Portfolio membership is not the asset. An alum's startup may have twelve people and two years of records; the 30-year-old company where she spent her twenties, or the one her family still owns, may pass every test the startup fails.
Why founders carry operating history their startups do not
Founders arrive with careers behind them. An NBER working paper on venture-backed founder-CEOs reports that, in its sample, founder-CEOs are 34 years old and have over 11 years of work experience across 4 different jobs before their venture. A separate NBER study using Census Bureau data on 2.7 million founders of companies that went on to hire found a mean founder age of 42, and that prior experience in the specific industry predicts much greater success.
Those are averages about founders in general, not facts about your alumni. Our working hypothesis, which the questionnaire tests, is that a meaningful share of the employers, family firms and boards behind those careers are established operating businesses with years of records, and that the alum still has a live relationship with some of their CEOs.
Which alum can ask the CEO, and which CEO decides?
Two answers per company, always. The CEO decides whether the company discusses licensing its records and signs for it; in an owner-run business that is usually the owner. The relationship owner is the alum, if the alum can ask that CEO for a conversation and be heard.
| Where an alum's operating history sits | Usual link to the CEO | What usually gets in the way |
|---|---|---|
| A former employer from before the startup | Ex-colleague or former manager, often years cold | The relationship lapsed, or the company is too large for the alum to reach its CEO |
| A family business | A parent or sibling, or the alum is now the CEO | Several family shareholders; unsettled succession, covered in family business succession planning |
| The acquirer after an exit | The alum now works inside the acquirer | The alum is not senior enough, or the deal moved records elsewhere |
| A company the alum now runs | The alum is the CEO | Most records may belong to the company's clients |
| A board or advisory seat | The alum sits with the CEO at board meetings | Duties as a director come before any introduction |
Where two owners hold equal stakes, the CEO alone may not be enough to open a licensing discussion, and the questionnaire asks about co-owners for that reason.
The alumni operating-history questionnaire
Ten questions in three parts. Send it as opt-in, let alumni answer with codes instead of names, and never attach a request for documents.
| # | Question to the alum | Why it is asked |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Outside the startup we backed, which companies have you worked at, run, owned part of or advised? | Turns one person into a list of company rows |
| 2 | Roughly how many full-time employees did each have at its peak, leaving out contractors? | The 50 full-time employees at peak test |
| 3 | About when did each start operating, and is it still run by the same owners? | Operating history, and whether ownership changed |
| 4 | Which systems held its day-to-day work, such as a ticketing, ERP, CRM, field-service or claims tool? | Record types, at metadata level only |
| 5 | Who is the CEO today, and when did you last speak with them? | The authorizer, and how warm the link is |
| 6 | Could you ask that CEO for a 20-minute conversation and expect a reply? | Whether a path exists at all |
| 7 | Is there anyone whose agreement you would want first, such as a co-owner or your own employer? | Gatekeepers, conflicts and equal-stake owners |
| 8 | Does the company create its records itself, or hold them mostly for clients? | Rights: client-owned material is usually not a fit |
| 9 | Has the company been sold, merged or restructured since you knew it? | Whether records moved, and parent-company effects |
| 10 | If an introduction makes sense, would you register as the partner, or prefer we submit with your consent? | Attribution: one partner per company |
What the questionnaire never asks for: files, samples, exports, screenshots, org charts or logins. Partners and platform teams stay at metadata level: what exists, roughly how much, over how many years, in which system and who owns it. On question 9, a company folded into a group shares a single reward cap with its parent and sister subsidiaries, and an asset sale can leave older records behind, a point covered in asset sale versus stock sale.
Method note. The questionnaire collects self-reported, consented answers. It measures reachability and the four published fit facts as the alum understands them, on the date of the answer. It does not measure demand for any company's records, record quality or payout, which only SourceX's review assesses. No results from it have been published.
Three alumni, three answers (Illustrative)
Illustrative. Invented people and companies, generic descriptions, no outcomes implied.
A. An owner-led company. An alum whose seed-stage software company, founded in 2019, wound down in 2023 now runs her family's commercial HVAC service company as CEO: 260 full-time employees at peak, operating since 1992, fifteen years of work orders and service notes in one field-service system. She is both the relationship owner and the authorizer. Her answer to question 7: two siblings hold shares and know she is exploring it. She asks to register as the partner herself.
