One ask seldom strains a relationship. The fourth "just circling back", from an analyst the CEO has never met, is another matter. The rules below put a number on each stage so nobody has to decide, in the moment, whether one more note is persistence or pressure.
What counts as inactive, and what an open row costs
Inactive means no reply and no movement at a stage for a set period. That definition only works for the stages the platform can observe: before the ask, after the ask, and between a CEO's interest and an application. After the company applies, silence is not inactivity. SourceX is reviewing operating history, documentation, data rights and relevance to demand, and the company controls whether to proceed. The platform's job there is to watch the dashboard, not the company.
The founder benefit of a good pause rule is space. A CEO who said "not now" should be able to trust that "not now" will be respected, and that the next contact will carry something useful. The capacity cost of a bad one is twofold: minutes in every weekly pipeline review, and goodwill drawn from whichever partner, LP or founder made the introduction.
Stage-specific pause rules
| Stage | Inactive after | Follow-ups allowed | Sent by | Pause when | Close when | Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Relationship owner has not asked the CEO | 14 days without the ask | One reminder to the relationship owner, never to the CEO | Platform lead | The owner says "not this quarter" | The owner declines, or 45 days pass | "Owner declined" or "owner deferred to a date" |
| 2. Asked; the CEO has not replied | 14 days | One, carrying a useful answer | Relationship owner | The CEO asks for time | 45 days after the ask with no reply | Date of the ask and of the follow-up |
| 3. CEO interested; link shared, no application | 21 days | Two: one practical help, one final note | Relationship owner, or the platform lead if the CEO asked to deal with them directly | The CEO names a later date | Day 90 of the attribution window with no application | Window start date and any reason given |
| 4. Applied; SourceX reviewing | Not measured by the platform | None to the company about SourceX's progress | Nobody | Not applicable | SourceX declines or the company withdraws | Dashboard stage and date |
| 5. Master signed; inventory, Confirmation and delivery | Not measured by the platform | None unless the CEO asks for help | Nobody | Not applicable | A no-deal notice | Dashboard stage and date |
| 6. Acceptance, Closing and payment | Not measured by the platform | None to the company; reward questions go to SourceX | The partner, to SourceX only | Not applicable | Reward paid, or the deal ends | Reward status: Estimated, Eligible, Approved or Paid |
Stages 1 and 2: the ask belongs to the relationship owner. A reminder goes to the partner, LP or founder who holds the relationship, never around them to the CEO. If the owner declines to ask, the row closes as "owner declined", and nobody tries another route. The single follow-up after the ask should add something the CEO can use; the companion guide on the follow-up that adds a useful answer has a library of them.
Stage 3: the window runs whether you chase or not. Section 2 of the terms ties credit to a single event, the company's own verified application, and reserves it for the first valid introduction, made within the 90-day attribution window, of a company SourceX did not already know. SourceX's home page adds that the link visit is recorded and attribution is locked when the application is submitted. Nor does the window stretch while the agreement's contact protection carries on; the terms keep those two clocks apart. Credit follows the CEO's decision to apply, so extra messages cannot protect it; they can only cost the introduction its warmth. Two follow-ups is the limit: one practical (an offer to help list systems, years and owners at metadata level, never records) and one final note that makes declining easy.
Stages 4 and 5: the company and SourceX set the pace. SourceX is free under the terms to talk with a referred company directly, and doing so leaves valid attribution untouched, so the platform keeps its place without staying in the thread. SourceX's process page describes what happens meanwhile: a Master signature that starts an inventory assessment of initially up to 30 days, a Dataset Deal Confirmation that fixes the dataset, payout and deadlines, and an acceptance review of up to 30 days. If a deal does not close, the company receives a no-deal notice and declined data is deleted. A platform lead asking a CEO how contracting is going is applying pressure to a negotiation the platform is not party to. If the CEO raises a question, route it through the founder question backlog.
Stage 6: reward questions are the partner's own business. The dashboard shows each referral's reward status as Estimated, Eligible, Approved or Paid. A disagreement over attribution, eligibility or a reward goes to SourceX with the referral details and supporting evidence, as the terms set out, never to the company.
