An investor relationship supplies neither permission nor corporate authority. A board seat, a lead on the last round or a standing call with the CTO lets you raise the idea. None of it lets you decide who speaks for the company, and none of it substitutes for the CEO's own yes.
Founder interest, an authorized sponsor and a voluntary decline
Three answers sound alike in a portfolio call and lead to different next steps. Write down which one you actually heard.
| What you heard | Who said it | What it allows | What it does not allow |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founder interest: "Interesting, send me something" | A founder who may or may not be the CEO, or any executive | Sharing public program pages and asking whether the CEO wants an introduction | Naming the company to SourceX, submitting it or asking anyone else inside the company |
| Authorized sponsorship: "Yes, explore it; our COO will run it" | The CEO, naming a sponsor | An introduction to the CEO and the named sponsor, and metadata questions answered by the sponsor | The sponsor signing for the company, or any record leaving before an agreement |
| Voluntary decline: "Not for us" or "not this year" | The CEO | A dated note with a reason code and any revisit trigger the CEO named | Asking the CFO, CTO or a board member to reopen it |
A founder who stepped back to chair or CTO can be enthusiastic and still not be the person who decides. Here the decision sits with the CEO: it is the CEO who authorizes a licensing discussion and signs on behalf of the company, and in an owner-run business that is usually the owner. SourceX's qualification page adds that an introduction made without the decision maker in the loop is usually not a fit, so founder interest alone never starts an introduction.
What a CEO asks once the answer is yes
When a CEO says yes, the next question is usually practical: "Who on my team should handle this, and how much of their time will it take?" SourceX's own page for CEOs lists team time and whether the company can stop at any point among a CEO's top questions, and it says signing comes first: the company approves the scope and the terms and signs, and only then is any data delivered.
The step the CEO is asking you for is narrow. You describe the program, the published fit facts and the reward you would receive; you help the CEO walk the tree below; and once a sponsor is named, the person who signed the SourceX Channel Partner Agreement submits the introduction. You do not nominate the sponsor, contact them first or collect anything from them beyond metadata.
The sponsor-selection decision tree
Five questions, asked in order, with the CEO answering each one. The output is a single named sponsor and a date.
- Has the CEO heard the idea from someone they trust and said they want to explore it? If the CEO has not been asked, the only next step is asking, through whoever owns that relationship. If the CEO declined, the tree ends and you log a voluntary decline. Only a yes continues.
- Which record family would carry the case? Pick the one with the longest documented history the company created itself. That choice names the record owner.
- Does the record owner have the CEO's trust and the time to carry it? Yes goes to question 4. No goes to question 5.
- Does the candidate hold a personal stake the company has not cleared? Examples: they would register as the referral partner and earn the reward, they are leaving within the year, or they sit on the board as your fund's designee. No stake, or a stake the CEO has heard and accepted in writing, makes them the sponsor. Otherwise go to question 5.
- Does a COO or CFO already run projects across these systems? If so, that executive sponsors, and the record owner answers system questions. If not, the CEO sponsors it personally.
Question 2 carries the most weight, because the record family decides which executive matters. A guide to the usual owners:
| Record family most likely to carry the case | Usual system owner | Likely sponsor if trusted and free |
|---|---|---|
| Support tickets, escalations and resolutions | Head of support | Head of support, or the COO above them |
| CRM opportunities, quotes and renewal notes | Head of sales operations | Head of sales operations |
| Issue histories, code reviews and incident write-ups | CTO or head of engineering | CTO |
| Purchase approvals, collections and close checklists | CFO or controller | CFO |
| Dispatch logs, work orders and field exceptions | COO | COO |
| SOPs, internal knowledge bases and project histories | Head of operations | COO or head of operations |
Every column describes a person, not a record. The tree runs on what the CEO tells you about systems, years and owners; nobody opens a file to answer it.
Personal enthusiasm is not company authority
The person you know best inside a portfolio company is often not the CEO. Platform programs are organized by function: Andreessen Horowitz, for example, describes an operating team spanning marketing, talent, legal and policy. A network built that way produces strong relationships with functional executives, and those executives are often the first to get excited about their own records.
That enthusiasm is useful once the CEO has said yes, and it is the reason question 4 exists. A CTO who wants to be the sponsor, the partner and the person who explains the systems is holding three roles, and at least one of them pays a reward. Separate them before anyone is introduced:
- Authority sits with the CEO, who decides and signs.
