Funding status never establishes eligibility. A celebrated seed-stage company and an unglamorous 20-year-old distributor owned by one of your LPs face the same four tests, and the distributor may well pass more of them.
What is fact, what is conditional and what is our thesis
| Type | Statement | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Program fact | Before any introduction, a mapped company's full-time headcount must have hit 50+ at its high point, leaving contractors out, and it needs an operating history on record, the rights to license those records and a contact authorized to act for it | SourceX terms and who-qualifies page, checked 2026-10-26 |
| Program fact | A company earns credit for only one partner: whoever made the earliest valid introduction inside the 90-day attribution window, once that company has submitted a verified application | SourceX terms |
| Conditional | Whether a mapped company is accepted, what it licenses and whether any reward follows | Decided only in SourceX review and a signed agreement |
| Thesis | For an early-stage fund, companies that already pass the size and history tests are more likely to sit in the wider network than in the portfolio | Our working hypothesis, not measured data; the map below is how you test it |
Who authorizes, and who in your network can ask?
Two different people answer two different questions. The company's CEO decides whether it discusses licensing its records, and signs for it. The relationship owner is the person in your network who can ask that CEO for a conversation and be heard. For a portfolio company these are often the same founder you speak to every month. Outside the portfolio they rarely are: the CEO of a portfolio company's largest customer is reachable through that founder, not through you.
Owning shares does not make the fund the decision-maker. It is the CEO who authorizes a licensing discussion under the program, and SourceX's screening guidance says a company whose decision maker was kept in the dark is usually not a fit. So every row on your map needs two cells filled before any outreach: the authorizer (the CEO) and the person who will make the ask.
| Term | How this page uses it |
|---|---|
| Relationship owner | The person who can ask a company's CEO for a conversation and be heard |
| Authorizer | The company's CEO: the person who agrees to a licensing discussion and signs on the company's behalf |
| Mandate-fit | Passing all four published fit facts, not just being reachable |
| Ring | A group of companies that share the same kind of relationship owner |
Platform programs already reach well past the cap table. Andreessen Horowitz's enterprise page, for example, says its operating team gives entrepreneurs access to expertise, insights and a network of experts to help the portfolio get to market and scale, and its roster groups operating staff under labels such as Go-To-Market Network and Full Stack Talent. A network like that is built to reach people outside the portfolio, and it is where ring 5 below comes from.
The portfolio-versus-network opportunity map
Draw five rings around your platform team. Every ring holds companies you can reach, but the relationship owner, the evidence you can see and the usual failure differ by ring.
| Ring | Who owns the CEO relationship | Evidence you can usually see | Usual reason it fails | Your first ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Current portfolio | The founder-CEO, directly | Headcount, systems and history from board materials | Too young or below 50 full-time employees at peak; product data belongs to customers | The founder, in a regular check-in |
| 2. Former portfolio and exits | The partner who held the board seat, or the acquirer's CEO after a sale | Dated: what you knew at exit | Ownership changed; the acquirer's CEO now decides | The former board member |
| 3. Portfolio customers and suppliers | The portfolio founder who sells to or buys from them | Little firsthand evidence | The founder will not spend commercial goodwill on it | The portfolio founder, whether to raise it at all |
| 4. LPs, co-investors and outside boards | The LP principal, co-investing partner or board member | Often strong: owners know their own companies | Confidential LP relationships; the internal owner has not agreed | The colleague who owns that relationship |
| 5. Platform programs | The program lead for the go-to-market, talent or advisor network | Role and company, rarely records | Your contact is a functional executive, not the CEO | The program lead, aiming for a CEO introduction |
Method note. The map records two things per company: the relationship owner and the fit evidence, built from the published fit criteria and the attribution rule (SourceX terms and who-qualifies page, checked 2026-10-26). Demand for a company's records, the quality of those records and any payout are left off the map, because only SourceX's review can assess them. Ring order is a reading order, not a ranking of value. For the step before the rings, listing everyone you know once, use the network opportunity worksheet or the network screening guide.
Three companies on the map (Illustrative)
Illustrative. Generic companies, invented facts, no outcomes implied.
A. An owner-led company in ring 4. A 140-person claims administrator, still run by its founder as CEO, is majority-owned by a family office that is also an LP in the fund. It holds fourteen years of claim files and adjuster notes in one system. The relationship owner is the family office principal, who sits on its board. The platform lead explains the fit tests to the principal; the principal asks the CEO; if the CEO wants the conversation, the person agreed in writing beforehand submits the introduction. The family office page covers that relationship from the LP side.
