For a VC portfolio operations lead, these tips arrive sideways: at an alumni dinner, from a founder who left two companies ago, from an engineer who now works at another portfolio company. The tip is useful precisely because the company may have forgotten what it has. The fund's role is to route it to the person who can act, not to retrieve anything.
Knowing, holding and deciding are three different jobs
A former employee knows. Someone else holds the copy. A third person decides. Mixing the three is how a helpful tip becomes a problem.
| Role | Who it usually is | What they can do | What they cannot do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Knows | A former employee, a former contractor, a departed founder | Describe what they remember, at the level of systems, years and roles | Open, copy, export or describe confidential contents |
| Holds | The company's own tenant, a software vendor, a managed service provider, a buyer running the systems | Confirm whether a copy exists and when it is due to be deleted | Decide anything about licensing |
| Decides | The CEO; the acquirer's CEO after an acquisition; the controller in a formal process | Authorize a search, a preservation step and a licensing conversation | Hand the decision to the person who knows |
Once someone leaves, they are outside the company. What they know about its systems came from their job and may be covered by a confidentiality agreement, whose terms only they and their former employer can read. The safe course works under any such agreement: say just enough for the company to find its own archive, and nothing about what is inside it.
Where the archive usually sits, and who runs it now
Archives that only a former employee remembers tend to live in a few places: a departed user's cloud drive or mailbox, a server that was retired but never wiped, a legacy software account still billed to a card, a vendor's storage, or a tenant that moved to an acquirer. Finding a company's old data archives lists the usual hiding places from the company's side.
The first of those carries a clock. Microsoft documents that when an account is deleted, the user's OneDrive is kept for 30 days by default, a period administrators can change, and that the user's manager gets access automatically unless delegation is switched off or no manager is set. The clock starts at deletion, not when sign-in is blocked or a license is removed. After the retention period the OneDrive sits in a deleted state for 93 days, and only a SharePoint administrator can restore it. Retention policies and labels override the standard process, and an eDiscovery hold stops deletion altogether. A former employee who says "the project files were in my OneDrive" is describing something on a timer that started when the company deleted the account, which may be long before anyone heard the tip. What to do with former employees' mailboxes covers the company's retention choices.
OneDrive
SharePointWho decides depends on what happened to the company since the person left. If it still operates under the same ownership, the current CEO decides. If it was acquired, the acquirer's CEO decides for it. If it is in an assignment for the benefit of creditors, a receivership or a bankruptcy case, the CEO alone may not be enough, and the controller of the estate decides.
The knowledge-without-access introduction guide
Three parts: what the note may contain, the route it travels, and who acts as partner.
Part 1: the note. The former employee writes one short paragraph, in their own words, from memory.
| Put in the note | Leave out of the note |
|---|---|
| The system or place by plain name, such as the old file server or a legacy ticketing tool | Credentials, server addresses, sharing links |
| Rough years covered and the kinds of records | Customer names, project code names, any contents |
| Who administered it, by role | Screenshots, photos, copies, even a single example |
| Any deletion, migration or shutdown they remember, with an approximate date | Guesses about value or what a buyer might pay |
| How they know: built it, used it or inherited it | Anything heard from people still inside the company |
Part 2: the route. Five steps, each with a date written next to it.
- The former employee sends the note to whoever holds the relationship with the current CEO: the fund's operations lead, a board member, or the CEO directly if the former employee has that relationship themselves.
- The relationship owner forwards it unedited, with one question: does the company want to look?
- The CEO asks the company's administrator, or the acquirer's IT owner, to check inside the company. Nobody outside the company checks.
- The company decides on preservation first, with counsel: whether to restore, extend, export or leave the archive alone, given any holds or deletion duties.
- If the archive exists and the CEO wants a licensing conversation, the agreed partner submits the introduction and the company applies.
Part 3: who is the partner. Three answers are possible: the former employee, the fund's relationship owner, or nobody. A former employee can introduce a former employer when they have a relationship with an authorized decision-maker and the company is not already talking to SourceX, as the former employee referral answer explains. Only one partner is credited per company, so agree in writing who will register and submit before the CEO hears the tip. That person signs the SourceX Channel Partner Agreement before submitting, and credit goes to the first valid introduction inside the 90-day attribution window once the company files a verified application.
