and signs |
| 9. Preparation and delivery | None | Gives access when the company instructs it | Instructs | Advises | Runs it through approved processing routes |
| 10. Payment | Any reward, paid separately, once its conditions are met | None | Receives the supplier payout | None | Pays both |
The line that matters falls between steps 5 and 6. Above it every task is finding and asking. Below it every task needs either the company's authority or SourceX's process, and the fund holds neither. Step 10 is separate for a reason: the reward is paid by SourceX on its own and never comes out of the company's payout. One fact can end the map before step 7: records already licensed for AI training are out, because suppliers confirm their data never was.
Methods note. The map assigns each step from SourceX's program terms (version 2026-10-22.2, since replaced by version 2026-11-04), its screening guidance and its supplier process page, read with section 202 of the Copyright Act and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e), all checked on 2026-10-27. The ten steps and the party labels are our own construction. It does not measure how often found archives lead to introductions, licenses or rewards; no such figures have been published.
Six moves that feel like discovery and are licensing work
- Opening the archive to judge it. Quality and relevance are assessed in SourceX's review. A referral never needs anyone at the fund inside a company's systems.
- Asking for a sample or a screenshot. SourceX's first step takes no files, so a sample serves no one and moves records that should stay put.
- Putting a number on it. SourceX's range is indicative, drawn from the company's own inventory, and the exact payout is fixed only in a signed deal confirmation. A fund's estimate anchors a CEO to a figure nobody stands behind.
- Telling a holder to copy, move or keep it. Holders take instructions from the company, and decisions about keeping records belong to counsel.
- Forwarding the data-room index or a board deck. What the fund learned as an investor came with confidentiality duties. It tells you whom to ask, and stays inside the fund.
- Calling the archive available. Only the company decides whether any part of it is offered, and only after review.
Field guides such as finding companies with enterprise email archives help with step 1. Nothing in them reaches past step 5.
Transitions that move an archive, and duties that freeze it
Some events move an archive from one holder to another: a system retirement, a change of IT provider, a data room closing after an exit, integration into an acquirer's systems. Each one changes the answer to step 3, and an acquisition also changes step 4. Others freeze it. Rule 37(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure deals with electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation and is lost because a party did not take reasonable steps; the Committee Note adds that the prospect of litigation may call for intervening in a system's routine operation. An archive under a hold is not free to be moved, copied for anyone or deleted on schedule, and counsel sets its terms. Your part is to ask whether a hold exists. The litigation hold and data destruction comparison covers the wind-down version of the same tension.
One archive, traced from first sign to introduction (Illustrative: a generic 260-person insurance services company, invented facts, no outcome implied):
| Month | What happened | Custody | Control | The introduction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| March | An operations review lists a claims server due to retire in December | The company's IT team | The company's CEO | A sign noted; nothing sent |
| April | The board partner asks the CEO whether she would want a conversation | Unchanged | The CEO | She wants a description first |
| May | The operations lead describes eleven years of claim files in one system, roughly 400,000 of them, labeled an estimate | Unchanged | The CEO | A metadata summary the CEO approves |
| June | Counsel confirms a hold on two years of files tied to a dispute | Unchanged; the hold covers part | The CEO, within the hold | Scope narrowed before anyone is introduced |
| July | The CEO says yes; the introduction is submitted and the company applies | Unchanged | The CEO | Steps 7 to 10 now belong to the company and SourceX |
| December | The server retirement date | Kept or not, as the company decides | The CEO | Nothing further for the fund |
The fund's data-room copy from the company's 2024 financing never enters the story. It is a copy held for another purpose.
Introduce, hold or stop
- Introduce when steps 1 to 5 are done and dated, the CEO's yes is in writing and the person submitting has signed the SourceX Channel Partner Agreement.
- Hold while counsel works through a hold or dispute, while an acquisition is moving the decision to a new CEO, or when the CEO asks for time.
- Stop when the only route uses confidential fund material, when nobody can name the decider, when the records belong to the company's customers, when they were licensed for AI training before, or when the company never had 50 or more full-time employees at its peak.
Where the line blurs
- The CEO asks the fund to help. Even then, keep to descriptions and introductions; the company's own staff and SourceX handle records.
- Information rights cut both ways. They are how the fund learned about the archive, and they are why it cannot pass that knowledge on.
- Finding is not credit. Section 3 treats a company SourceX already knew as a duplicate, however the archive was found, and a lead or meeting alone earns nothing.
- Review can say no. Rights, demand and record quality are unknown until SourceX looks, and a strong-looking archive can still be declined.
- Relationship cost. Pressing a portfolio CEO about an archive she has not thought about spends goodwill, and no data on how CEOs respond has been published.
The portfolio side of the program is set out for venture platform teams, the operations review screen covers the step before discovery, and the public records comparison makes the same point about visibility and permission from another angle. More guides are in the guides hub.
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 your column of the map is complete through step 5 and the CEO has said yes, create your partner account, check the company against who qualifies and read the program terms, then submit and step back.
Mapping who finds and who licenses is part of referral work; assessing SourceX as an investment is a separate question, and anyone looking into it can ask for 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.