- Sponsorship sits with the person the CEO names, who coordinates and answers questions at metadata level.
- The referral sits with whoever signed the SourceX Channel Partner Agreement and submits the introduction. Working from dated records, SourceX credits one partner per company: the partner whose valid introduction was first inside the 90-day attribution window, once the company has submitted a verified application.
Your own stake belongs in the same conversation. You would earn the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout, with no cap, on the company's first qualifying transaction; SourceX pays that separately, and it never reduces what the company receives. Say so to the CEO before the sponsor is chosen, not after.
A freight broker, a software company and an advisory firm on the tree (Illustrative)
Illustrative: three invented companies; nothing here describes a real firm or a result.
A 260-person freight brokerage. The founder-CEO says yes on a board call. The deepest history is eleven years of dispatch exceptions, run by the VP of operations, whom the CEO trusts and who has no stake in the referral. Questions 2 to 4 all pass, and the VP of operations sponsors. The board member who owns the CEO relationship submits the introduction after signing the agreement.
A 140-person vertical software company. Your platform team knows the CTO well and the CTO is keen. The CEO has not been asked. The tree stops at question 1: the CTO does not become the sponsor by being reachable, and the next step is the lead partner asking the CEO. If the CEO later says yes, question 4 matters, because the CTO had offered to register as the partner.
A 90-person tax and advisory firm. The CEO listens and declines: most of what the firm holds is client material, and SourceX's screening guidance treats material that belongs to clients as usually not a fit. The row is logged as a voluntary decline with the reason "client-owned records" and no revisit date. Nobody asks the firm's CFO to reconsider. The decline log page covers what to keep and when to delete it.
Hand off only what the CEO approved
Once the CEO names a sponsor, write a short handoff note and send it to the CEO and the sponsor together. It records permission; it is not a data inventory.
| Field | What goes in | What stays out |
|---|---|---|
| Decision | The CEO's yes, its date and how it was given | Anything the CEO said in confidence about the business |
| Roles | The CEO as authorizer, the sponsor's name and title, and the partner who will submit | Your view on who should have been chosen |
| Records | Record family, rough span of years and system names | Files, samples, exports, screenshots or logins |
| Limits | Topics or systems the CEO asked to keep out | Customer names and contract terms |
| Stake | The partner's reward, stated once, plainly | Any estimate of what the company might earn |
Consent wording can be one line from the CEO, for example: "Happy to explore this; our COO will be the contact, and nothing leaves the company before we agree terms." Illustrative wording, not a SourceX form. For the step before this note, choosing between a fund sponsor and the CEO as the route in, see introducing through the sponsor or directly to the CEO, and for the independent-sponsor view of the same question see the independent sponsor program page.
Where the tree points to the wrong person
- Ownership splits. In a company held 50/50 by two owners, or one controlled by a bankruptcy trustee or a court, the CEO alone may not be enough. The tree assumes an ordinary chain of command.
- Groups. Inside a corporate group, the executive running the business may not be the CEO who authorizes. Use the subsidiary escalation tree first.
- Rights. A well-chosen sponsor does not change who owns the records. Customer contracts, employee privacy and third-party terms are tested in SourceX's rights review, and records that belong to clients usually fail.
- Demand. SourceX checks relevance to its current data needs during review, and its criteria differ by program. A strong sponsor can carry a company that is still declined.
- The sponsor leaves. If the named sponsor departs mid-process, the CEO names another; the tree is rerun from question 2, not from the start.
- Founder-owned companies. Where the founder still runs the company as CEO and owns most of it, the tree often ends at "the CEO sponsors it", which is a fine answer. The founder-owned company map covers that pattern.
Methods note. The tree and the record-owner table are built from SourceX's program terms (version 2026-10-22.2, since replaced by version 2026-11-04), its qualification page and its CEO page, all checked on 2026-10-26, plus a public description of one venture platform's operating team. No founder interviews were conducted, and SourceX has not published data on which sponsor roles lead to accepted companies; those figures are not yet published. To test the tree, record the sponsor's role for every introduction you make, then compare verified applications and review outcomes by role at 90 days, keeping declined and stalled companies in the count.
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.
Once the CEO has said yes and the tree has produced a named sponsor, three tasks remain on your side: register to get a tracked partner link, compare the company with the who-qualifies page and go through the referral terms line by line before the introduction goes out.
Helping a portfolio company choose its sponsor is referral work. If your fund also wonders whether SourceX itself is worth investing in, treat that as its own decision and 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.