Method note. The guide applies SourceX's terms and screening page and Microsoft's OneDrive retention documentation, all checked on 2026-10-27. It governs what moves between people: a note, a question and a decision. It does not measure whether an archive is complete, wanted or valuable, and it does not interpret anyone's confidentiality agreement.
Transition events that start the clock
Every archive a former employee remembers has been through some transition since they left. The event decides who holds the copy, who decides and which preservation question comes first.
| Transition | What usually happens to departed staff's data | Preservation question for counsel | Who decides |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ordinary departure | The account is deleted on the offboarding schedule and vendor clocks start | Is any hold on that person's data? | The CEO |
| Acquisition | The buyer migrates or retires the seller's systems | Do the deal documents move or exclude the archive? | The acquirer's CEO |
| Wind-down | Subscriptions end and staff leave together | Which records must be kept, returned or deleted? | The CEO, then whoever is authorized to wind up |
| Formal process | Control passes to a trustee, assignee or receiver | What does the controller's mandate cover? | The controller |
| Dispute or investigation | A hold freezes deletion | Does a hold cover the archive? | The CEO, with counsel |
Licensing never overrides a hold or a required deletion. Whether records under a hold can be shared at all is covered in litigation hold records.
Two tips, two outcomes (Illustrative)
Illustrative. Generic people and companies, invented facts; no outcome is implied.
Tip A. A former claims operations manager at a 230-person insurance services firm, acquired in 2025, says eleven years of adjuster notes sit in a legacy claims system on a server the acquirer plans to retire next quarter. The fund's former board member still knows the acquirer's CEO. The note goes to that CEO, whose IT lead confirms the server and its retirement date; counsel finds no hold. The CEO wants a conversation, and the former board member, who registered as a partner, submits. The former employee is thanked and told the company decides from here.
Tip B. A former engineer at a portfolio company that peaked at 90 full-time employees says years of project files sat in her OneDrive, which was deleted with her account five months ago. The company's administrator checks: no retention policy was set, so the 30-day period and the 93-day deleted state have both run out, and nothing can be restored. The answer and the date go in the fund's notes. The tip is closed.
The difference was not the quality of the archive. It was where the copy sat and how long ago its clock started. A locked or partly lost archive can sometimes still be described honestly, which preparing a referral when the archive is inaccessible covers, and the custodian-first guide sets out the questions to ask whoever holds a copy.
Introduce now, leave it with the company, or stop
- Introduce when the company has confirmed the archive itself, the CEO wants the conversation, counsel has no objection on holds or deletion duties, and the partner has been agreed.
- Leave it with the company while it searches or preserves. No introduction until it has decided.
- Stop when the archive is gone, when the CEO declines, when the records belong to clients, when the former employee wants to supply copies they kept, or when the company already had an application, relationship or earlier valid introduction with SourceX.
The company must still pass the published checks on its own: a full-time headcount that reached 50 or more at its peak, contractors excluded, a documented operating history, the right to license its records and a decision-maker who knows. A former employee's enthusiasm is not one of them. More transition guides sit in the guides hub.
Where this guide can go wrong
- Memory drifts. Former employees misdate systems and overstate what survived. The company's own check is the only reliable answer.
- Agreements differ. A former employee should read their own confidentiality obligations; this guide is not legal advice about them.
- Defaults are not settings. Microsoft's figures are its documented defaults, and each company's administrators may have changed them.
- Demand is unknown. Whether an archive matches a current SourceX program is decided in review, after the company has found it.
- Relationships can sour. A CEO may read a tip from a former employee as an intrusion. Routing it through the person who holds the relationship, and accepting a no, keeps that risk small.
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 company has confirmed the archive a former employee remembered and its CEO wants the conversation, register for a partner link, check the company against who qualifies and read the program terms before the agreed partner submits.
Routing an alumni tip is referral work; anyone assessing SourceX as a company to back, rather than as a program to refer into, can ask for materials on the SourceX investor page.
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.