The hours an inactive row consumes, with income at zero
Illustrative. One quarter, 18 open rows, 7 of which go quiet in stages 1 to 3; invented figures.
| Measure | Without pause rules | With pause rules |
|---|---|---|
| Inactive rows | 7 | 7 |
| Weeks each stays open | 13 | 5 |
| Review minutes per row per week | 6 | 6 |
| Review hours | 9.1 | 3.5 |
| Follow-ups sent | 21 | 10 |
| Minutes per follow-up, including coordinating with the relationship owner | 20 | 20 |
| Follow-up hours | 7.0 | 3.3 |
| Platform hours in total | 16.1 | 6.8 |
| Referral income booked | $0 | $0 |
The rules return 9.3 platform hours a quarter in this example, and the income line is the same either way. That is the point of a zero-revenue base case. Any reward, the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout with no cap for each referred company, comes into being only once a company completes a qualifying deal and every payment condition in the terms is satisfied, and a nudge sent in week eleven shifts none of those odds. The hours are real and the income is hypothetical, so the hours decide.
The goodwill side is not in the table because nobody has measured it. No data on how founders or LPs react to repeated referral follow-ups has been published. Record it yourself: one line per row on how the CEO and the relationship owner responded to each message.
Program-level expansion, pause and stop criteria
| Reading at the quarter's end | Expand | Pause | Stop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rows inactive in stages 1 to 3 | Under the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% | the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% to 50% | Over 50% |
| Follow-ups sent per verified application | Three or fewer | Four to six | More than six |
| CEOs or relationship owners who asked you to stop | None | One, handled | More than one |
| Closed rows carrying a dated revisit trigger | All | Most | Few |
The Illustrative quarter has 7 of 18 rows inactive, 39%, which sits in the pause band. The right move is to close the quiet rows under the rules before adding any new company, then read the table again next quarter.
A row to close today (Illustrative)
A 230-person engineering consultancy. Its CEO told a portfolio founder at a dinner, "Interesting, send me something." A platform analyst the CEO had never met shared the partner link and sent four notes over eleven weeks. There was no application, and last week the CEO's assistant asked to be taken off the list.
Three rules were broken: the wrong sender, twice the stage 3 limit, and no useful answer in any of the four. Close the row now. The portfolio founder sends one line of apology, the row is recorded as "closed at stage 3, CEO asked for no further contact", and the revisit trigger is the CEO raising it. The attribution window opened by the introduction has run. If the company applies one day, attribution is decided from dated records under the terms, and the platform treats that as SourceX's decision.
The contrast case is a 120-person freight broker whose CEO asked for time until after a system migration with a documented end date for read access to the old platform. A dated, documented event justifies one more note, once, carrying that date. Without it, the stage 3 limit stands.
Where these rules are wrong
- The CEO's own timeline beats any rule. If a CEO asks for a note in March, send it in March, even if the row would otherwise have closed.
- Real events change the math. A documented migration, archive deletion or retention change with a date can justify one note beyond the limit. A quarter-end cannot.
- Some relationships run warmer. A founder who speaks to the CEO weekly can raise the subject in passing without it counting as a follow-up. Write down which rows are exceptions and why.
- The partner agreement has its own clock. The SourceX Channel Partner Agreement lasts one year, renews only when it is accepted and signed afresh, and for six months after it ends still protects the qualifying contacts introduced while it ran. That protection does not extend the 90-day attribution window. Put the renewal date on the tracker.
- Closed is not permanent. Every program carries its own criteria, so a company that missed this one can still match a different program when it opens. A revisit trigger keeps the door open without anyone holding it.
Method note. The stage boundaries come from the program terms (Version 2026-10-22.2, since replaced by version 2026-11-04), SourceX's referral and process pages and the screening page, all checked on 26 October 2026. The follow-up limits, inactivity periods, hour estimates and bands are this page's own rules, applied to Illustrative rows; they are not SourceX requirements. Not measured: founder reactions, conversion at any stage or any reward outcome, none of which is published. The live guide on following up after an introduction covers tone; the six published stages are on how it works; the fund-side overview is on the page for venture platform teams; and more operating guides sit in the guides library.
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 quiet rows are closed and the active ones each have an owner, register for a partner link for the next introduction, confirm the company against who qualifies and keep the attribution rules in the program terms next to your tracker.
Deciding when to stop chasing a referral is a question about founders' time; deciding whether to invest in SourceX is a different one, and readers weighing it 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.