B. A network intermediary. An alum who founded a company in 2016 and sold it in 2021 to a 700-person property management firm, operating since 2001, now leads its maintenance operations. He is not the CEO, but he meets the CEO weekly and is willing to raise it. He does not want to be paid for introducing his own employer, so the platform lead registers as the partner with his written consent, and he stays the person who asks. How to frame the first conversation is in the guide to explaining data licensing to a founder.
C. A no-fit counterexample. An alum's current startup has 38 full-time employees, was founded in 2022 and keeps its product records inside customer accounts. Her earlier employer was a 9,000-person bank where she was a product manager and never met the CEO. Neither row works: the startup fails the size test and the rights picture, and the bank is reachable only through former colleagues. Both rows are kept, coded "no path" and "revisit at 50 full-time employees", so nobody asks her again next quarter.
Reachable alumni are not the same as mandate-fit companies
The alumni list is people you can reach. The questionnaire turns it into a list of companies, and a company needs two things before anyone asks its CEO.
The fit facts. Four tests apply: 50+ full-time employees at peak with contractors left out, documented operating history, rights to license, and location. 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 90% of the data is in English. Funding status plays no part: a venture-backed name and a bootstrapped family firm face the same tests.
An authorized path. An alum who will ask the CEO first, and a CEO who knows about and wants the conversation. In SourceX's screening guidance, an alum's introduction made behind the decision maker's back is usually not a fit. Whoever submits must first sign the SourceX Channel Partner Agreement.
What stays unknown until SourceX reviews the company: whether its records match a current program, whether client contracts restrict reuse, and what any license would cover.
Rank the next conversations by authority distance
SourceX has not published conversion rates or typical payouts, so a ranking built on guessed proceeds ranks guesses. Rank on what the questionnaire actually establishes.
Authority distance: 0 when the alum is the CEO; 1 when the alum can ask the CEO directly and expects a reply; 2 when someone else must ask; 3 when there is no route. Sort by distance first, then by how many of the four fit facts the alum could state. A row with a failed fit fact drops out, however close the alum is.
| Order | Company (Illustrative) | Authority distance | Fit facts stated | Next action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Case A, HVAC service company | 0 | 4 of 4 | Alum opens the conversation |
| 2 | Case B, property management firm | 1 | 4 of 4 | Alum asks the CEO; platform lead submits with consent |
| 3 | 140-person dental laboratory where an alum sits on the board | 1 | 3 of 4 | Alum confirms operating history first |
| 4 | Former employer of two alumni, a 400-person engineering firm | 2 | 2 of 4 | Find which alum knows the CEO |
| 5 | Case C, the startup and the bank | 3 | Fails size | Revisit at 50 full-time employees |
Where the questionnaire misleads
- Self-report. Alumni round headcounts up and remember relationships as warmer than they are. Question 5's "when did you last speak" is the check.
- Who answers. Engaged alumni respond; those who drifted away may hold the best companies and never reply. Treat the response rate as a result.
- Averages are not your network. The NBER figures describe founders in aggregate; your alumni may be younger or have spent their careers at startups.
- Rights. Some of the most familiar companies hold records mainly for clients, which SourceX's guidance treats as a poor fit.
- Demand. SourceX judges a company against one program's criteria at a time, so an alum's company that misses one program may still suit a later one; broader shifts, such as synthetic data meeting more training needs, could narrow demand for real records altogether.
Long operating history is described in recognizing a business with several years of operating history, and founder-run companies that need their records organized first in professionalizing a founder-led business. To screen the companies alumni name by age and ownership, use the age-and-ownership worksheet. The rest of the program, seen from a venture platform team's seat, is in the overview for venture platform teams; further reading sits in the guides hub.
Next step
Refer a company. Earn up to $100,000. Default reward: 25% of Actual Supplier Payout, capped at $100,000 cumulatively per referred company. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.
When an alum's answers show authority distance 0 or 1 and four fit facts, agree who registers; that person creates the partner account, screens the company on the who-qualifies page and reads the program terms before the alum asks the CEO.
If you are assessing SourceX as a possible investment rather than as a referral program, that is a separate decision, and investor materials can be requested 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.