B. A network intermediary in ring 3. A portfolio company's largest customer is a 600-person regional freight operator with years of dispatch exceptions and claims records. Nobody at the fund knows its CEO. The portfolio founder does, and decides whether raising data licensing helps or strains the account. If the founder says no, the row is marked "owner declined" and nobody goes around them. Whether to approach a sponsor or the CEO directly is weighed in introducing through a sponsor or directly to the CEO.
C. A no-fit counterexample in ring 1. The fund's best-known company has 45 full-time employees, was founded in 2024 and keeps most of its records inside customer tenants. It fails the size test today and the rights picture is weak. A warm relationship does not cure either. The row is marked "revisit" with the condition that would change it: full-time headcount passing 50 and records the company itself controls.
A reachable CEO still needs fit facts and an authorized path
A contact list tells you whom you can reach. Fit depends on two gates, and a company needs both.
Gate 1, the published fit facts. Headcount: 50+ full-time employees at the company's peak, not counting contractors; history: documented operating records; rights: the company can license those records; 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. For a staffing firm in ring 4 or 5, the count covers the firm's own full-time staff and leaves out the workers it has placed on assignment at clients. Give both figures separately, and still introduce the firm when its records are strong.
Gate 2, an authorized path. A named relationship owner who will ask the CEO first, and a CEO who knows about and wants the conversation.
| Fit evidence | Authorized path confirmed | No authorized path yet |
|---|---|---|
| All four fit facts known and passing | Ask now | Find the relationship owner |
| Some fit facts unknown | Ask metadata questions through the owner | Park the row |
| A fit fact fails | Record it and revisit on a named trigger | Drop the row |
Every question in a ring stays descriptive: the record type, a rough count, the span of years, the system and its administrator. Files, samples and logins are out of bounds. The column set in the metadata-only opportunity map fits each ring. Three questions stay open until SourceX's review: do the records match what is wanted now, do customer contracts restrict reuse, and what would a license cover? For the reward cap, a parent and every subsidiary under it are treated as a single company, which matters when ring 2 exits were rolled into a larger group.
Order the map by confirmed path, fit facts and dated events
SourceX has not published conversion rates or typical payouts. A ranking that guesses them ranks your guesses, not your companies. Sort on four observable keys, in this order:
- Path confirmed. The relationship owner has agreed to ask.
- Fit facts known. All four confirmed beats three of four.
- A dated event. A documented system migration, archive deletion or retention change with a date. That is real urgency; a quarter-end is not.
- Effort for the relationship owner. One call before a chain of introductions.
A row with a failed fit fact sits below every other row, however warm the path.
| Rank | Company (Illustrative) | Ring | Path confirmed | Fit facts known | Dated event |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Case A, claims administrator | 4 | Yes | 4 of 4 | None |
| 2 | 210-person field-services group owned by a co-investor's fund | 4 | Yes | 3 of 4 | CRM migration scheduled |
| 3 | Former portfolio company, now inside a 320-person group | 2 | Yes | 2 of 4 | None |
| 4 | Case B, freight customer | 3 | Pending founder | 3 of 4 | None |
| 5 | Logistics company whose COO sits in the go-to-market network | 5 | No | 1 of 4 | None |
| 6 | Case C, seed-stage company | 1 | Yes | Fails size | Revisit later |
Where this map is wrong
- Growth-stage funds. If most portfolio companies already have hundreds of employees and long histories, ring 1 holds your best rows and the outer rings add little. The thesis is written for early-stage funds.
- Rights. The most visible records may belong to customers, and SourceX's screening guidance treats client-owned material as a poor fit.
- Demand. Whether a company's records match what SourceX needs right now is a review question, and fit moves when programs move. A strong row can still be declined today.
- Synthetic data. If synthetic data closes the gap, demand for real records could narrow. Epoch AI's report on AI in 2030 expects synthetic and multimodal data to cover the shortfall for the largest training runs, and does not see data as the constraint that stops scaling.
- Relationship cost. Asking an LP or a portfolio founder to raise this with a customer spends goodwill. No data on how LPs or founders react has been published; record it.
A measurable next step. Map 30 companies across the five rings in one sitting. Two weeks later, count three numbers: rows with a confirmed relationship owner, rows with all four fit facts known, and CEOs who agreed to a conversation. If ring 1 produces as many "ask now" rows as rings 2 to 5 combined, the thesis is wrong for your fund and the portfolio is where to start. Whoever submits must first have signed the SourceX Channel Partner Agreement, which earlier carried the title Channel Partner Non-Circumvention and Non-Disclosure Agreement. For the portfolio side of the program, start with the overview for venture platform teams.
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 your map shows a row with a confirmed relationship owner and four known fit facts, sign up as a partner, test that row once more against who qualifies and go through the program terms before the CEO hears from anyone.
Mapping who holds each CEO relationship is referral work, and looking at SourceX as a possible investment is a separate task; anyone weighing that can ask for investor materials via 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.